New pre-recorded cassettes from major artists on major record labels are actually a *lot* cheaper than new vinyl records. Most new pre-recorded cassette tapes cost around $10 to $15, while most new vinyl records cost around $20 to $30. And all cassette players can play all types of tape; the cheapest ones will sound a little too bright when playing CrO2 or Metal tapes, but the audio will still be listenable and enjoyable. The differences between the tape types are only really relevant when recording. And at least around here, the thrift stores are full of good-quality used cassette decks at very reasonable prices, whereas good used turntables are scarce and good new ones are pricey. At today's prices, a good used $50 cassette deck will sound a lot better than any $50 turntable, used or new, unless you get very lucky or know how to fix a broken one.
@ VWestlife: agree, especially on flea markets you can often get tapedecks really cheap while turntables cost a lot more and sometimes come with bad or totally worn out needles. I once even got a Sony 3head cassette deck on a fleamarket for ca 20 bucks. Worked like a charm. I'd love to see a new production of tape-head de-magnetizers for cassette decks however. The ones that come as cassette form and which run for a few seconds. The ones i find on ebay cost way too much and usually cause bidder-wars...
I haven't seen new cassette decks that do have CrO2, but don't have metal. I believe the decks had Dolby-B but don't recall Dolby-C and definitely not Dolby-S! National Audio Company has stated that they've stopped making Type-II tapes and are scheduled to come out with a high-quality Type-I tape in the not too distant future.
That was a good overview. Cassettes got a bad reputation because most record companies used cheap tape for pre-recorded cassettes. Too many people didn't buy quality tape brands like Maxell and TDK, but bought junk 3-pack for a dollar tapes like Certron and Tonemaster instead. And most people played cassettes on low watt walkman clones, boomboxes and factory car stereos that had the sound quality of AM radio. And many never cleaned their tape deck's head and pinch rollers so tapes could jam or break eaisly.
I used Maxell and TDK tapes for years! My main favorites were Maxell's XLII and UDII, and TDK SA for taping LP's and CD's for my car's tape deck. It's a shame they dont make new High Bias tape anymore.
I wish I could go to the store and get them. I did try a pack of the current Normal bias Maxell UR. I recorded some old albums on them and surprisingly they sounded good.
I think another mark against pre-recorded cassettes was that they were usually duplicated at high speed. This reduced the sound quality of the resulting tape, and is a reason that tapes you made yourself (recorded in real time) sounded better than pre-recorded tapes.
I'll never understand anyone who advocates for leaving a unique medium 'in the past'. Audio cassette tapes offer characteristics that can be found nowhere else - and some kinds of music come *alive* on tape. I've kept every tape I ever bought and recorded on - and also have my dad's tapes - some of which date from the late '70s. Some prerecorded tapes have deteriorated badly but every tape I recorded from the mid '90s to the mid-'00s sounds as perfect as the day it was made. Tape will always be the most unfairly maligned audio format and the fact that nobody can manufacture a good quality tape deck anymore pretty much guarantees this sad state of affairs for ever more.
@ bumbtree: You should check out VWestlife's channel. He did a WONDERFUL video once about the audio quality of old pre-recorded cassettes and how they sound now. Some even as old as 50 years now. It'll amaze you.
I agree, bumtree, thumbs up. I've got several tapes from the late 1980s, and 1990s, and almost all of them, included some pre-recorded cassettes (don't have too many of those), and only one is type 2 sound very good; and the music is not obstructed by whatever element, it is clear, and the musical instruments are just as good as listening on vinyl.
Being born in 98' cassettes should have been after my time, but growing up poor I amassed a large cassette collection through hand-me-downs and thrifting. I still use and love collecting cassettes because they have a special feel to them. It's not individual nastalgia, it's *cultural* nestalgia that makes them special. They represent what people love from that time and how it influences culture now. The music on them is typically stuff I wouldn't find now, but I'm glad I have. Even if cassettes die as a medium they'll live on as iconography of time cherished and represent the revolution of portable music. People often scoff at nastalgia, saying looking at the past through rose tinted glasses is childish and petty; but I think the opposite is true. It's part of human nature to pick out things we loved from the past and celebrate them. That's where tradition comes from. It's a staple of humanity.
Interesting take on this. I literally have no experience of any modern manufactured tape recorders, only my vintage decks. Back in the day like yourself i never was into the pre-recorded tapes, mostly vinyl record and CD but a tonne of blank tapes. I loved recording mix tapes and still do to this day.
I adore cassettes and making astonishing sounding recordings on a good deck and tape. Type IV of course, but Type II and even Type I can sound breathtaking, especially on rock music. That said, while I thoroughly enjoy working with cassette, I can't honestly recommend it to most people. You have to be "really" into it to reap the benefits and enjoyment.
You are so right...and without the good quality tapes being made, the used metal and chrome costs a damn fortune! You can almost buy a new vinyl record for what a stupid blank tape costs! If they wanted to do the comeback right we need better tapes and better mechanisms. I understand Tascam is making a new deck but from what I saw on vwest channel, I am NOT impressed.
I remember back in the early seventies when my oldest brother got his first cassette deck. It was a top loader with big VU meters, and I believe it was a Pioneer. When he wasn't around, I used to make tapes for myself of whatever albums I wanted to listen to. That way I had a good quality copy of favorite albums to listen to anywhere that I didn't have to worry about destroying the original in any way shape or form due to whatever mishap might befall it, simply because it was at home put away in it's sleeve and safe. If something happened to the tape I would just make another one. One thing that you didn't quite touch on is that tapes taught many people how to make a cohesive playlist, one that would fit as much music onto each side of that 60, 90, 120 minute tape. It also taught people how to actually count in time units rather than base 10. The other thing is that there are many rare, at least to the owner, recordings that have been done either via microphone, off air, or in the really old days with the microphone pressed up close to the speaker. I have a recording of my uncle and my mother where my uncle is playing the piano and singing and my mother is singing along with him. They are both long gone from this Earth and it is one of the few remaining pieces of both of them than I still have that I can remember them by. I also have a concert by a now-defunct radio station where they had put together a Beatles Reunion concert, it was fake, just before John Lennon passed away. That is a piece of audio history that should be preserved and I'm glad that I have it on tape. So there's a lot of nostalgia for those who grew up with tape, but unfortunately for the people who would like to have a resurgence, it's nowhere near as convenient as digital is nowadays or as clear. However, I have tapes that are 45 years old and still playable. Makes you wonder if tape is a longer-lasting medium than digital. Because when a hard drive fails generally all those files are gone forever unless you made a back up, but as long as I have a player and my tapes I can get that old information and listen to it.
Do you think a mix tape for a girl friend back in 1985 will have a wow factor in 2019 and would you pay 19.95 for it plus 30$ shipping on e-bay for it now?
What sucks the most is Dolby not licensing their noise reduction for whatever reason. Dolby S sounds incredible even on normal tape and the new music that does get released has that terrible hiss; I disagree it adds charm, at least with zero NR its not since its so loud.
I’m a 30 year-old pseudo-audiophile. Or, vintage audio enthusiast. I find myself in all camps with this audio tech discussion as a whole. Because of my age, cassettes were the primary means of playback music. CD’s were still relatively new, and players were still new tech with new tech prices. I remember still playing my parent’s Pink Floyd records as a kid, but I was also knee deep in the mix tape era. I listen to all mediums for different reasons and styles. I listen to my growing vinyl collection on a big 60’s cabinet console at home. (Along with 5 other broken players from the 30’s to 2010’s) Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline, Grandpa’s 40’s big band jazz. That’s my vinyl music. I like to listen to old blues that plays on NPR on my 50’s German radio. I sometimes listen to my old 80’s metal cassettes on my 80’s boombox when I’m cruising in my 1970’s jeep that has no sound capabilities at all. I even rescued a reel-reel to player to hear old family recordings. I stream shuffled music for convenience through a jambox. Certain music I play by album-start to finish, as it was intended. I never use CD’s however. They’re not fun, they’re not convenient, they’re not portable by today’s standards. They’re not a novelty, and they scratch easily. So some is by modern convenience, some is nostalgia, and some is what is already available to me. Here is another camp, related to cassettes, that I’m noticing. While I was raised on the tail end of one era, and the beginning of another, Younger millennials (up to early or mid twenties), have a different mindset. These guys grew up primarily in the CD, and mp3 era. To them, cassettes are the novelty, that they may not even have had. Even if they did, it was already just outdated leftovers they vaguely recall their parents using. They are buying new production and used cassettes because of the vintage novelty. Not their own nostalgia, and not for sound quality. You can see it trending in markets. Images of cassettes on T shirts, stickers, or phone cases that look like cassettes. Even brightly colored and designed shoes and sunglasses are beginning to look reminiscent of the 90’s. In “my time”, a few short years ago, it was NES novelty. Same licensed merchandise with controller or pixel Mario images on everything. I’m already beginning to keep an eye out at thrift stores for a Walkman before they become a artificially inflated vintage tech and snatched up.
I'm one of those people who never really stopped listening to music on a certain format when a new one was introduced. Over the years I've accumulated a respectable music collection on different formats, so I have vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, MiniDiscs, and digital files. I have two Walkmans that still work (thankfully), and for my hi-fi stereo system I've had a Sony cassette deck inherited from my grandfather; this deck worked flawlessly from 1995 to 2016, then I was lucky enough to acquire a TEAC unit when I went to pick up some vintage Apple hardware at a graphic studio. Between me and my wife, we have about 500 cassettes, and there's a bit of everything - commercial releases, old mixtapes, a bunch of recordings from vinyl records I don't own anymore, rare recordings of other vinyls that have never been reissued, etc. Sometimes people ask me why I don't just digitise all this stuff. They underestimate the time-consuming nature and utter tediousness of such a task. It's really much simpler to look for a working vintage player when one of ours breaks down, and keep listening to the music directly on tape. Keep up the good work, Colin!
Young man … I lived it. It’s fun to see you try to put the pieces of the puzzle together. And you’ve got some of the pieces in the creek places. But there’s much you don’t understand about what it was like back in those days and you never will because you didn’t leave it.
I am a vintage girl at heart! I like to hunt for rare pre-recorded tapes, and I have a tape deck from 2001. It’s a Sony! Also I have walkmans of all kinds of brands!
As someone in my 30s i never really abandoned cassettes but always used them one way or another. As a young kid i did listen to vinyl too but never had a personal recordplayer but only listened to Vinyl records when my parents were around, on the livingroom recordplayer (was the only one we had) over my dad's HIFI system. However i did have a radio boombox (an AIWA TRP300A) which i used for listening to cassettes. It was my very own device and i was so proud of it and listened to cassettes like crazy. They were super easy to use, didn't require you to be SUPER careful (as a kid you are not really careful anyway) and didn't take much space. As soon as i got a hold of a blank cassette to record on, i was totally lost & in love with that format. I had them all. Expensive brand tapes and super cheap low-quality tapes. Played and recorded on sometimes low quality, sometimes high quality decks or portables. Listening to cassettes with a walkman i really only did during train rides when we visited my grandparents. I even discovered electronic music through cassettes and always had at leas 2-3 compilation tapes of electronic music and sometimes copied the stuff from my dad's CDs to cassette. As a kid quality wise there never was a real significant difference to me. The only difference was you could skip a CD. But other than that i was always super happy with cassettes. The ability to record on them really was, and still is, the biggest reason why i love them so much. Especially when used for 4 track or 8 track portastudio machines.
About skipping songs, even back then some higher end decks had pulse sensor (you leave a pulse before every song and the player will be able to find that pulse and fast forward to it) or silence sensor which just find blank space between songs and fast forward to the beginning of the next song. It may not have been standard but my deck is equipped with it.
Just a little FYI: I currently have over 450 cassettes in my collection, starting in the mid-sixties. I wish I had at least 200 more. I have something on the order of 375 LP's and 300 45's. But CD's top them all at 600+. I have almost seven decades under my belt.
