Wow! I remember cassettes well but not favourably. I'm surprised they're making a comeback, though I can understand the punk angle.

Relevant to this thread . . .

Tape runs out for Sony's portable cassette recorders

I still use mini DV tapes, but that's it. I'm hoping to move on to digital/HD for home video soon.

This is cool and all, I guess. There is a problem though and that is that cassette SUCKED as a format. It wasn't as bad as 8 Track (the worst mainstream consumer format ever) but it really did suck. Recordable and portable, sure, that's why I had so many of the things, but sound quality was...not good, and age and replay were not kind to cassette.

I guess if it fulfills some sort of contrarian philosophy then...fine, but it really is a garbage format. I have LPs from the 1950s that sound awesome, and cassettes from the late 80s that have their ferric material flaking off of them.

If I had any good memories of cassette it would be for the extreme levels of innovation (some would say gimmickry) in the blank cassette market. I had this TDK blank once that ran me $11 (in 1989 blanks were usually $1-3). It had a cast aluminum frame (like an iPhone 4), roller bearings and reversible write protects. I assume it was a Type IV Metal, but I lost it, evidently. I would like to have a mint one of those in the package just for old times sake.

i remember those blanks, the ones that my father bought were older than that, i want to say mid 80s.
he might even still have them? only had 2 but they were heavy cast metal with clear plastic.

i think it was an amazing format, better than records due to the fact that you could record with them and before CD or digital recordings.

i also feel that cassette tapes were better than VHS, i never had any issue with tape jam or breaks like VHS.

That will be this tape - a TDK MA-XG90 Type IV:


I recorded a copy of Suzanne Vega - Solitude Standing from CD back in December 1987 onto this tape and it still sounds perfect played today.
Not a single drop out even during the really quiet intro track 'Tom's Diner'.

that's it, but i sort of rememeber mine having lime green pieces on top to allow record.

That it!

I put The Cure's Disintigration on mine. At the time I remember it being almost indistinguishable from the CD I recorded it from. Of course, the CD I recorded it from only cost $4 more so these things were probably best used for making recordings of unique material.

I guess somehow I missed this topic

I still have around 700 to 800 cassettes and my trust Proton Ad300 auto reverse and I bought the last Yamaha high end deck new in 1999

I even bought extra cassettes of Led Zeppelin before they remastered them digitally to cassette in 93 or 94!!!

Then I purchased all the Queen Imports before the new recording label took over....

I still love the warm sound of Analog...

So are they really doing a comeback? I guess I never knew it, the Germans stayed with the cassette format in their cars into the 2000 models even.

Toyota and VW had cassettes in their cars for a while. I have a 2004 Jetta with cassette and CD.

But no, I would not say they are making a comeback. Its just punk lables trying to do something different. Whats different today just happens to be what was super popular 25 years ago. While sales might have increased, if the numbers are to be believed vinyl is still selling 2000 times better, and vinyl is a teeny tiny portion of iTunes and CD.

I recently saw a video about a band who released their latest single on Laserdisc. Yes, a new release Laserdisc!

How do they do it? They take a pre-existing LD (Roger Rabbit was shown) and use a record lathe designed for dub plates to carve a groove into it so it can be played on a turntable. Pretty cool! I'm sure it sounds horrific and destroys your stylus, but it's pretty cool regardless.

I've got about 900 cassettes here, and, um...5 stereo decks (Nakamichi/Teac/Tascam/Denon), a 4-track cassette deck, and two 8-track cassette decks still in use (plus the deck in the van). Probably half of those cassettes are unique recordings from my live shows & home studios, the other half are mostly from my vinyl collection (the bulk of which was stolen from me). So, they still work & sound good & allow me to hear music I love, so they stay. They also allow me to make money by archiving other folks' old tapes to CDs/MP3s.

I still record live shows to the 8-track decks, too, sometimes. Once I even recorded to both 8-tracks at the same time, just to see if I could sync 'em up later in ProTools.

No crazier than keeping LD players going, in some folks' eyes.

je

Is the Nakamichi Dragon really that great? When I was in Highschool I was dreaming about that for a longtime, but some told me there were better sounding decks for less money?

What's your recommendations? I find the Proton as that nice quiet warm sound that's pleasing to my ears playing back commercial recorded tapes.

It just seams the Dragon is hard to get repaired or parts now when I was reading up on it a few years back.

Thanks if you could give me any advice on some other good decks that are good.

Duane, MI

The Dragons were good sounding decks, I installed a ton of them & the RX-505s back in the day (I designed & installed AV systems for millionaires & billionaires for a bunch of years). My current Nak isn't up in that range, it's a CR-2A if I remember correctly. I do love the look of these Naks, which is part of why I have them as my bedroom system (cassette/CD/receiver). Mine sounds fine for what it's asked to do in that context.

Try asking around on AudioKarma or similar sites for folks that still repair & maintain these decks, they might be able to give you more useful info than I can. I'm mostly using the Tascam/Teac pro decks these days.

je

I started buying CDs that same year (1987) and at the time CDs cost about £12 per disc for new releases in the UK.
Many of the early CDs I bought cost far more as I was into buying Japanese or US imports right from the very beginning.

Given you could often fit two CDs onto a 90 minute cassette because albums were shorter back then it was actually quite economic to use these tapes and the quality was superb. Also there were other far cheaper Metal oxide TDK tapes available that didn't come in the real metal shell but were just as good to actually record on. I think the worst cassette tapes were the ones with pre-recorded material sold in record stores which were often terrible quality and snagged up in tape players as they used cheap mechanisms and low grade ferric oxide tape that tended to leave dirty deposits on the heads.

me too, i have some cassettes and plan to buy a better tape deck in the future: a pioneer ct-1000.

i had a pioneer CT-F700, nice deck but i feel the newer ones are better.
the one i have now is a pioneer CT-W830R and it is amazing, it will skip songs when searching, has dolby B and C
anyway James, what do you need a tape deck for? i wanted to get the whole rack setup, and also wanted the
tape deck as it was sitting at my parents in storage just getting covered in dust.
now it's going to sit in my place covered in dust

Technical question: was Dolby C good for anything other than obliterating sound quality? Dolby B was bad enough but C just seemed to produce terrible dropouts that came and went randomly.

Regarding retail tape releases on budget: yes, it was terrible. You pay $10 for an album and its made on the worst quality tapes available. The stuff was glued together too, often times, so to repair one you'd have to smash it apart and transfer the reels to a sacrificial housing. Taping a CD at home on a consumer deck should NOT give superior results, but it often did.

i didn't use a tape deck for over 15 years, when i picked up the 700 and tried the dolby B i thought it
was just like putting a mute over the sound, it almost took out all the treble and left you with a muddy bass sound.

the deck i have now has B and C but i didn't have it hooked up long enough to even bother with them, just cleaned
all the dust out and now its on the side of my A/V rack on the floor waiting for room on the shelf one day

I have both of the TDK MA-XG

The first one being the original design, and then it was later changed to new design black with green, before it got discontinued. I think the black/green one cost me 20.00 for it which was alot back then.

A sealed TDK MA-XG 90 cassette tape is worth about £45 on Ebay in 2012.