Slouching Raymond
Well-known member
Slade mis-spelled everything.
How Many People Are Using Cassettes Here?
- Thread starter clamsterdamm
- Start date
grimtraveller
If only for a moment.....
They tuk me bakk ome
grimtraveller
If only for a moment.....
But not digitally !
Smithers XKR
Well-known member
Noddy was the most unlikely rock god lets face it. An ugly old man with sideburns that looked like the school janitor in overalls.... but with an incredible voice that could shatter glass!!!
sweetbeats
Reel deep thoughts...
So…I apologize but I lost track about page 4 of this thread…too much going on...Wanted to chime in but was worried I’d not have the time to say what I want to say. So I make this post in light of a lot of catching up to do.
Let’s all just admit the Philips Compact Cassette format is limited okay? But let’s also, please, consider certain manufacturers took it…way…further than the original instigators of the format intended or thought possible. And even the consumer format far exceeded what historical standards of the consumer open-reel formats achieved. It is portable, it’s analog, and was the shit for a long time. The Philips Compact Cassette is arguably the most accessible format of analog tape recording. And though it is NOT an open-reel format, it is still analog tape and I can recall after years of having Compact Disc and other digital formats available, still enjoying being able to listen to my mix tapes in the cassette deck in my early 1990s car. I am a child of the very early 1970s, so I know plenty of years before there was a consumer digital format. I grew up making faux radio shows with my brother on a Sony TC-630, and dubbing to cassette…doing whacky shit with the SOS functionality…had a Radio Shack portable cassette recorder with built-in condenser microphone. And we were into music. And contrived songs using acoustic drums and my brother’s MicroMoog analog synthesizer…and captured these ideas on analog tape…I was, like. 7 or 8 years old. My ears are tuned to analog recording of the 1970s and 1980s. So if the fact that I have boxes of analog Philips Compact Cassette tapes comprised of mix tapes I made, LP dubs, and a whole lotta recordings off the console at live gigs at which I played drums makes me some sort of audio troglodyte, well, screw you. It sounds good. If your ears are tuned to something different, go ahead and do you. I remember after listening to a lot of CDs and doing early multitrack production using a Digidesign AudioMedia III PCI card…basically being around a lot of early digital audio…putting a dubbed cassette copy of Fleetwood Mac’s “dreams” in the cassette car stereo and thinking “How can that sound so nice? How can I just turn that up on this shitty factory car stereo and it sounds so nice?” Yes, it’s limited. Yes there is tape hiss. Oh no, you’re going to get cancer from the tape hiss (sincere apologies to anybody experiencing cancer treatment or loss of a loved one from cancer…I don’t want to offend, I’m just trying to make an obtuse point). Can we stop arguing about a format that has some limitations and get to the really important question “How does it sound?” This is the most important question pertaining to many things, including this thread, and the answer is variably different for everybody and that’s okay…it’s subjective. But if cassette sounds like ass to you consider what it is you are listening to and to what it is you are using to listen. Realize not everybody hears things the same. @famousbeagle has some amazing 4-track productions…he’s probably tired of me tagging him in this, but he and his wife have some, as far as I’m concerned, “it’s the shit” stuff they did on a Tascam 414. Cassette. So…if you think it’s garbage then go to your happy place and leave the folks that dig the format alone. Like, seriously…if you want to troll and say it sucks then you just look like a total douchebag doing that amidst people that enjoy the format. I have high quality digital interfacing at my disposal…and 1/2” 8-track and 1” 8-track/2” 16-track available. I *still* maintain multiple cassette formats in my midst because I like how it sounds in conjunction with how easy it is to use. Sure…some of it is nostalgia. But that’s not the entirety of it and if you want to minimize it to that, then maybe you’ve got other things you need to talk through.