I am 16 and I currently (probably illegally) stream music from my laptop onto a blank tape with a deck and listen to it daily. The reason is that one day I found my father's walkman in an old box in the corner of my house and it was still working. He told me that he himself used that exact player when HE was 16, so while it isn't really nostalgia, it was kind of cool to be able to live in a time where I didn't exist, using technology my father used during his prime. Given the number of decks, players, and blank tapes going around on eBay and other auctioning sites, it got me obsessed with cassettes and I kind of bought a ton and resold them to my classmates listened to them together. I suppose that teenagers like me are popping up all over the world and perhaps, just ever so slightly, making the sale of cassettes increase?
As someone in their early 20's I didn't exactly grow up during the time when cassette tapes were popular. It was only until about 10 years ago that I took an interest in them, and collect them to this day. Mainly new releases that indie musicians and sometimes even popular labels put out. Some music just seems to work the best on this format, it feels right being listened to on a lofi format. Such as black metal, beat tapes/lofi hip hop, plunderphonics, analog electronic music, garage and noise rock, shoegaze etc...Something about that fuzzy warm sound quality is so cozy to me. I don't think analog formats will ever truly die, I think there will always be a niche audience for it. Anyway, great video like always!
First of all like to say *really* great video--very intelligent, articulate, and insightful. Couple of thoughts: as to the random access issue, I've heard many people say that's actually something they like about cassettes, because it's one of the only formats that actually makes you to listen through an entire album, forcing you to patiently listen to and enjoy a collection of songs as a whole. Also, as to who's buying them (or going to buy them), I agree about what you said about it being unlikely that we'll see many mass-market albums being regularly released by currently popular major artists. I think they'll probably mostly remain the domain of the independent artists who want to get physical copies of their work out to their fans. In fact, that's what my band is planning to do. Another plus these days is that you can include a download code with your cassette so that people who want a physical copy of your art can also download it and play it on their iphone and so forth. Cassettes are also just very cool, punk, and retro. So it has that going for it as well! Again, thanks for this great video!
I grew up in the 70s&80s using cassetes as the only media to record music. They were fragile and highly inconvenient. No recording you made on your deck sounded good on any other deck or walkman, due to various heads misaligments and because of differences in dolby manufacturing. There was always a serious lack of trebles. Always. Not to mention the ease that cassetes can be destroyed by magnetism. Just leave them for 1 minute next to your bluetooth speaker or next to your mobile phone. Finished. All the nostalgia is all about the way cassetes are looking. They are looking good and thats all.
I love Cassettes I'm glad they're making a comeback. I don't expect them to make a comeback to the extent of Vinyl Records but still... it's cool to see Cassette's back on the market and sales increasing every year.
One thing I can see hindering cassettes is that unlike vinyl, there’s no really good cassette decks. Even the Tascam or Teac ones are just tanashin mechanisms dressed up as much as possible. Tanashin doesn’t even make the mechs anymore. Vinyl on the other hand, you can still get a really nice automatic turntable. Plus I’ve seen way more turntables for sale that are pretty good than cassette decks in general. And they’re fairly expensive as well. Some are dirt cheap, but the good decks are expensive. I was in a bidding war for a 12 pack of used erased type 2 tapes, and I dropped out when the price went from 15$ to 45$. I got a larger quantity of unerased tapes, but even at high speed dubbing itl take forever to erase them. 90 minute tape takes 45 minutes to erase it
I got a really clean Sony MDS JE480 with remote control at Goodwill for about 10 dollars. I think they had it confused for a dvd player? I record myself dj'ing with it all the time. Works great.
Great review and opinion. I am much older than the generation you are talking about. I grew up with vinyl and open reel as the predominant formats and then cassettes. I find it interesting all the talk about poor quality and tape eating. It’s like saying everyone in the 70s had macrame plant hangers. I owned few prerecorded cassettes, but did own a lot of Type II and IV blank cassettes. I recorded all my vinyl and CDs in the mid to late 80s to save vinyl and to play CD albums in my car. The key was having a quality deck to pull the best out of the tape. I had a decent deck, not TOTL, but god enough to make high quality recordings. I am back into cassettes and open reel again and have high end decks now. I am doing this for pure nostalgia and the joy of actually recording.
I still have all my cassettes mostly taped in the eighties and I use them in my vintage Clarion car stereo. Roxanne Shante vs Frukwan at the NYC music seminar in 1985 is one of my favourite tapings.
I love cassettes,they make great toys if you use them to play producer, get a good used tape deck,an equalizer,and a good quality cassette tape,then with the equalizer bring to life all those instruments you can barely hear in a regular commercial recording and record them in a cassette that you'll feel tempted to listen to all day long.
Ok,here is the skinny.. I am a DJ/recordist, and have my own recording gear.There was NOTHING wrong with records nor cassettes,except that having them meant we had control over our recordings,our mixes,and could control our financial environment.For example,i have records,so i can put them on,spin,record a mixtape,or even play live,controlling that environment,because I bought the right to.I dont have to download anything,dont have to worry about what level of quality,because all my records and blanks were about the same.Plus,if i need to,i can tweak the music,with an efx box,EQ,or tweak the whole system.All this stuff about 'better' sound quality mostly depends on how things are recorded,maintaining records/decks, and of course the tape medium. I recall that most of my decks never like TDK blanks,and when you shook them,you could understand why they would get caught in the deck,except for the top ones,sometimes.You had to deal with bias,cleaning heads,demagnetizing heads,and knowing which tapes you could push to it's limits,etc,etc.Yeah,people were selling mixtapes and there were a few pirated vinyl instances,yet that's not why they went digital.They found out quickly,especially the artists,they made a fatal mistake,opening up piracy to insane levels.It got so bad that artists like Lupe Fiasco,had his whole LP sold off on the Internet right before the official release.There was even a time that i didnt know hardly anyone who paid for music. They forgot that DJs alone would buy 2+ copies alone,of the same track/LP,and when you factor in that my collection alone is between 50-100k+ records,that's a good chunk of money spent on music.These newer vinyl records cost a lot more overall,yet the original vinyl before digital is still around and available.Oh yeah,the difference between records/tapes and digital is that digital music is NOT music,it is binary data,that has to be sent through a digital to analog converter,and has no harmonics.Plus,people like me,who can deal with both,prefer to have hardware and physical medium.Floppies are still also great,if you have an older computer,or if you use hardware music samplers.You do not need a computer that's new to be online,because the service provides your modem/router,which has not much to do with your computer,as long as it fits minimum requirements...
'Struth!It was the control they offered to the consumer which is what caused the industry to go after these formats with a blood lust.Criminalizing their own customers!
As an independent musician, I own upwards of 30+ cassettes of friends music. Their cheap, and quick to produce and allow for a greater profit margin. To make some blank tapes with 17 mins of tape on each side, it cost me 2.50 a tape. And I'll sell that for 5 each. This is something you talked about. I only bring it up because so many musicians, I'm in Philly but, all over the state's are using it to get their music out to fans. Also for touring they store a lot easier than a stack of records. Nonetheless, Great video Collin!!
I listen to rap and they still release it on tape. Only some artists do it but I bought one a few months ago. Its why Vinyls comeback, rap music made it cool then everyone follows. Pretty much with advertising and tons of stuff in life.
Perverted Alchemist Yeh mate that doesn't suprise me tbh. Its tough to be a fan of hip hop like Chris Rock says because you get so criticised and it doesn't get its praises due. I listen to all types of music tbh
Born 1976. When I got interested in music, cassette was king. In the mid 89s I had no idea what fidelity was but I knew mom had a cassette deck in he Chrysler k car and when it was time for me to start wanting my own music, I never gave vinyl a chance. I knew of it and my folks had it but it felt antiquated. I spent no amount of time thinking about it but it just knew that you can't take an lp in the car with you or on a walk with your "walkman". It just felt like the normal corse of events for me to embrace cassette technology. At the time, it seemed like an epoch, but I eventually moved on to cds in the early 90s. I'm currently going down the rabbit hole of cassette resurgence. Thanks for the great video! Cheers
People my age (40), if they were really into music, used CDs and tapes interchangeably. Anything we could get our hands on. People my age have since engaged in a lot of revisionist history about why they switched to tape and greatly exaggerate how often tapes failed or how bad they sounded.
I did both with tapes. I bought og albums till cds came out. I was born '79. My first tape as a lil kid was Poison....Open up and say ahh which is still popular today funnily enough especially with strippers :p I bought a Sony walkman in 2016, the same model I had as a kid. What sparked the nostalgia was I bought a t shirt from a rapper in NYC, ordered from Australia and he put a tape in the package which was cool. Nice video man!!! :)
Big question, are the people out there getting tired of that really clinical digital sound in music today, as for me, as a producer i love todays music and the technology, but it doesn't have the soul like analogue sound.
I'm only 19 and experienced CD for the most part as my main music format. My parents still had a few cassettes lying that I got to listen to. For me, I never really liked mp3. It was fun for awhile. But somewhere along my life I wanted more of something that was interactive. I'm a fidgeter, and I naturally fidget with a lot of things, and I think cassette can do that for me. Not just popping it in like CD, but having to rewind amd fast forward and flipping to side 2 and back to side 1. It falls into my fidgeting personality. That is why I love cassettes more than any other music format out there with Vinyl beimg 2nd. I also REALLY love all those vintage designs on boomboxes back in the 80s with all the chrome, and neon labels and dials, switches and sliders etc. Again, falls with my fidgeting personality. That is why cassettes will be for a long time at least be my main musical format.
You’ve gotten much better as a speaker since I’ve been listening to you. Your transitions flow really well together and your cadence keep things from sounding like a boring lecture. Thanks for the good work
I dispute a lot of the statements in this video. First, that vinyl sounds better than tapes. It doesn't. This myth basically stems from that people used to listen to tapes in subpar equipment, mostly boomboxes. Play a tape in a proper deck, with a proper amplifier and proper speakers, and you'll be surprised by the quality. Second, that vinyl sounds great out of the box regardless of the equipment. It doesn't. Play it on a cheap hi-fi with crappy speakers and it will sound like, er, crap, and that's without taking into account it's inherent problems, like scratches, dust, surface noise etc. Third, that tapes need noise reduction. It helps, but it's no big deal. Tape hiss (that's what noise reduction is about) is only a problem in quiet parts if you turn the volume LOUD. That's when the hiss is audible.
DavidGolder Yes sir. I agree. I have a proper setup for both formats and prefer my cassette deck more for sound quality. Thing is as more people start experimenting with tape and find that it does indeed sound top shelf with good equipment (this is happening now) the prices for blanks and decks will increase to rival that of gold. It’s getting hard for the bargain hunter to obtain good quality equipment these days. People and kids in general are starting to catch on to the fact that we’ve been duped into thinking digital is kind for sound reproduction. I’m just glad I have a good stash of components for backup if need be.
I agree with both points made, a quality turntable will outperform most cassette decks and conversely a quality cassette deck will outperform most cheap to mid range turntables. I play vinyl on a Linn Lp12 and tapes on a Nakamichi and both sound lovely, different in character but both very pleasing to listen to. Making tapes on the Nak from CD`s is interesting, they loose a little of their digital quality and replace it with something more analogue. Whether this is my imagination or a real dynamic I`m not sure. Burning CD`s from my Linn definitely gives them a different sound to the source, but a pleasing one.
Unfortunately the more people you convince of this the worse the market becomes for us old dinosaurs who never gave up the cassette medium. The 2nd winning chess move is to put our vanity and ego down and walk away quietly and let the normies, vinyl fans, streaming digital fans etc., enjoy "being right" while we let them 'win' the chess game we get to proceed suffering with the broken limited overpriced squat left available. Somehow like Family Guy that was just loaded with truth and sarcasm at the same time. Now back to our regularly scheduled enslavement.
@@jsdhesmith2011 I agree with what you have said! Fortunately I have a very good cassette deck, and a decent receiver. By the way, I had a Sony walkman, and it was good enough; but the quality, and performance of the hi fi equipment should, or must be taken into consideration.
You are kind of rattling off what Wikipedia is presenting as truth. By 1979, when the Walkman came out, cassettes were already the main format for car stereos. Enthusiasts at that time were eager to bring their vinyl to their driving experience. That said there was also tons of prerecorded cassette music before the Walkman. I remember both taped and prerecorded being common.
28:00 If a deck can play chrome tapes, it can play metal tapes as well. Recording is different, though. Metal tapes need a bit more oomph than chrome tapes, and new decks aren't equipped to supply that.
