Listening to some of these, and it just floods back the horrendousness that was cassette tapes. They were horrible, yet they were amazing. They were great in every way except for their main purpose of listening to the recorded content. The sound was atrocious. From the muddled sound from losing all the fidelity of the highs because they were usually lost to any attempt at lowering the infamous tape hiss. The slow draggy sound from a tape that was stretched or the player having loose belts on the driving mechanism. Or worse, when the recorder did and no other player has the exact same issue so every player sounds like the batteries are dying.
For those too young to have to suffer through your youth of listening to such inferior sounds, just be grateful. For those trying to be hip and bring back old formats, stick to vinyl. Cassettes are worth losing to history.
My brother and I bought the same album back in 1994. Stone Temple Pilots—Purple.
I had it on CD, he bought the tape.
The CD sounded (obviously) so much better than his tape. But a little while later I made my own tape copy of the CD, and my copy sounded really close to the CD! Way better than his store-bought copy.
Those bastards didn't even have the decency to use Type II cassettes for the released album.
A Type II (or even better, Type IV-Metal) tape could sound pretty damn good. Still sucked to have to rewind or fast-forward, though.
(Also, Dolby NR was terrible. I'd rather have the hiss than have the muted highs)
Don't forget about quality loss from manufactured cassettes being high speed dubs. There's significant quality loss as you increase the dub speed.
Yeah mass-produced tapes were pretty bad but if you copied an album to cassette using a good tape and decent tape deck they could sound pretty good. Good enough for a Walkman or playing in the car anyway.
Pioneer, metal tape (TDK) and Dolby, man.
Maxell man!!! j/k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk71h2CQ_xM
even the tape hiss in the ad about a cassette tape is golden
One of the all-time great iconic ads. The photo of the guy in the chair was available as a poster and graced many a young man's bedroom or dorm room wall.
I still have cassette tapes encoded with dbx rather than Dolby and the former's sound quality is much better than the latter. I'd recorded them on Technics decks, which is why I still keep an old deck of that brand for playback and ripping as the bias values are identical.
Cassettes had a bit of a resurgence in the late aughts to 2010s among DIY/punk/indie bands due in part to the widespread availability of cheap (often free) old players, older used cars with tape decks, and cheap four track recording devices.
It would be very common for a new band in that time to have their first release on cassette, and then after they could scrape up the dough, press a vinyl single (CDs being very digitally uncool). There were several niche labels from that time whose bread was buttered with cassette sales.
You're absolutely right the sound quality sucks, but as a child of the '80s whose first music collection was purely cassette based and played back on a Radio Shack cassette dictation player, that sound has a nostalgia for me.
nails across the the chalkboard has a nostalgia sound as well, but I don't want to spend time listening to it if I don't have to!
Yeah. I lived on tapes, stuff ripped from radio, other tapes, and CDs. I honestly don't remember thinking tape sound was that bad, worse than CD's sure. Most of the audio gear kids and young people had access to were cheap walkmans & headphones, boom boxes, and crappy all-in-one stereo systems likely made everything sound like shit and we were oblivious. It wasn't until I was older and befriended someone who was into sound production that I put a bit more thought into audio gear.
I used to work for a VHS dub house while working graveyard shift. There was a weekend radio program that would play underground tunes not normally broadcast. It was a multi-hour broadcast longer than cassettes. Instead, I would hook up a tuner to a VHS audio-in, and record the entire broadcast on VHS HiFi tracks. I'd then listen to that tape through out the week. Lather, rinse, repeat.
We all put up with stuff when we have to. We no longer have to. Bringing back formats for nostalgia is fun, but for anything other than cassettes. Hell, my first car had an 8-track in it. My dad had a supply of blank 8-track tapes and an 8-track recorder in the home HiFi setup. I would record modern releases from CD to 8-track and rock it in the car. So yeah, been there done that
> and record the entire broadcast on VHS HiFi tracks.
That's a neat Idea. I once did something along those lines when I was a kid. A friend and I were trying to dub as many albums as we could on to a 160 minute VHS tape in LP or SLP, whatever gave you nearly 6 hours of play time. Was just for fun though.
Growing up I had a cheap stereo that I think came from a garage sell. Can't remember the brand, but it had an am/fm tuner, an 8 track player, and rca jacks for the speakers to plug into. Later on, I guess for my birthday or something, I got this adapter thing that could plug into the 8 track player and then you could play cassettes with that.
That was my setup for many years until one day I made friends with this new kid at school and stopped by his house afterwards. They were, uh, not so hygienic and had trash and clothes laying all over the house. In the mess I found some 8tracks just laying around. He didn't even know what they were so I tossed one in my backpack and took it home to try on my stereo that had an actual 8track player.
I remember being shocked by the sound quality. To me, it sounded way better than a cassette. I was also amazed that you could push a button and hear a different song. That seemed way better than a cassette that you had to rewind and fast forward through to get the right spot. I ended up taking the 8track apart for fun and of course got tape everywhere so in the trash it went. And that was my first and only 8track experience.