My current stable of Philips Compact Cassette compatible machines:
Tascam 122B
Tascam 244
Audio Technica AT-RMX64
Tascam 238
Let’s all just admit the Philips Compact Cassette format is limited okay? But let’s also, please, consider certain manufacturers took it…way…further than the original instigators of the format intended or thought possible. And even the consumer format far exceeded what historical standards of the consumer open-reel formats achieved. It is portable, it’s analog, and was the shit for a long time. The Philips Compact Cassette is arguably the most accessible format of analog tape recording. And though it is NOT an open-reel format, it is still analog tape and I can recall after years of having Compact Disc and other digital formats available, still enjoying being able to listen to my mix tapes in the cassette deck in my early 1990s car. I am a child of the very early 1970s, so I know plenty of years before there was a consumer digital format. I grew up making faux radio shows with my brother on a Sony TC-630, and dubbing to cassette…doing whacky shit with the SOS functionality…had a Radio Shack portable cassette recorder with built-in condenser microphone. And we were into music. And contrived songs using acoustic drums and my brother’s MicroMoog analog synthesizer…and captured these ideas on analog tape…I was, like. 7 or 8 years old. My ears are tuned to analog recording of the 1970s and 1980s. So if the fact that I have boxes of analog Philips Compact Cassette tapes comprised of mix tapes I made, LP dubs, and a whole lotta recordings off the console at live gigs at which I played drums makes me some sort of audio troglodyte, well, screw you. It sounds good. If your ears are tuned to something different, go ahead and do you. I remember after listening to a lot of CDs and doing early multitrack production using a Digidesign AudioMedia III PCI card…basically being around a lot of early digital audio…putting a dubbed cassette copy of Fleetwood Mac’s “dreams” in the cassette car stereo and thinking “How can that sound so nice? How can I just turn that up on this shitty factory car stereo and it sounds so nice?” Yes, it’s limited. Yes there is tape hiss. Oh no, you’re going to get cancer from the tape hiss (sincere apologies to anybody experiencing cancer treatment or loss of a loved one from cancer…I don’t want to offend, I’m just trying to make an obtuse point). Can we stop arguing about a format that has some limitations and get to the really important question “How does it sound?” This is the most important question pertaining to many things, including this thread, and the answer is variably different for everybody and that’s okay…it’s subjective. But if cassette sounds like ass to you consider what it is you are listening to and to what it is you are using to listen. Realize not everybody hears things the same. @famousbeagle has some amazing 4-track productions…he’s probably tired of me tagging him in this, but he and his wife have some, as far as I’m concerned, “it’s the shit” stuff they did on a Tascam 414. Cassette. So…if you think it’s garbage then go to your happy place and leave the folks that dig the format alone. Like, seriously…if you want to troll and say it sucks then you just look like a total douchebag doing that amidst people that enjoy the format. I have high quality digital interfacing at my disposal…and 1/2” 8-track and 1” 8-track/2” 16-track available. I *still* maintain multiple cassette formats in my midst because I like how it sounds in conjunction with how easy it is to use. Sure…some of it is nostalgia. But that’s not the entirety of it and if you want to minimize it to that, then maybe you’ve got other things you need to talk through.
My current stable of Philips Compact Cassette compatible machines:
Tascam 122B
Tascam 244
Audio Technica AT-RMX64
Tascam 238
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Well said Mr Beats. The bottom line is that it is all subjective and, as you say, what we grew up with.
I don't HATE cassette, it is fine for 90% of the music people listen to but its limitations show through for 'classical' music where you need a very low noise floor, a wide dynamic range without distortion and solid speed stability. Yes! We got Dolby B and C and DBX but these are but kludges to prop up what you admit is a less than 'hi fi' medium. Dual loop capstans and servo control help with wow&f but can do little to eliminate flutter sidebands.
Of course, those that think the sun shines out of the cassette's A will cite these imperfections as the very things they like about them but my journey through the hi fi world has been for over 60 years is to get the most accurate reproduction I can given my financial constraints. As I said at the top of the post, cassette IS OK but once I had heard my Bach and Mozart on CD sans hiss, distortion and wow there was no going back!
Beatles, Stones, Quo? Fine.
Dave.
I don't HATE cassette, it is fine for 90% of the music people listen to but its limitations show through for 'classical' music where you need a very low noise floor, a wide dynamic range without distortion and solid speed stability. Yes! We got Dolby B and C and DBX but these are but kludges to prop up what you admit is a less than 'hi fi' medium. Dual loop capstans and servo control help with wow&f but can do little to eliminate flutter sidebands.
Of course, those that think the sun shines out of the cassette's A will cite these imperfections as the very things they like about them but my journey through the hi fi world has been for over 60 years is to get the most accurate reproduction I can given my financial constraints. As I said at the top of the post, cassette IS OK but once I had heard my Bach and Mozart on CD sans hiss, distortion and wow there was no going back!
Beatles, Stones, Quo? Fine.
Dave.