I've found myself suddenly interested in owning physical music again! People are slowly realizing we were duped with streaming. The quality isn't nearly as good or the experience.
Spotify for example. Free Spotify voluntarily lower the quality of the music they stream so you buy the premium version. It's all bs. Oh and the advertisement abuse too...2 to 5 ads back to back every few other songs...
I kinda discovered I like recording albums posted on youtube, over a bluetooth to a strong fm signal transmitter into a vintage receiver connected to a tapedeck. It sounds much nicer then simply downloading it as an mp3. You get a verry nice, clean fm recording, the one you would had called perfect in the 80s, with no radio interference, only the thin but crispy audio with mild tape hiss.
I've started using cassettes mainly for 2 reasons. As a guitar player I'd like to record my music onto something that is not a digital format because of its accessibility, and pretty much independency from any complex hardware and software. Plug and play, just the tapedeck hooked up to my mixer which is also entirely analog. Few things that can go bust, need updates, whatever. Also for practicing purposes. After a long day at work (mostly in front of a pc) that's what you want. Secondly, I really do see music as an art that I want to appreciate, and I cannot do that with non physical formats like mp3 downloads. Not that back in the day everything was better on tape or vinyl, cd, but it was much more appreciated in my eyes.
I prefer cassettes over vinyl, because cassettes actually have better quality in particular with Dolby and hifi quality stereo systems. Vinyl records comeback has kind of cheapen the format with terrible remasters, and needle replacement, also vinyl is overpriced, it’s also lacks portability.
There are many terrible remasters. So buyer beware.But on the idea that it's over priced, if you compare unit price versus average income, records are actually cheaper now as a percentage of income.Also you have absolutely vast amounts of back catalogue.So you can pick up amazing records for next to nothing, if you know where to look.
Cassettes absolutely do NOT have better quality over vinyl...even with Dolby. Sorry, but that is wrong. The only way you can make that comparison is if you compare a Nakamochi to a shitty Crosley Cruiser. Vinyl has plain more frequently range. However, tape has way better portability, storability, and with something like a mix tape, no one cares Bout lack of random access. That being said I think both can still have their place but there is no way in hell tapes will surpass vinyl. I still don't see them sold in stores but vinyl sure is. And without Dolby and decent metal tapes being made sadly it doesn't stand a chance.
Yes there are bad re-masters nowadays. But if you think that a pre-recorded compact cassette sounds better than a good vinyl records, played on a good turntable with good cart&stylus, you are sadly mistaken. Also vinyl is not overpriced. Maybe compared to CD's but remember that a vinyl record in the eighties or nineties was much more expensive than they are today. Also you can buy lots and lots of old vinyl albums that are still in good to excellent quality for quite low prices.
Nico Meier the new vinyl records I bought that were on sale during record store day didn’t sound as good as the digital version. I don’t find vinyl fun anymore, most new albums cost too much, I find used cassettes sound better than used vinyl I find at record stores, and I have a high quality turntable and speakers. I think the vinyl format has been oversaturated by terrible remasters.
I was an insane mix-tape maker. Most of my vinyls got transferred to cassettes when I went to college, especially as the Walkman came out around then and I could take my music around campus with me, trade tapes with my friends, record lectures for later review, and more. Before full inflight entertainment systems became widespread on airlines, my cassette tapes helped save my sanity on long flights as well. Nowadays you have a choice of hundreds of films and TV shows on the screen in front of your seat, but back then there was one movie - maybe two on long hauls - for everyone, and your only choice was to watch them or not. I can't imagine what it was like in the days before they had entertainment at all!
I use them for analog recording to metal tapes for retro looking film projects. I think cassettes are at their best when recording your vinyl to a metal tape and using it to listen to your analog music collection on the go. Dolby B and HX Pro on a metal tape make for a very compatible and high quality mixtape. Fidelity isn't much different from a CD.
Yes. A good tape deck from the 80s or early 90s, even a medium priced one can sound fantastic, almost indistinguishable from a CD at least for the first dozen or so times you play it back.
They have never really went away, as some industrial applications that have machines which have been running almost 24/7 for decades still have computers with floppies, and you can go on eBay, and buy newly made USB floppy drives direct from China. well at least if count 3.5in floppy disk drives. However the disk themselves are a bit harder to get a hold of.
Exactly. Last year I paid like 20€ for two new 10 packs of floppies. They are expensive and quite hard to get. But at least the drives are cheap. I guess it's the opposite of the tape situation.
If floppies come back, it will be like video game cartridges. Nintendo Switch cartridges are now really just SD cards. If floppies came back, they would basically be new versions of SD cards or USB drives.
One of my favorite bands put out a box set that includes the album on cassette. I have shoe boxes filled with cassettes back home that I'd like to get onto my computer. I didn't realize how powerful the amp was in my Walkman to power my headphones. I've been listening to my old tapes way more often.
Colin, I just a couple of weeks ago purchased a mint condition, 1980s Sony CFS-W301 Sound Rider. It is a dual cassette tape deck mini boombox. It sounds great! I also acquired about 20 old stock Maxell blank tapes. I have already created 4 mixed tapes! I love it. The sound is great! It makes me feel like a teenager again!
I started using cassette's again because I wanted to see what I missed when I gave up on them because I had garbage players and tapes. Few years later I got quite a few tape decks, fixed them and started collecting high quality tapes for a while, when I managed to get high quality recordings that matched the source I stopped recording on them because I couldn't see the point of it anymore. So I started buying old tapes and searching for tapes that were recorded by other people and what a difference there was. Tons of new music (to me) that I couldn't find online, and to also see how people recorded them back in the day was priceless to me. To this day I still have a lot of tapes that need to be re-listened perhaps after 30-40 years. Cheers :)
I didn’t get rid of my tape deck, although I didn’t use it for about 13 years because I switched to a minidisc deck, I added a equalizer to my system remembering what that did for my car deck(which is pretty much an unwritten rule for cassette) and now I use them both equally
I like your thought provoking perspectives on music formats. I worked in the hi end Hi Fi trade for most of my life in a company called Teletape that specialised in tape recorders and importing prerecorded reel to reel tapes ( tape Music Distributers ) . I remember when the first walkman made an appearance and I was invited to meet the chairman of Sony at The Hilton Hotel in Park lane Mayfair. Most dealers were a little bit sceptical about the first walkman but I saw it’s potential and brought as many as Sony would supply me on the first delivery. I used to record albums on a Nakamichi Dragon to play on my walkman and the recordings sounded fantastic. I still have a lot of cassette decks and 3 portable machines including my original walkman and a walkman pro. I must have about 12 cassette decks to this day and a stack of unopened Maxell UDXL 2 cassettes as I don’t really use that format anymore. When portable CD payers came out they tended to skip so I still used cassette for portable music. Now I use either use proratable CD player that does not skip or preferably I use an Olympus portable PCM recorder. I find the PCM recorder will hold 32 Gig or ripped CDs and it’s now my favourite portable music format. I still buy vinyl and still have reel to reel but only because I have a Technics SP10 Mk 2 and a Technics RS1506 reel to reel but at home I mainly listen to SACDs but thats because I have MS and the other formats are a bit fiddly. But in answer to your question I don't think cassettes all come back in the way vinyl has. Thanks again for your perspective Jeremy Travis formerly Teletape Marble Arch London
For the cassette format to really comeback, the manufacturers are going to have improve that quality of the cassettes being produced. The majority of them are normal bias and it would need to be high bias to provide quality sound. While there may be more used cassette decks in the market place then turntables, the cassette decks are more often then not being sold as not functional. So buyers are dealing with units that they have to repair or get repaired before using it. Tape also degrades faster then vinyl. In my opinion, cassettes do not have the same level of attractiveness that vinyl does. I doubt it will make a comeback that vinyl has.
A nice follow-up to the nostalgia podcast! In this age of streaming I often find the lack of random access a positive. When I get tired of choosing, I can just put on one of my tapes and let it roll. I could put on a playlist, but knowing that once there was a stranger sitting and curating the tape makes the tape experience more valuable to me. I don't buy new tapes though, they have to be "authentic".
Personally I think there will be definitely more varieties of blank tapes and even new releases of music on tape. It is much more likely than with any other format because Cassettes don't use any proprietary technology that uses expensive patents (like the MiniDisc) and everyone can build tapedecks or manufacture tapes and the best thing is, you can do it even at home. Massproduce cassettes at home, in your basement or bedroom or anywhere else, with a tape recorder, print your own labels and it's done. With Vinyl it is a hell lot more complicated. But Cassettes are really the only analog medium you can masscopy yourself without too much trouble. The Casing varieties also make it very interesting as a medium of choice. Black, White, Neon Colours, Translucent, Transparent, with added sparkles, gold-, silver- (or any other color) chromed, Foldout artworks, multiple cassette case variations.... the Cassette really is very a physical medium and also very sturdy. Even tech-companies like Tascam are releasing new tapedecks and i'm sure the quality of these newer one will get better too (maybe even as good as mid/late 80s tape-decks) and probably cheaper too. It would be great if there would be a new production of Chrome Tapes again. Like TDK's SA-X series or the good old Chrome II tapes from BASF (the Pre-EMTEC productions thou).
Colin, there's something I have to note about mass-producing tapes. Some smaller set-ups may do it the way you describe, but there are still companies who produce tapes in a much easier way. Basically the magnetic tape itself is bought in bulk, in big spools. Big machines then feed the tape, at high speed, recording many many copies rather quickly. The tape itself is fed into empty cassettes which is then closed up. It's not a slow process, and depending on the machine, it can produce high quality copies at a much higher rate. The machines themselves aren't inexpensive, and they're usually older machines. But the companies who do have the machines happily take orders for mass production at a reasonable cost.
Great comprehensive content; I did the mix tape thing and loved the process of compiling, recording the playlists and then of course, listening to them. I'd honestly forgotten how all pervasive casette technology was in the mid to late-1990s. It's interesting how things come and go in cycles - fashion and technology amongst them. I enjoy your posts, always well researched and professionally presented. Thank you for providing many enjoyable and interesting TH-cam moments. Best regards from Melbourne, Australia.
IKEA Bekväm Spice racks are the only thing that prevent me from literally snowing myself in with tapes.. I hang 'em from the sloped attic ceiling. 500 tapes in, not seeing any signs of slowing down.. I'm lost :D edit1: I fully agree with the "tangible" argument. If you're a fan of any artist, it's great to have something you can hold in your hand, be it a tape, cd or a vinyl. The fact that you have something that is not going to succumb to the sand of time easily is enough to add value. tldr; A shrine. Ask me how I know. edit2: I'd love to see high quality unrecorded tape having a comeback. People dig mixtapes, but they very seldomly actually make their own. Not sure why that is, but I do know there is definitely a market for Chrome and Type 4/High bias tapes again. Anythjing that's left on the market now is new old stock, or old repurposed tapes. We need a fresh source.
I'm 17 (only have nostalgia for CDs), and I've been buying a lot of new indie albums on CS. Sure, a lot of these albums are only on tape, but a lot of it's fashion. It looks and feels damn cool to pop these $5-$7 neon plastic rectangles into a tapedeck and have your favorite album play
Material objects will always have more sentimental value than files on a drive. I just can't commit to listening off my hard drive over buying a CD or a cassette.
Interesting topic. I will relate why I got back into blank cassette taping. I am 58 years old, graduating high school in 1979. I joined the Air Force soon after. I loved the "silver" Yamaha stereo systems from the late 1970's and my vinyl records. The cassette gave me the ability to do a few things that I thought were "great" during the 1980's. I could of course now listen to my recorded / taped vinyl collection in my car and not just a radio. Also I could buy new vinyl and use it as a "master copy" of an album making a tape and play it as much as I wanted while the vinyl record stayed "pristine". Then there was the privacy of the "Walkman". We had transistor radios but it wasn't your own music like a cassette tape was. And lastly was the boombox which I adored and had so much fun with. I still love CDs too and thought they were a miracle of recording technology back then. *** But back to the "cassette". I got back into it for pure nostalgia a few years back, and recorded my new vinyl onto tape for pure fun and a hobby. Brings back very good memories of the times I recorded my music. I love all music technology from all time periods - and most of us no matter what your age might one day be nostalgic for the "music format of their youth". I am willing to bet that someday those that grew up in the CD era will one day want to return to the format "just for fun" and fond memories. Anyway . . I don't need to record my vinyl onto cassette tapes but love doing it :-)
I have 3 vintage cassette decks in great condition and use Type 1 and Type 2 cassette, new and new old stock. A cassette deck mechanism is a complicated and fascinating piece of technology that can be difficult to get running well because of alignment and the rubber belts. But once refurbished or tuned up should be good for a decade or more with routine cleaning. Enjoyed your video. Thanks :-)
What really limits the Cassette, is the lack of new good decks. Most people buying cassettes, listen them on vintage decks. It's great, it's even eco friendly, but it is not something for the masses.
In personally like cassette because it's a mobile analog format. I think it sounds really good in the right conditions. Alot of people that listened to cassette didn't really use great equipment aka cheap players and boom boxes. High quality players are a whole different story. Alot of times modern albums released on cassette and vinyl are less compressed than the CD and digital counter part due to the nature and limitations of the format. Even with the same digital master. There are videos showing the graphs on TH-cam if you wanna look into it yourself. That's a big perk for me.
As a fan of cassettes I couldn't be happier to see people giving some love to analogue in this form. Vinyl is great but there's just something about the compact cassette that draws me in every time I'm out at at a record store
I belive cassette players in cars predates boomboxes by several years. At least in Europe I believe it was getting quite common already by the first half of the seventies. I distinctly remember listening to the same James Last and Ray Conniff cassettes over and over again in our 1974 BMW (with a factory option radio/cassette deck), as a child.
Most important things about the cassettes are : they are cool, physical audio format and portable. In these years people usually listen mp3s in their cars, cd's in home then play with cassettes as nostalgically toys!. Recording on tapes with professional cassette decks is very enjoyable. Also cheap-low quality cassette players are very painful!!!.
I recently dusted-off my Aiwa “Walkman” (after watching Techmoan) and have been enjoying listening to mix-tapes I recorded 35 years ago, they still sound good! It’s pure nostalgia for me though, as you can’t buy Chrome or Metal blank cassettes new, and the secondhand ones are extortionately expensive. For that reason I’ll be sticking to streaming, high-res Flac files and the organic sound of vinyl.
interesting podcast. I really enjoyed your talk. I've heard most of the points you've mentioned before, but it is still good to see/hear someone who's thinking about this too. I was born in 64, which is the same year the compact cassette was released onto the market. I remember getting into recording on cassette in the 70s right through the disco era and beyond. Now as to your point regarding sound quality. Its easy to remember the uptick of sound quality timeline if you think of it like this. the compact cassette released in 1964 it had a signal to noise ratio around 45-50dB first noise reduction(Dolby B) for the home user came along in 1968 which is the end of the 60s and offered around 65dB of Signal to noise ratio. the second noise reduction came along in 1979 which is the end of the 70s and offered around 75dB of signal to noise. now the last level of noise reduction came along at.... you guessed it 1989 called Dolby S and that gave a noise reduction of 82dB. To put this into perspective, records typically have 77dB of noise reduction whilst CDs which came along 5 years earlier than dolby S gave 92+ dB of noise reduction. So actually the best a compact cassette can do is give a sound quality better than record but not quite that of digital. Its interesting to note though that the cassette decks of the early 90s have various features that compliment the dolby S system and these decks cost.. oh around 100-200 USD. when the dolby S system is used, the average listener simply cannot reliably tell the difference between the CD and the cassette music. new additions like HX PRO that extend the dynamic range in the higher frequencies makes it difficult to pick the difference between CDs/lossless and cassettes using dolby S. HIstorically of course the update of CDs in the mid 80s and into the 90s meant that dolby S , while reasonably easy to find in home decks on ebay, is virtually impossible to locate in portable players and car players. your point about random access can be somewhat countered by pioneer cassette decks that allow you to forward up to 15 songs with one button, but you'd still have to wait until the cassette stopped on that song. I've got a pioneer deck that can random play songs by selecting from any of six cassettes and playing it until the next song break where it swaps out another cassette of random selection. It was a copy of the six stacker pioneer CD player. Its a lost oppourtunity that the dolby system development and improvement took so long to develop for today you can sit in armchair comfort while you dolby S cassette deck plays a cassette that's controlled via your handheld remote control and you simply would not know the difference to a CD of the same song. These aren't expensive either. the six cassette deck from pioneer costs 180AUD while the dolby S remote control units cost about the same. Considering that this is in today's dollars, that's mighty cheap. you are right about the cost to cut new vinyl versus tape and that's a fact which will have more and more new talent keen to use the media. Unlike usb stick or streaming, its got a life of its own when being played. a usb stick does nothing !! it just sits there delivering digital content. another fact worth considering is that with a cassettee and a record, you own the music. you aren't payijng a company for the right to play it until you pass away. Also the rise in sales of cassettes as a percentage of their previous sales in USA was a whopping 94% versus the rise in streaming against its last year sales was 96%. Now given that the change in sales is a better indicator of future sales than the absolute sales, I'd say that cassettes are on the way up in a big way. vinyl's rise in sales is actually way lower, meaning that the thrust for vinyl has lost its original appeal. www.google.com/search?q=Screenshot&tbm=isch&tbs=simg:CAQSlwEJTLQbEfsTmRwaiwELEKjU2AQaBAgVCAoMCxCwjKcIGmIKYAgDEiiNCK4TsxO7E78TjAj3H_1gCuhOtE-8_11z-jPvA_17T_1GNu4_1qii8PqQ-GjBTON5-E31EBsU4KdxBgi-C20BIw0zBQvtWIWlXv2ViJTcTiLKBgTrYh7If0f6YqRsgBAwLEI6u_1ggaCgoICAESBE55t-QM&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi25Zi32IXgAhVWWH0KHdWuARwQwg4IKygA
This is really good stuff, I know some musicians who insist on physical media, partly so they can sell them at gigs and when busking on the street andpartly because they can add a personal touch to them. These are practical considerations not just nostaligia.
I really don't understand this. Maybe it's because I'm a gen-xer, but the idea of going back to cassette's is anathema to me. When I was young I used vinyl. While I recall enjoying the sound I also recall it being easy to scratch the records. Then around the age of 8 or 9 my family transitioned to cassette's. As a teen I owned 100's of cassette's. The positives were obvious. It was portable and easy to use but the sound was sort of...meh. And the tapes breaking? Oh, I had that happen in walkmen's, boom boxes, stereos, the car, etc. I HATED tapes breaking. I heard my first CD around 1988 or so and I was in love from the start. The sound was SO much better than tapes. And I could look at my reflection on the back! What beats that? :-) Granted, They were bigger than cassette's and could scratch, but those were the only real negatives as far as I was concerned. It's interesting when I worked in radio in the mid 90's we would use cassette's to record live shows just for the archive's. A station I was at in the early 2000's used reel to reel to play repeat/recorded talk shows. But, that was AM radio. you could get away with that on AM talk. I actually had one reel with Clark Howard breaking while live on the air! Yes, those tapes could break too. Once we moved everything to digital, the sound difference over tape was huge for me in the studio (you wouldn't notice it over the air). As the station started streaming over the internet then it actually mattered more though. So, anyway, I'm NOT a fan of tape in any form. Digital rules the nest as far as I'm concerned. In fact, having given up on CD's in the early 2000's I've recently been feeling nostalgic for CD's, as strange as that may sound. But never for cassette's.
Cassettes are coming back in my area.Alot of people who were buying 180 vinyl are now buying cassettes.It s way cheaper and alot of local bands find it cheaper to get there music out to the people.Music is all about choice.I say like what you like.I stick with the old 80s vinyl and my cassettes.My cassette collection is awesome.I will Never sell any of my cassettes.Never!!! Cassettes make me happy and i love the fact i can take my cassettes with me wherever i go.I still have my panasonic walkman and my cassettes still play great.☺
Great coverage of this subject! I work at a record shop that's catching the vinyl resurgence wave and doing alright. I'm trying to get tapes going there as a way to, as you mentioned, get more diversity in the shop with Indy labels I'm finding on Bandcamp. We're also experimenting with releasing small runs of tapes that have recordings of concerts being done by local bands in the shop. the idea is that customers can discover local bands and the bands themselves can sell the tapes when they go out an play shows. We'll see how it goes, but one thing I think you didn't mention is that bands can use tapes as merch to good effect. It's hard to get excited about download cards or even CDs, and tapes have that physical feeling with artwork that can connect fans to the band with the novelty and cost of cassettes. Even for people without decks, by including download cards in the tapes, they can buy tapes just as a way of supporting the musicians. Better than nothing or that vague "We're on Spotify, iTunes and Amazon if you wanna check us out..ok our next song is.." that I hear people doing on stage alot. Again, really enjoyed hearing your thoughts, very thorough and fun))
I hope so!! I hold the same nostalgia towards cassettes as the past generations hold towards vinyl. it was the first format in which I bought some of my favorite albums like Nirvana Nevermind, AC/DC High Voltage, Michael Jackson BAD! BTW, "Random Access" on CDs is what killed the album in my opinion, people just skipped to the main hit or single on the album then turn it off... artists became lazy and started adding filler tracks, knowing that people would just skip them... as opposed to before where bands like Pink Floyd used the album to tell a story where you had to listen from start to finish.
Also, tape decks take a lot of luck to find a vintage one that still works well. They're not cheap, and can need a lot of maintenance. Pinch rollers can deteriorate (often the cause of a tape getting eaten), almost all of them have belts that can be completely disintegrated by now, heads can get scratched or may need demagnatized and realigned, doors and eject machanisms can fail... They're complicated machines and especially later on, had a ton of tiny moving plastic parts. Unfortunately new models, as far as I know, can't have some features that made tapes so good in the 90s. Dolby noise reduction isn't licensed out anymore, and the companies that made high end tape heads just aren't gonna start cranking out new ones. On the other hand, phonographs / record players have relatively few moving parts. They may need a belt and a new stylus, and in some cases a new motor, but there is much less to repair and they are easier to get into.
I think pop culture has an impact too. Tape sales rocketed after Guardians of the Galaxy came out, then theres 13 Reasons Why and Stranger Things etc etc. Plus theres a whole new generation of lovestruck teenagers discovering the joy of making your latest crush a mixtape
I have sampler cassettes (and CDs) that I give out to promote my channel. The CDs are pretty easy, but the cassettes have to be produced in real time, but I still like doing it.
The folks who led the charge back into LPs were audiophiles, because the sound that they contained could easily (if they were created well, not a given) give you an amazing experience, especially for tracks that were never reissued to CD. I see cassettes as a novelty format, good for a bit of fun, but saddled by all the issues that you cited. I wish all the retro collectors and hobbyists all the fun in the world, because it is all good fun, but I don't see how the resurgence can last. I considered getting back into tape myself, but I decided that I'm not up to yet-another hobby. I would just play with it and get bored because I already played with this stuff back in the 80's and 90's.
I recently bought a Carver TDR 2400 (1992). The brand was around for 10 years then vanished. I was instantly surprised by the quality of the deck compared to my old Sony from 2004. It has Pro HX, Dolby B and C. The difference between a recent deck vs a Golden age Deck is so big I would have never guessed. My parents don't support my fascination for old music and video format but as long as I'm enjoying it then everything is well.
I'll be happy to be taught here. I admit I don't know the recording method for vinyls but I don't think it's true that cassettes are more expensive and time consuming to record than vinyl. Cassettes can record at higher speeds given you have proper quality equipment (and tape) and you can also record more music on a "bigger" cassette. Also you can fit some 4 cassette recording decks in the same space of a single one vinyl recorder, I assume. Both do have the same problem though: how many songs on that tape/vinyl do you actually like? Mix tape to the rescue.
As a 45 year old I’ve picked up some quality tape players (tape deck/boom box and Walkman) plus about 20 of my favourite albums - these are purely nostalgic which I’m holding on to. However I would not choose to hear new music on tape. However I buy both old and new music on records which is my favourite audio playback option. I’m no audiophile but the experience of using records is second to none.