Sample Hands
New member
I recently bought a rather high-end portable cassette deck for the purpose of recording vintage-sounding spoken word samples. So far I have achieved some decent results. The funny thing is in the past during the cassette era I craved Chrome Dioxide and Metal tapes where as now the lower rent ferric tapes are giving me the most convincing results.
clamsterdamm
Member
I had no idea this thread would bring so many responses!
Thanks Guys!
Thanks Guys!
James Tree
New member
I've recorded digitally before at animation school, but not for a long time since I got a TSR-8, just don't like working in front of computers; I do like patching cables and twisting knobs. (So I dropped out of animation school and eventually became a vegetable farmer). I use my 4 track cassette recorders way more than my r2r, demoing songs as a solo project. It takes time and lots of takes to write new parts, and the cassette is way faster and cheaper to use, and I don't want to wear out the r2r on demos. In my garage studio I have the Tascam 424mkii, and in the living room I have the Porta02mkii on top the electric piano, so my demos are on normal speed with no NR so I can use both machines (that way I can still work on stuff and not ignore the family too much 
Once I've gotten a few tracks 'figured out' it'll go onto the r2r.
I've also been doing a cassette recording project with an old friend where we mail the tapes back and forth, taking turns adding to them. We're treating each tape like a mini 10 minute album, it's pretty fast and loose psychedelia, each 'song' is like 30 to 60 seconds, but they all blend together for the duration of the tape. Fuzzed out everything with random samples and field recordings mixed in, improvised lyrics, just a mess. It's a lot of fun! He's got a Fostex x-55 and I'm using the 424mkii, we're using high speed, but no NR, and the two machine seem to be compatible enough together, at least for this project. It's sorta like jamming together, just not at the same time and place....really fun to just let her rip, record into the red, and move on. Tapes.com has new type ii high bias tapes, got 50 recently with cases for about $3 each.
I definitely use the DAW as a mix down deck instead of doing internal bounces.
Once I've gotten a few tracks 'figured out' it'll go onto the r2r. I've also been doing a cassette recording project with an old friend where we mail the tapes back and forth, taking turns adding to them. We're treating each tape like a mini 10 minute album, it's pretty fast and loose psychedelia, each 'song' is like 30 to 60 seconds, but they all blend together for the duration of the tape. Fuzzed out everything with random samples and field recordings mixed in, improvised lyrics, just a mess. It's a lot of fun! He's got a Fostex x-55 and I'm using the 424mkii, we're using high speed, but no NR, and the two machine seem to be compatible enough together, at least for this project. It's sorta like jamming together, just not at the same time and place....really fun to just let her rip, record into the red, and move on. Tapes.com has new type ii high bias tapes, got 50 recently with cases for about $3 each.
I definitely use the DAW as a mix down deck instead of doing internal bounces.
Slouching Raymond
Well-known member
Fun is the most important element James.
rob aylestone
Moderator
Cassette vs reel to reel seems so similar to mp3 vs 96k32 bit in terms of how we complain about recording quality.
I think the current topic about the misbehaving Tascam r-r is a good one to remember. As in, all the tape based linear recorders of EVERY type were just so finicky and potentially unreliable. We forget the bad bits and remember the good. Like my first DAT machine chewing the tapes, the ADATs that would drift out of sync and all that stuff
I think the current topic about the misbehaving Tascam r-r is a good one to remember. As in, all the tape based linear recorders of EVERY type were just so finicky and potentially unreliable. We forget the bad bits and remember the good. Like my first DAT machine chewing the tapes, the ADATs that would drift out of sync and all that stuff
so-awesome
New member
My perception is that cassettes are a big deal right now. Lots of music blogs talking about tape labels (which are independent record labels releasing things only on tape) and lots of the bands I'm into putting out cassettes right now. Don't know how it came back but it seems like its back in a huge way. Some kind of revival going on. Just went and bought a cassette player again myself actually
Not a world I know myself but I could have a guess for the recent emergence of cassette? Relatively easy to copy.
OK, a really high quality high speed duping rig is still a serious chunk of change but it is not as costly I would guess as a top end disc cutting lathe, the heads, amps, top end tape transport and all the other gear that goes with them. Mastering for vinyl and the cutting itself are still something of a Black Art?
In other words, behind all this is MONEY. Someone has seen a market and is exploiting it.
Dave.
TalismanRich
Well-known member
I think "huge" is a bit much.... It's trendy. It's also cheap to produce so small labels and local bands can get 50 copies made and sell them at shows. However, most of the labels that I see also sell digital downloads and CDs. There are a few that make actual vinyl records. I even saw one that put out a 7" vinyl. That doesn't make it a huge volume item. They market via Bandcamp and Spotify.