Tascam still makes pro audio tape decks, and they seem to be pretty good quality. I bought one that plays and records cassettes, cd, and mp3s all in one unit
Didn't buy many tape albums however mix tapes for sure. I think the portability of tapes is what did back in the day at lest for me. The Walkman and boombox helped a lot with that. Spent most of my time recording radios shows and even got into a bit of cut and splicing for tapes. Mixtapes did a lot for a number of music genre's especially Hip-hop, House, Techno etc. When CD came out it, it just seemed more cumbersome to make a mix on the fly. Funny enough that's when I stared to buy actual albums because of quality then oddly enough rip them and make a mix CD for use with a Discman. When Mp3 players came out that was probably the end of all that for me. The apple ipod just was just a dream, to be able to carry all that music with you on one, at lest to eyes of the day, compact device was just crazy. I know Mixtapes are still being used but can't fathom other than for nostalgia why tapes would make a comeback. I would think the minidisc would be a better choice, still surprised it never caught on in the US, or maybe DAT tapes.
Back in the 80's, and 90's I had a mix of prerecorded taps, and blank/mix tapes, but honestly once I moved to CD in the mid 90's after getting my first portable CD player being a KOSS unit, I've not looked back, and don't think I will. I have picked up a few CD's here, and there recently that have caught my eye while out thrifting to RIP as 320Kbps Mp3 files for my phone, but the vast majority of my music these days is my digital collection, or via streaming as it's just easier, and places like SoundCloud, and Google Play Music have a lot of it for free, and with an unlimited data cap on my cell plan it's a no brainer for me.
BK-201 The Spliffsta it was a very kind gift from my grandmother, and with 10sec antiskip it worked just fine for years plugged into the stereo RCA ports on my Panasonic boombox. So please take your snarky attitude someplace else.
Those KOSS headphones were complete crap. I'm not being snarky, I'm being realistic. I've had to use those KOSS brand headphones that came with those CD players before...horrible.
BK-201 The Spliffsta My apologies then, but if you think the cans that came with some of the KOSS CD players where bad, then you never had to suffer with cans, and buds from the Dollar Tree as a kid as with some of them I think a rat farting could make a better sound, and they would fall apart if you looked at them wrong, but eventually my mother wised up, and got tired of buying cheap cans everytime we went shopping, and got me a pair of KOSS over the ears cans(can't remember the model # off the top of my head) that had an 8.5 foot long cord for use with my CD player/computer setup that I used for several years, and the sound was actually really good. However saying that, KOSS is one of those brands where it's either just awesome well beyond its price range like the Portapros, or just utter trash that need to be burned in hell fire. These days I'm a big fan of Philips cans for my home computer, and ROKU private listening use with their open back SHP9500S, and SHP2600/27 closed back over ear cans, but for something cheap and cheerful to throw in my backpack for work, the gym at my work, going camping, giving to the kids, etc.. JLAB has really impressed me with a lot of there cans like the Rewind, The JBuds Pro(both wired, and Bluetooth), and the NEON on ear cans.
IMO this: #1 lofi movement #2 Millennials obsession with anything 80’s or 90’s #3 nostalgia #4 hipster trend #5 Guardians of the Galaxy #5 Was cheap but getting expensive My reason: I love music and collecting it, I do not trust a computer chip to store and take care of my collection, I want to see it, hold it, smell it, hell, even lick it if I feel like. I bought vinyl when it was in a ditch, very cheap but now people are asking ridiculous prices...recent trends. Switched to cassettes because blanks were cheap or free in some instances, and I recorded high quality music and amassed a huge collection...recent trends again raised the prices. Now I’m buying CD’s because...again, people are giving them away, right now anyways but guarantee in the next few years prices will go up for this format too. I honestly think people are starting to feel empty by just having their music collection on a drive or in cloud storage heaven, there’s nothing to show to anyone, friends and family can’t see what you collect. It’s human to collect things that are tangible and it’s this fact that drives us back to physical formats of music. The bonus of having the tangible artifacts that we collect, is the process by which we obtain these things, the stories of how we found it, the people we meet along the way, the hours of digging and finding a treasure for pennies, the reward of getting it home and loading it into or on your devise for playback. This is a visceral experience and it’s human. Collection of Digital music is mundane and lifeless just like the machines that store it for us. That.....is why you are seeing a surge in analog. It brings us back to humanity!
In the last three months I have purchased 2 new releases on vinyl: Mike Oldfield's Return to Ommadawn and U2's Songs Songs of Experience. I also purchased a new release in cassette: Stranger Things Vol 1. The sound track of the series. I think new releases will keep coming, this is not a fad. People really appreciate analog sound.
Just revived my Technics Double Stereo Cassette Deck RS-TR474 and found a cassette inside with a pretty bad record of a radio station trance music remix from 1998 I made on unfortunately another very low quality cassette deck. The tape plays back just fine except there are a few places where the sound gets pretty bad with no heights or just one channel playing and so one. But I always like the smoother playback of a cassette recording rather than the harsh cd recording. I have never been into vinyl but I guess I would like it even more. I just ordered the soundtrack of Guardians of the galaxy on stereo cassette because I don’t own many cassettes anymore unfortunately :) Very nice video :) Thank you!
I after 39 years are back into cassettes...as I am back into electronic restoring tube and transistor radios...I have a JVC TD W354(made in the mid 90's) and enjoy using it....and it has music search where while listening to a song you can push a button and it skip to the next song, and if you know the song you want to listen to is the third song down...you just hit that same button 3 times and it will skip to that 3rd song a play it...I have around 100 blank tapes of various brands, sony, TDK, Maxell, Pioneer, JKC,BASF, and if Im not mistaken they can be recorded over at least 100 times....I can ride around my neighborhood and usually find hundreds of prerecorded music tapes being thrown away on the side the road...So my point is, it is both a new device to listen to...and like the radios repair also...like I use to...and it brings back those times, which I miss so much....thanks for your video...
BTW, I went to "Fingerprints" record store in Long Beach LA. They pack surprise cassette packages for like $2. I loved that. That's genuine fun. I feel cassettes are "music books". Libraries were doing something similar so you could buy blind. Discover books you wouldn't buy judging by its cover. Same thing. You rip the wrap and start discovering for such little money.. Then you get to keep it for effing ever. Nothing like cassette for that purpose. Vinyl is posh. It's for that muysi you have to love to pay as much as it costs. I still do, but not for discovering anything. I buy when I love the record. Cassettes and records are not comparable as experiences.
Thanks Col' for another good retrospective review of micro cassette. But i do remember i did love my cassettes back in the 80's and 90's.... but the elephant in the room, was I wanted a Minidisc or DAT as i could record my CD's perfectly or from the Radio, but just couldn't afford them back then, i had to wait another 10 years before i got my first MD.... it was too late, as MP3's were around in 96/97....
I'm totally with you on this! But i was so stupid as to get on the MD-bandwagon in 1997; just (as you state) when MP3 came around... :P But MD was great imo! It combined all the good from cassette with all the good from CD :) I had the portable Sony MZ-R30; 600 Dutch Guilders at the time (+/-250USD?); well, that was a 'waste' of hard earned money even though i loved the thing! :P Used it for some 4 years still, until it got stolen >:( :'( Although MP3 at that time wasn't great either with the original Fraunhofer-codec which was limited to 128kbps if you didn't want to pay for a license. Or one could use that awful Xing-encoder, which was even worse. LAME wasn't around yet or not easily used... I still got one (chromium) cassette with music from FGTH (mid 80's), which was/is not available on other media. I'll never throw that away; just for nostalgia's sake. Got to digitise it soon i guess before the tape starts to degrade away completely :o Wow; this has become a genuine rant :P
Back in 80’s we bought the record and made quality copies, often multiples for friends. Prerecorded tapes were always marginal quality. With quality gear you can capture a really good copy, even today. quality blank tape material is probably more important than new decks, there are many old ones still kicking around. CDs are more likely to have a decent resurgence in my opinion.
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New pre-recorded cassettes from major artists on major record labels are actually a *lot* cheaper than new vinyl records. Most new pre-recorded cassette tapes cost around $10 to $15, while most new vinyl records cost around $20 to $30. And all cassette players can play all types of tape; the cheapest ones will sound a little too bright when playing CrO2 or Metal tapes, but the audio will still be listenable and enjoyable. The differences between the tape types are only really relevant when recording.
And at least around here, the thrift stores are full of good-quality used cassette decks at very reasonable prices, whereas good used turntables are scarce and good new ones are pricey. At today's prices, a good used $50 cassette deck will sound a lot better than any $50 turntable, used or new, unless you get very lucky or know how to fix a broken one.
VWestlife Weezer's EWBAITE is $30 second hand though
@ VWestlife: agree, especially on flea markets you can often get tapedecks really cheap while turntables cost a lot more and sometimes come with bad or totally worn out needles. I once even got a Sony 3head cassette deck on a fleamarket for ca 20 bucks. Worked like a charm.
I'd love to see a new production of tape-head de-magnetizers for cassette decks however. The ones that come as cassette form and which run for a few seconds. The ones i find on ebay cost way too much and usually cause bidder-wars...
I haven't seen new cassette decks that do have CrO2, but don't have metal. I believe the decks had Dolby-B but don't recall Dolby-C and definitely not Dolby-S! National Audio Company has stated that they've stopped making Type-II tapes and are scheduled to come out with a high-quality Type-I tape in the not too distant future.
New artist cassette tapes are not 10 to 15 dollars on average. It’s more like 20 to 25 bucks.
Also cheaper than cds,on amazon and urban outfitters new cassettes are 9-10 bucks,but cds are like 13 bucks on amazon, target,and Walmart
That was a good overview. Cassettes got a bad reputation because most record companies used cheap tape for pre-recorded cassettes. Too many people didn't buy quality tape brands like Maxell and TDK, but bought junk 3-pack for a dollar tapes like Certron and Tonemaster instead. And most people played cassettes on low watt walkman clones, boomboxes and factory car stereos that had the sound quality of AM radio. And many never cleaned their tape deck's head and pinch rollers so tapes could jam or break eaisly.
wildbilltexas Right? If you're not using Maxell, wtf is wrong with you? I used to buy Maxell 5 packs. TDK was a good back up brand.
I used Maxell and TDK tapes for years! My main favorites were Maxell's XLII and UDII, and TDK SA for taping LP's and CD's for my car's tape deck. It's a shame they dont make new High Bias tape anymore.
Yeah the Maxell XLII High Bias 5 packs were what I used to get. I seen them on Amazon recently for like $50.
I wish I could go to the store and get them. I did try a pack of the current Normal bias Maxell UR. I recorded some old albums on them and surprisingly they sounded good.
I think another mark against pre-recorded cassettes was that they were usually duplicated at high speed. This reduced the sound quality of the resulting tape, and is a reason that tapes you made yourself (recorded in real time) sounded better than pre-recorded tapes.
I'll never understand anyone who advocates for leaving a unique medium 'in the past'. Audio cassette tapes offer characteristics that can be found nowhere else - and some kinds of music come *alive* on tape. I've kept every tape I ever bought and recorded on - and also have my dad's tapes - some of which date from the late '70s. Some prerecorded tapes have deteriorated badly but every tape I recorded from the mid '90s to the mid-'00s sounds as perfect as the day it was made. Tape will always be the most unfairly maligned audio format and the fact that nobody can manufacture a good quality tape deck anymore pretty much guarantees this sad state of affairs for ever more.
bumtree Computer software used to come on cassette tapes before also.
Fucking true my man. So sad. :-( . I'm glad that the community is growing though.
@ bumbtree: You should check out VWestlife's channel. He did a WONDERFUL video once about the audio quality of old pre-recorded cassettes and how they sound now. Some even as old as 50 years now. It'll amaze you.
I agree, bumtree, thumbs up. I've got several tapes from the late 1980s, and 1990s, and almost all of them, included some pre-recorded cassettes (don't have too many of those), and only one is type 2 sound very good; and the music is not obstructed by whatever element, it is clear, and the musical instruments are just as good as listening on vinyl.
-SG6000- bitch that’s good. Flac format for the win
Being born in 98' cassettes should have been after my time, but growing up poor I amassed a large cassette collection through hand-me-downs and thrifting. I still use and love collecting cassettes because they have a special feel to them. It's not individual nastalgia, it's *cultural* nestalgia that makes them special. They represent what people love from that time and how it influences culture now. The music on them is typically stuff I wouldn't find now, but I'm glad I have. Even if cassettes die as a medium they'll live on as iconography of time cherished and represent the revolution of portable music.
People often scoff at nastalgia, saying looking at the past through rose tinted glasses is childish and petty; but I think the opposite is true. It's part of human nature to pick out things we loved from the past and celebrate them. That's where tradition comes from.
It's a staple of humanity.
Interesting take on this. I literally have no experience of any modern manufactured tape recorders, only my vintage decks.
Back in the day like yourself i never was into the pre-recorded tapes, mostly vinyl record and CD but a tonne of blank tapes. I loved recording mix tapes and still do to this day.
Same here.
I adore cassettes and making astonishing sounding recordings on a good deck and tape. Type IV of course, but Type II and even Type I can sound breathtaking, especially on rock music.
That said, while I thoroughly enjoy working with cassette, I can't honestly recommend it to most people. You have to be "really" into it to reap the benefits and enjoyment.
You are so right...and without the good quality tapes being made, the used metal and chrome costs a damn fortune! You can almost buy a new vinyl record for what a stupid blank tape costs!
If they wanted to do the comeback right we need better tapes and better mechanisms. I understand Tascam is making a new deck but from what I saw on vwest channel, I am NOT impressed.
I remember back in the early seventies when my oldest brother got his first cassette deck. It was a top loader with big VU meters, and I believe it was a Pioneer. When he wasn't around, I used to make tapes for myself of whatever albums I wanted to listen to. That way I had a good quality copy of favorite albums to listen to anywhere that I didn't have to worry about destroying the original in any way shape or form due to whatever mishap might befall it, simply because it was at home put away in it's sleeve and safe. If something happened to the tape I would just make another one. One thing that you didn't quite touch on is that tapes taught many people how to make a cohesive playlist, one that would fit as much music onto each side of that 60, 90, 120 minute tape. It also taught people how to actually count in time units rather than base 10. The other thing is that there are many rare, at least to the owner, recordings that have been done either via microphone, off air, or in the really old days with the microphone pressed up close to the speaker. I have a recording of my uncle and my mother where my uncle is playing the piano and singing and my mother is singing along with him. They are both long gone from this Earth and it is one of the few remaining pieces of both of them than I still have that I can remember them by. I also have a concert by a now-defunct radio station where they had put together a Beatles Reunion concert, it was fake, just before John Lennon passed away. That is a piece of audio history that should be preserved and I'm glad that I have it on tape. So there's a lot of nostalgia for those who grew up with tape, but unfortunately for the people who would like to have a resurgence, it's nowhere near as convenient as digital is nowadays or as clear. However, I have tapes that are 45 years old and still playable. Makes you wonder if tape is a longer-lasting medium than digital. Because when a hard drive fails generally all those files are gone forever unless you made a back up, but as long as I have a player and my tapes I can get that old information and listen to it.
Do you think a mix tape for a girl friend back in 1985 will have a wow factor in 2019 and would you pay 19.95 for it plus 30$ shipping on e-bay for it now?
What sucks the most is Dolby not licensing their noise reduction for whatever reason. Dolby S sounds incredible even on normal tape and the new music that does get released has that terrible hiss; I disagree it adds charm, at least with zero NR its not since its so loud.
I’m a 30 year-old pseudo-audiophile. Or, vintage audio enthusiast. I find myself in all camps with this audio tech discussion as a whole. Because of my age, cassettes were the primary means of playback music. CD’s were still relatively new, and players were still new tech with new tech prices. I remember still playing my parent’s Pink Floyd records as a kid, but I was also knee deep in the mix tape era. I listen to all mediums for different reasons and styles. I listen to my growing vinyl collection on a big 60’s cabinet console at home. (Along with 5 other broken players from the 30’s to 2010’s) Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline, Grandpa’s 40’s big band jazz. That’s my vinyl music. I like to listen to old blues that plays on NPR on my 50’s German radio. I sometimes listen to my old 80’s metal cassettes on my 80’s boombox when I’m cruising in my 1970’s jeep that has no sound capabilities at all. I even rescued a reel-reel to player to hear old family recordings. I stream shuffled music for convenience through a jambox. Certain music I play by album-start to finish, as it was intended. I never use CD’s however. They’re not fun, they’re not convenient, they’re not portable by today’s standards. They’re not a novelty, and they scratch easily. So some is by modern convenience, some is nostalgia, and some is what is already available to me.
Here is another camp, related to cassettes, that I’m noticing. While I was raised on the tail end of one era, and the beginning of another, Younger millennials (up to early or mid twenties), have a different mindset. These guys grew up primarily in the CD, and mp3 era. To them, cassettes are the novelty, that they may not even have had. Even if they did, it was already just outdated leftovers they vaguely recall their parents using. They are buying new production and used cassettes because of the vintage novelty. Not their own nostalgia, and not for sound quality. You can see it trending in markets. Images of cassettes on T shirts, stickers, or phone cases that look like cassettes. Even brightly colored and designed shoes and sunglasses are beginning to look reminiscent of the 90’s. In “my time”, a few short years ago, it was NES novelty. Same licensed merchandise with controller or pixel Mario images on everything. I’m already beginning to keep an eye out at thrift stores for a Walkman before they become a artificially inflated vintage tech and snatched up.
I'm one of those people who never really stopped listening to music on a certain format when a new one was introduced. Over the years I've accumulated a respectable music collection on different formats, so I have vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, MiniDiscs, and digital files. I have two Walkmans that still work (thankfully), and for my hi-fi stereo system I've had a Sony cassette deck inherited from my grandfather; this deck worked flawlessly from 1995 to 2016, then I was lucky enough to acquire a TEAC unit when I went to pick up some vintage Apple hardware at a graphic studio.
Between me and my wife, we have about 500 cassettes, and there's a bit of everything - commercial releases, old mixtapes, a bunch of recordings from vinyl records I don't own anymore, rare recordings of other vinyls that have never been reissued, etc. Sometimes people ask me why I don't just digitise all this stuff. They underestimate the time-consuming nature and utter tediousness of such a task. It's really much simpler to look for a working vintage player when one of ours breaks down, and keep listening to the music directly on tape.
Keep up the good work, Colin!
Young man … I lived it. It’s fun to see you try to put the pieces of the puzzle together. And you’ve got some of the pieces in the creek places. But there’s much you don’t understand about what it was like back in those days and you never will because you didn’t leave it.
I am a vintage girl at heart! I like to hunt for rare pre-recorded tapes, and I have a tape deck from 2001. It’s a Sony!
Also I have walkmans of all kinds of brands!
captianbubble Im guessing your a teenager because I am lol I collect blank tapes
Man, you have an interesting take on across-the-board-stuff!! Keep it fresh.
As someone in my 30s i never really abandoned cassettes but always used them one way or another. As a young kid i did listen to vinyl too but never had a personal recordplayer but only listened to Vinyl records when my parents were around, on the livingroom recordplayer (was the only one we had) over my dad's HIFI system. However i did have a radio boombox (an AIWA TRP300A) which i used for listening to cassettes. It was my very own device and i was so proud of it and listened to cassettes like crazy.
They were super easy to use, didn't require you to be SUPER careful (as a kid you are not really careful anyway) and didn't take much space. As soon as i got a hold of a blank cassette to record on, i was totally lost & in love with that format. I had them all. Expensive brand tapes and super cheap low-quality tapes. Played and recorded on sometimes low quality, sometimes high quality decks or portables. Listening to cassettes with a walkman i really only did during train rides when we visited my grandparents. I even discovered electronic music through cassettes and always had at leas 2-3 compilation tapes of electronic music and sometimes copied the stuff from my dad's CDs to cassette.
As a kid quality wise there never was a real significant difference to me. The only difference was you could skip a CD. But other than that i was always super happy with cassettes. The ability to record on them really was, and still is, the biggest reason why i love them so much. Especially when used for 4 track or 8 track portastudio machines.
About skipping songs, even back then some higher end decks had pulse sensor (you leave a pulse before every song and the player will be able to find that pulse and fast forward to it) or silence sensor which just find blank space between songs and fast forward to the beginning of the next song. It may not have been standard but my deck is equipped with it.
Personally I’d like 1/4” open reel tape to make a comeback.
Played at higher speeds, that’s a format that could sound absolutely phenomenal.
I grew up listening to music on cassettes, recording songs from the radio and making my own mixtapes. Cds were expensive
Just a little FYI: I currently have over 450 cassettes in my collection, starting in the mid-sixties. I wish I had at least 200 more. I have something on the order of 375 LP's and 300 45's. But CD's top them all at 600+. I have almost seven decades under my belt.
I am 16 and I currently (probably illegally) stream music from my laptop onto a blank tape with a deck and listen to it daily. The reason is that one day I found my father's walkman in an old box in the corner of my house and it was still working. He told me that he himself used that exact player when HE was 16, so while it isn't really nostalgia, it was kind of cool to be able to live in a time where I didn't exist, using technology my father used during his prime. Given the number of decks, players, and blank tapes going around on eBay and other auctioning sites, it got me obsessed with cassettes and I kind of bought a ton and resold them to my classmates listened to them together. I suppose that teenagers like me are popping up all over the world and perhaps, just ever so slightly, making the sale of cassettes increase?
As someone in their early 20's I didn't exactly grow up during the time when cassette tapes were popular. It was only until about 10 years ago that I took an interest in them, and collect them to this day. Mainly new releases that indie musicians and sometimes even popular labels put out. Some music just seems to work the best on this format, it feels right being listened to on a lofi format. Such as black metal, beat tapes/lofi hip hop, plunderphonics, analog electronic music, garage and noise rock, shoegaze etc...Something about that fuzzy warm sound quality is so cozy to me. I don't think analog formats will ever truly die, I think there will always be a niche audience for it.
Anyway, great video like always!
First of all like to say *really* great video--very intelligent, articulate, and insightful. Couple of thoughts: as to the random access issue, I've heard many people say that's actually something they like about cassettes, because it's one of the only formats that actually makes you to listen through an entire album, forcing you to patiently listen to and enjoy a collection of songs as a whole. Also, as to who's buying them (or going to buy them), I agree about what you said about it being unlikely that we'll see many mass-market albums being regularly released by currently popular major artists. I think they'll probably mostly remain the domain of the independent artists who want to get physical copies of their work out to their fans. In fact, that's what my band is planning to do. Another plus these days is that you can include a download code with your cassette so that people who want a physical copy of your art can also download it and play it on their iphone and so forth. Cassettes are also just very cool, punk, and retro. So it has that going for it as well!
Again, thanks for this great video!
I grew up in the 70s&80s using cassetes as the only media to record music. They were fragile and highly inconvenient. No recording you made on your deck sounded good on any other deck or walkman, due to various heads misaligments and because of differences in dolby manufacturing. There was always a serious lack of trebles. Always.
Not to mention the ease that cassetes can be destroyed by magnetism. Just leave them for 1 minute next to your bluetooth speaker or next to your mobile phone. Finished.
All the nostalgia is all about the way cassetes are looking. They are looking good and thats all.
I love Cassettes I'm glad they're making a comeback. I don't expect them to make a comeback to the extent of Vinyl Records but still... it's cool to see Cassette's back on the market and sales increasing every year.
As a lo fi and beat tape producer with 4 amazing decks stacked it is a great solution for diy labels like my own
One thing I can see hindering cassettes is that unlike vinyl, there’s no really good cassette decks. Even the Tascam or Teac ones are just tanashin mechanisms dressed up as much as possible. Tanashin doesn’t even make the mechs anymore. Vinyl on the other hand, you can still get a really nice automatic turntable. Plus I’ve seen way more turntables for sale that are pretty good than cassette decks in general. And they’re fairly expensive as well. Some are dirt cheap, but the good decks are expensive. I was in a bidding war for a 12 pack of used erased type 2 tapes, and I dropped out when the price went from 15$ to 45$. I got a larger quantity of unerased tapes, but even at high speed dubbing itl take forever to erase them. 90 minute tape takes 45 minutes to erase it
To me MiniDisc has never died
I got a really clean Sony MDS JE480 with remote control at Goodwill for about 10 dollars. I think they had it confused for a dvd player? I record myself dj'ing with it all the time. Works great.