Ujn Hunter
Active member
I've got like 3-4 cassette tapes in the mail as we speak. 
Cassettes are cool. It was the first medium where you could throw an entire album on and stick it into your shirt pocket.
Sound was reasonably good, and the medium could be played virtually anywhere. High end machine, cheap machine, in your car, through a small portable, battery operated device with headphones (walkman) etc.
It was a truly “global” platform. Made music accessible to everyone. You could make your own playlists and listen to music anywhere. Custom tailored to you and your tastes without commercial.
Yeah, there are better music storage systems now, but it was pretty damn good. And years later is still fine.
Sound was reasonably good, and the medium could be played virtually anywhere. High end machine, cheap machine, in your car, through a small portable, battery operated device with headphones (walkman) etc.
It was a truly “global” platform. Made music accessible to everyone. You could make your own playlists and listen to music anywhere. Custom tailored to you and your tastes without commercial.
Yeah, there are better music storage systems now, but it was pretty damn good. And years later is still fine.
Don’t know what happened to that, but for whatever reason it never caught on.
Profitability perhaps? Or lack of?
TalismanRich
Well-known member
I had a couple of cassette Walkman type players years ago. My first cassette was a Ross. I think it cost me about $20. Looked just like this:
Sound quality was crappy but we didn't care. I was driving a van around delivering stuff, had a 12" speaker in a box on the floor plugged into the headphone jack, and a rechargeable NiCad batteries that I charged every night. I could listen to music I wanted. I sure wouldn't do that today, but hey, it was around 1970. It beat the crap out of an AM radio with a 5x7 speaker in the dash. Every once in a while, it would chew a tape up and we would have to make a new tape, or just listen to the old one with the accordion creases in the middle of a song. It was only a 5 or 10 seconds of a 45minute side.
I don't think the MD player gave much of an advantage over the portable CD players. Besides, most people already had CD players in their stereos, and their favorite albums on CD. Also blank Minidiscs weren't especially cheap as I recall.
I've got two portable CD players upstairs that ran on batteries. I could put it on my desk at work and plug earbuds in to listen to music. Then I got my RCA Lyra which played MP3/WMA files, was the size of a pack of cigarettes and could hold 5 or 6 albums on 4 or 8GB Flash Cards. Sound was OK but it was really portable, especially when you were in a hotel or on a plane. I still have a little Coby MP3 player with 16GB and a bunch of albums on it. I use it when I'm cutting grass.
Today I have JBL BlueTooth earbuds that I can use with my phone for casual listening and the sound is better than any of those. Why would I want to go backwards, either in sound quality or convenience?
The copy protection wars were a really big deal. Then Napster was created and people basically gave the record companies the finger. That genie has never been put back in the bottle.
Sound quality was crappy but we didn't care. I was driving a van around delivering stuff, had a 12" speaker in a box on the floor plugged into the headphone jack, and a rechargeable NiCad batteries that I charged every night. I could listen to music I wanted. I sure wouldn't do that today, but hey, it was around 1970. It beat the crap out of an AM radio with a 5x7 speaker in the dash. Every once in a while, it would chew a tape up and we would have to make a new tape, or just listen to the old one with the accordion creases in the middle of a song. It was only a 5 or 10 seconds of a 45minute side.
I don't think the MD player gave much of an advantage over the portable CD players. Besides, most people already had CD players in their stereos, and their favorite albums on CD. Also blank Minidiscs weren't especially cheap as I recall.
I've got two portable CD players upstairs that ran on batteries. I could put it on my desk at work and plug earbuds in to listen to music. Then I got my RCA Lyra which played MP3/WMA files, was the size of a pack of cigarettes and could hold 5 or 6 albums on 4 or 8GB Flash Cards. Sound was OK but it was really portable, especially when you were in a hotel or on a plane. I still have a little Coby MP3 player with 16GB and a bunch of albums on it. I use it when I'm cutting grass.
Today I have JBL BlueTooth earbuds that I can use with my phone for casual listening and the sound is better than any of those. Why would I want to go backwards, either in sound quality or convenience?
Hey, you can't hear that 3840Hz notch in the frequency response, even if it is right in the middle of things!
The copy protection wars were a really big deal. Then Napster was created and people basically gave the record companies the finger. That genie has never been put back in the bottle.