I see dead people? They sounded ok, but were a compressed format. If your player ever breaks, I don't think anyone repairs them.
Because they never lived...lol
Minidiscs were more popular in Asia and Europe. Much more. I still have a portable player and about 40 discs I play.
@@Falstaff-mr8fk ford and bmw build minidisc Player in the cars in germany ... This was nice
Great review and opinion. I am much older than the generation you are talking about. I grew up with vinyl and open reel as the predominant formats and then cassettes. I find it interesting all the talk about poor quality and tape eating. It’s like saying everyone in the 70s had macrame plant hangers. I owned few prerecorded cassettes, but did own a lot of Type II and IV blank cassettes. I recorded all my vinyl and CDs in the mid to late 80s to save vinyl and to play CD albums in my car. The key was having a quality deck to pull the best out of the tape. I had a decent deck, not TOTL, but god enough to make high quality recordings. I am back into cassettes and open reel again and have high end decks now. I am doing this for pure nostalgia and the joy of actually recording.
I still have all my cassettes mostly taped in the eighties and I use them in my vintage Clarion car stereo. Roxanne Shante vs Frukwan at the NYC music seminar in 1985 is one of my favourite tapings.
Ah man I know this is an old comment but much respect for your music taste, ain't nothing like the golden age of Hip-Hop!
I love cassettes,they make great toys if you use them to play producer, get a good used tape deck,an equalizer,and a good quality cassette tape,then with the equalizer bring to life all those instruments you can barely hear in a regular commercial recording and record them in a cassette that you'll feel tempted to listen to all day long.
Ok,here is the skinny..
I am a DJ/recordist, and have my own recording gear.There was NOTHING wrong with records nor cassettes,except that having them meant we had control over our recordings,our mixes,and could control our financial environment.For example,i have records,so i can put them on,spin,record a mixtape,or even play live,controlling that environment,because I bought the right to.I dont have to download anything,dont have to worry about what level of quality,because all my records and blanks were about the same.Plus,if i need to,i can tweak the music,with an efx box,EQ,or tweak the whole system.All this stuff about 'better' sound quality mostly depends on how things are recorded,maintaining records/decks, and of course the tape medium.
I recall that most of my decks never like TDK blanks,and when you shook them,you could understand why they would get caught in the deck,except for the top ones,sometimes.You had to deal with bias,cleaning heads,demagnetizing heads,and knowing which tapes you could push to it's limits,etc,etc.Yeah,people were selling mixtapes and there were a few pirated vinyl instances,yet that's not why they went digital.They found out quickly,especially the artists,they made a fatal mistake,opening up piracy to insane levels.It got so bad that artists like Lupe Fiasco,had his whole LP sold off on the Internet right before the official release.There was even a time that i didnt know hardly anyone who paid for music.
They forgot that DJs alone would buy 2+ copies alone,of the same track/LP,and when you factor in that my collection alone is between 50-100k+ records,that's a good chunk of money spent on music.These newer vinyl records cost a lot more overall,yet the original vinyl before digital is still around and available.Oh yeah,the difference between records/tapes and digital is that digital music is NOT music,it is binary data,that has to be sent through a digital to analog converter,and has no harmonics.Plus,people like me,who can deal with both,prefer to have hardware and physical medium.Floppies are still also great,if you have an older computer,or if you use hardware music samplers.You do not need a computer that's new to be online,because the service provides your modem/router,which has not much to do with your computer,as long as it fits minimum requirements...
'Struth!It was the control they offered to the consumer which is what caused the industry to go after these formats with a blood lust.Criminalizing their own customers!
As an independent musician, I own upwards of 30+ cassettes of friends music. Their cheap, and quick to produce and allow for a greater profit margin. To make some blank tapes with 17 mins of tape on each side, it cost me 2.50 a tape. And I'll sell that for 5 each. This is something you talked about. I only bring it up because so many musicians, I'm in Philly but, all over the state's are using it to get their music out to fans. Also for touring they store a lot easier than a stack of records. Nonetheless, Great video Collin!!
I've never stopped using cassette. Warts and all, I love this format for recording.
I listen to rap and they still release it on tape. Only some artists do it but I bought one a few months ago. Its why Vinyls comeback, rap music made it cool then everyone follows. Pretty much with advertising and tons of stuff in life.
Perverted Alchemist Yeh mate that doesn't suprise me tbh. Its tough to be a fan of hip hop like Chris Rock says because you get so criticised and it doesn't get its praises due. I listen to all types of music tbh
Born 1976. When I got interested in music, cassette was king. In the mid 89s I had no idea what fidelity was but I knew mom had a cassette deck in he Chrysler k car and when it was time for me to start wanting my own music, I never gave vinyl a chance. I knew of it and my folks had it but it felt antiquated. I spent no amount of time thinking about it but it just knew that you can't take an lp in the car with you or on a walk with your "walkman". It just felt like the normal corse of events for me to embrace cassette technology. At the time, it seemed like an epoch, but I eventually moved on to cds in the early 90s. I'm currently going down the rabbit hole of cassette resurgence. Thanks for the great video! Cheers
People my age (40), if they were really into music, used CDs and tapes interchangeably. Anything we could get our hands on. People my age have since engaged in a lot of revisionist history about why they switched to tape and greatly exaggerate how often tapes failed or how bad they sounded.
I did both with tapes. I bought og albums till cds came out. I was born '79. My first tape as a lil kid was Poison....Open up and say ahh which is still popular today funnily enough especially with strippers :p I bought a Sony walkman in 2016, the same model I had as a kid. What sparked the nostalgia was I bought a t shirt from a rapper in NYC, ordered from Australia and he put a tape in the package which was cool. Nice video man!!! :)
Big question, are the people out there getting tired of that really clinical digital sound in music today, as for me, as a producer i love todays music and the technology, but it doesn't have the soul like analogue sound.
I'm only 19 and experienced CD for the most part as my main music format. My parents still had a few cassettes lying that I got to listen to. For me, I never really liked mp3. It was fun for awhile. But somewhere along my life I wanted more of something that was interactive. I'm a fidgeter, and I naturally fidget with a lot of things, and I think cassette can do that for me. Not just popping it in like CD, but having to rewind amd fast forward and flipping to side 2 and back to side 1. It falls into my fidgeting personality. That is why I love cassettes more than any other music format out there with Vinyl beimg 2nd. I also REALLY love all those vintage designs on boomboxes back in the 80s with all the chrome, and neon labels and dials, switches and sliders etc. Again, falls with my fidgeting personality. That is why cassettes will be for a long time at least be my main musical format.
You’ve gotten much better as a speaker since I’ve been listening to you. Your transitions flow really well together and your cadence keep things from sounding like a boring lecture. Thanks for the good work
I dispute a lot of the statements in this video.
First, that vinyl sounds better than tapes. It doesn't. This myth basically stems from that people used to listen to tapes in subpar equipment, mostly boomboxes. Play a tape in a proper deck, with a proper amplifier and proper speakers, and you'll be surprised by the quality.
Second, that vinyl sounds great out of the box regardless of the equipment. It doesn't. Play it on a cheap hi-fi with crappy speakers and it will sound like, er, crap, and that's without taking into account it's inherent problems, like scratches, dust, surface noise etc.
Third, that tapes need noise reduction. It helps, but it's no big deal. Tape hiss (that's what noise reduction is about) is only a problem in quiet parts if you turn the volume LOUD. That's when the hiss is audible.
DavidGolder Yes sir. I agree. I have a proper setup for both formats and prefer my cassette deck more for sound quality. Thing is as more people start experimenting with tape and find that it does indeed sound top shelf with good equipment (this is happening now) the prices for blanks and decks will increase to rival that of gold. It’s getting hard for the bargain hunter to obtain good quality equipment these days. People and kids in general are starting to catch on to the fact that we’ve been duped into thinking digital is kind for sound reproduction. I’m just glad I have a good stash of components for backup if need be.
I agree with both points made, a quality turntable will outperform most cassette decks and conversely a quality cassette deck will outperform most cheap to mid range turntables. I play vinyl on a Linn Lp12 and tapes on a Nakamichi and both sound lovely, different in character but both very pleasing to listen to. Making tapes on the Nak from CD`s is interesting, they loose a little of their digital quality and replace it with something more analogue. Whether this is my imagination or a real dynamic I`m not sure. Burning CD`s from my Linn definitely gives them a different sound to the source, but a pleasing one.
Unfortunately the more people you convince of this the worse the market becomes for us old dinosaurs who never gave up the cassette medium. The 2nd winning chess move is to put our vanity and ego down and walk away quietly and let the normies, vinyl fans, streaming digital fans etc., enjoy "being right" while we let them 'win' the chess game we get to proceed suffering with the broken limited overpriced squat left available. Somehow like Family Guy that was just loaded with truth and sarcasm at the same time. Now back to our regularly scheduled enslavement.
@@jsdhesmith2011 I agree with what you have said! Fortunately I have a very good cassette deck, and a decent receiver. By the way, I had a Sony walkman, and it was good enough; but the quality, and performance of the hi fi equipment should, or must be taken into consideration.
You are kind of rattling off what Wikipedia is presenting as truth. By 1979, when the Walkman came out, cassettes were already the main format for car stereos. Enthusiasts at that time were eager to bring their vinyl to their driving experience. That said there was also tons of prerecorded cassette music before the Walkman. I remember both taped and prerecorded being common.
28:00 If a deck can play chrome tapes, it can play metal tapes as well. Recording is different, though. Metal tapes need a bit more oomph than chrome tapes, and new decks aren't equipped to supply that.
You can play chrome tapes back in a type I deck also, it will just be a bit bright, so you will need to turn the treble down.
I love repairing classic tape deck and hearing them play, watching mechanism go into action
I've found myself suddenly interested in owning physical music again! People are slowly realizing we were duped with streaming. The quality isn't nearly as good or the experience.
Spotify for example. Free Spotify voluntarily lower the quality of the music they stream so you buy the premium version. It's all bs. Oh and the advertisement abuse too...2 to 5 ads back to back every few other songs...
@@birdysama2980 I mean its free :v
I kinda discovered I like recording albums posted on youtube, over a bluetooth to a strong fm signal transmitter into a vintage receiver connected to a tapedeck. It sounds much nicer then simply downloading it as an mp3. You get a verry nice, clean fm recording, the one you would had called perfect in the 80s, with no radio interference, only the thin but crispy audio with mild tape hiss.
I've started using cassettes mainly for 2 reasons. As a guitar player I'd like to record my music onto something that is not a digital format because of its accessibility, and pretty much independency from any complex hardware and software. Plug and play, just the tapedeck hooked up to my mixer which is also entirely analog. Few things that can go bust, need updates, whatever. Also for practicing purposes. After a long day at work (mostly in front of a pc) that's what you want. Secondly, I really do see music as an art that I want to appreciate, and I cannot do that with non physical formats like mp3 downloads. Not that back in the day everything was better on tape or vinyl, cd, but it was much more appreciated in my eyes.
I prefer cassettes over vinyl, because cassettes actually have better quality in particular with Dolby and hifi quality stereo systems. Vinyl records comeback has kind of cheapen the format with terrible remasters, and needle replacement, also vinyl is overpriced, it’s also lacks portability.
There are many terrible remasters. So buyer beware.But on the idea that it's over priced, if you compare unit price versus average income, records are actually cheaper now as a percentage of income.Also you have absolutely vast amounts of back catalogue.So you can pick up amazing records for next to nothing, if you know where to look.
Cassettes absolutely do NOT have better quality over vinyl...even with Dolby. Sorry, but that is wrong. The only way you can make that comparison is if you compare a Nakamochi to a shitty Crosley Cruiser. Vinyl has plain more frequently range.
However, tape has way better portability, storability, and with something like a mix tape, no one cares Bout lack of random access.
That being said I think both can still have their place but there is no way in hell tapes will surpass vinyl. I still don't see them sold in stores but vinyl sure is. And without Dolby and decent metal tapes being made sadly it doesn't stand a chance.
and its not as toxic as vinyl
...i think..
Yes there are bad re-masters nowadays.
But if you think that a pre-recorded compact cassette sounds better than a good vinyl records, played on a good turntable with good cart&stylus, you are sadly mistaken.
Also vinyl is not overpriced. Maybe compared to CD's but remember that a vinyl record in the eighties or nineties was much more expensive than they are today.
Also you can buy lots and lots of old vinyl albums that are still in good to excellent quality for quite low prices.
Nico Meier the new vinyl records I bought that were on sale during record store day didn’t sound as good as the digital version. I don’t find vinyl fun anymore, most new albums cost too much, I find used cassettes sound better than used vinyl I find at record stores, and I have a high quality turntable and speakers. I think the vinyl format has been oversaturated by terrible remasters.
I was an insane mix-tape maker. Most of my vinyls got transferred to cassettes when I went to college, especially as the Walkman came out around then and I could take my music around campus with me, trade tapes with my friends, record lectures for later review, and more. Before full inflight entertainment systems became widespread on airlines, my cassette tapes helped save my sanity on long flights as well. Nowadays you have a choice of hundreds of films and TV shows on the screen in front of your seat, but back then there was one movie - maybe two on long hauls - for everyone, and your only choice was to watch them or not. I can't imagine what it was like in the days before they had entertainment at all!
I use them for analog recording to metal tapes for retro looking film projects. I think cassettes are at their best when recording your vinyl to a metal tape and using it to listen to your analog music collection on the go. Dolby B and HX Pro on a metal tape make for a very compatible and high quality mixtape. Fidelity isn't much different from a CD.
Yes. A good tape deck from the 80s or early 90s, even a medium priced one can sound fantastic, almost indistinguishable from a CD at least for the first dozen or so times you play it back.
I can't wait for Floppy disks to make a comeback. :)
They have never really went away, as some industrial applications that have machines which have been running almost 24/7 for decades still have computers with floppies, and you can go on eBay, and buy newly made USB floppy drives direct from China. well at least if count 3.5in floppy disk drives. However the disk themselves are a bit harder to get a hold of.
Exactly. Last year I paid like 20€ for two new 10 packs of floppies. They are expensive and quite hard to get. But at least the drives are cheap. I guess it's the opposite of the tape situation.
If floppies come back, it will be like video game cartridges. Nintendo Switch cartridges are now really just SD cards. If floppies came back, they would basically be new versions of SD cards or USB drives.
@ Jack kraken: I'm sure a lot of Amiga 500 and Atari ST owners would cheer in rejoice over the news of new 3.5' floppies. ;)
Get yourself a commodore 64 and they never left.
One of my favorite bands put out a box set that includes the album on cassette. I have shoe boxes filled with cassettes back home that I'd like to get onto my computer.
I didn't realize how powerful the amp was in my Walkman to power my headphones. I've been listening to my old tapes way more often.
Colin, I just a couple of weeks ago purchased a mint condition, 1980s Sony CFS-W301 Sound Rider. It is a dual cassette tape deck mini boombox. It sounds great! I also acquired about 20 old stock Maxell blank tapes. I have already created 4 mixed tapes! I love it. The sound is great! It makes me feel like a teenager again!
I started using cassette's again because I wanted to see what I missed when I gave up on them because I had garbage players and tapes. Few years later I got quite a few tape decks, fixed them and started collecting high quality tapes for a while, when I managed to get high quality recordings that matched the source I stopped recording on them because I couldn't see the point of it anymore. So I started buying old tapes and searching for tapes that were recorded by other people and what a difference there was. Tons of new music (to me) that I couldn't find online, and to also see how people recorded them back in the day was priceless to me. To this day I still have a lot of tapes that need to be re-listened perhaps after 30-40 years. Cheers :)
I didn’t get rid of my tape deck, although I didn’t use it for about 13 years because I switched to a minidisc deck, I added a equalizer to my system remembering what that did for my car deck(which is pretty much an unwritten rule for cassette) and now I use them both equally
I like your thought provoking perspectives on music formats.
I worked in the hi end Hi Fi trade for most of my life in a company called Teletape that specialised in tape recorders and importing prerecorded reel to reel tapes ( tape Music Distributers ) . I remember when the first walkman made an appearance and I was invited to meet the chairman of Sony at The Hilton Hotel in Park lane Mayfair.
Most dealers were a little bit sceptical about the first walkman but I saw it’s potential and brought as many as Sony would supply me on the first delivery. I used to record albums on a Nakamichi Dragon to play on my walkman and the recordings sounded fantastic.
I still have a lot of cassette decks and 3 portable machines including my original walkman and a walkman pro.
I must have about 12 cassette decks to this day and a stack of unopened Maxell UDXL 2 cassettes as I don’t really use that format anymore.
When portable CD payers came out they tended to skip so I still used cassette for portable music.
Now I use either use proratable CD player that does not skip or preferably I use an Olympus portable PCM recorder. I find the PCM recorder will hold 32 Gig or ripped CDs and it’s now my favourite portable music format.
I still buy vinyl and still have reel to reel but only because I have a Technics SP10 Mk 2 and a Technics RS1506 reel to reel but at home I mainly listen to SACDs but thats because I have MS and the other formats are a bit fiddly.
But in answer to your question I don't think cassettes all come back in the way vinyl has.
Thanks again for your perspective
Jeremy Travis formerly Teletape Marble Arch London
For the cassette format to really comeback, the manufacturers are going to have improve that quality of the cassettes being produced. The majority of them are normal bias and it would need to be high bias to provide quality sound. While there may be more used cassette decks in the market place then turntables, the cassette decks are more often then not being sold as not functional. So buyers are dealing with units that they have to repair or get repaired before using it. Tape also degrades faster then vinyl. In my opinion, cassettes do not have the same level of attractiveness that vinyl does. I doubt it will make a comeback that vinyl has.
A nice follow-up to the nostalgia podcast! In this age of streaming I often find the lack of random access a positive. When I get tired of choosing, I can just put on one of my tapes and let it roll. I could put on a playlist, but knowing that once there was a stranger sitting and curating the tape makes the tape experience more valuable to me. I don't buy new tapes though, they have to be "authentic".
Personally I think there will be definitely more varieties of blank tapes and even new releases of music on tape. It is much more likely than with any other format because Cassettes don't use any proprietary technology that uses expensive patents (like the MiniDisc) and everyone can build tapedecks or manufacture tapes and the best thing is, you can do it even at home. Massproduce cassettes at home, in your basement or bedroom or anywhere else, with a tape recorder, print your own labels and it's done. With Vinyl it is a hell lot more complicated. But Cassettes are really the only analog medium you can masscopy yourself without too much trouble.
The Casing varieties also make it very interesting as a medium of choice. Black, White, Neon Colours, Translucent, Transparent, with added sparkles, gold-, silver- (or any other color) chromed, Foldout artworks, multiple cassette case variations.... the Cassette really is very a physical medium and also very sturdy.
Even tech-companies like Tascam are releasing new tapedecks and i'm sure the quality of these newer one will get better too (maybe even as good as mid/late 80s tape-decks) and probably cheaper too.
It would be great if there would be a new production of Chrome Tapes again. Like TDK's SA-X series or the good old Chrome II tapes from BASF (the Pre-EMTEC productions thou).
Colin, there's something I have to note about mass-producing tapes. Some smaller set-ups may do it the way you describe, but there are still companies who produce tapes in a much easier way. Basically the magnetic tape itself is bought in bulk, in big spools. Big machines then feed the tape, at high speed, recording many many copies rather quickly. The tape itself is fed into empty cassettes which is then closed up. It's not a slow process, and depending on the machine, it can produce high quality copies at a much higher rate. The machines themselves aren't inexpensive, and they're usually older machines. But the companies who do have the machines happily take orders for mass production at a reasonable cost.
Great video. Glad I didn’t get rid of my high bias Maxell, TDK and Sony tapes
Great comprehensive content; I did the mix tape thing and loved the process of compiling, recording the playlists and then of course, listening to them. I'd honestly forgotten how all pervasive casette technology was in the mid to late-1990s.
It's interesting how things come and go in cycles - fashion and technology amongst them.
I enjoy your posts, always well researched and professionally presented. Thank you for providing many enjoyable and interesting TH-cam moments.
Best regards from Melbourne, Australia.
IKEA Bekväm Spice racks are the only thing that prevent me from literally snowing myself in with tapes.. I hang 'em from the sloped attic ceiling. 500 tapes in, not seeing any signs of slowing down.. I'm lost :D
edit1: I fully agree with the "tangible" argument. If you're a fan of any artist, it's great to have something you can hold in your hand, be it a tape, cd or a vinyl. The fact that you have something that is not going to succumb to the sand of time easily is enough to add value. tldr; A shrine. Ask me how I know.
edit2: I'd love to see high quality unrecorded tape having a comeback. People dig mixtapes, but they very seldomly actually make their own. Not sure why that is, but I do know there is definitely a market for Chrome and Type 4/High bias tapes again. Anythjing that's left on the market now is new old stock, or old repurposed tapes. We need a fresh source.
I'm 17 (only have nostalgia for CDs), and I've been buying a lot of new indie albums on CS. Sure, a lot of these albums are only on tape, but a lot of it's fashion. It looks and feels damn cool to pop these $5-$7 neon plastic rectangles into a tapedeck and have your favorite album play
I hope so!
Material objects will always have more sentimental value than files on a drive. I just can't commit to listening off my hard drive over buying a CD or a cassette.
I enjoyed not only watching this video, but others you have uploaded.
Interesting topic. I will relate why I got back into blank cassette taping. I am 58 years old, graduating high school in 1979. I joined the Air Force soon after. I loved the "silver" Yamaha stereo systems from the late 1970's and my vinyl records. The cassette gave me the ability to do a few things that I thought were "great" during the 1980's. I could of course now listen to my recorded / taped vinyl collection in my car and not just a radio. Also I could buy new vinyl and use it as a "master copy" of an album making a tape and play it as much as I wanted while the vinyl record stayed "pristine". Then there was the privacy of the "Walkman". We had transistor radios but it wasn't your own music like a cassette tape was. And lastly was the boombox which I adored and had so much fun with. I still love CDs too and thought they were a miracle of recording technology back then. *** But back to the "cassette". I got back into it for pure nostalgia a few years back, and recorded my new vinyl onto tape for pure fun and a hobby. Brings back very good memories of the times I recorded my music. I love all music technology from all time periods - and most of us no matter what your age might one day be nostalgic for the "music format of their youth". I am willing to bet that someday those that grew up in the CD era will one day want to return to the format "just for fun" and fond memories. Anyway . . I don't need to record my vinyl onto cassette tapes but love doing it :-)
I have 3 vintage cassette decks in great condition and use Type 1 and Type 2 cassette, new and new old stock. A cassette deck mechanism is a complicated and fascinating piece of technology that can be difficult to get running well because of alignment and the rubber belts. But once refurbished or tuned up should be good for a decade or more with routine cleaning. Enjoyed your video. Thanks :-)
What really limits the Cassette, is the lack of new good decks. Most people buying cassettes, listen them on vintage decks. It's great, it's even eco friendly, but it is not something for the masses.
In personally like cassette because it's a mobile analog format. I think it sounds really good in the right conditions. Alot of people that listened to cassette didn't really use great equipment aka cheap players and boom boxes. High quality players are a whole different story. Alot of times modern albums released on cassette and vinyl are less compressed than the CD and digital counter part due to the nature and limitations of the format. Even with the same digital master. There are videos showing the graphs on TH-cam if you wanna look into it yourself. That's a big perk for me.
As a fan of cassettes I couldn't be happier to see people giving some love to analogue in this form. Vinyl is great but there's just something about the compact cassette that draws me in every time I'm out at at a record store
I belive cassette players in cars predates boomboxes by several years. At least in Europe I believe it was getting quite common already by the first half of the seventies. I distinctly remember listening to the same James Last and Ray Conniff cassettes over and over again in our 1974 BMW (with a factory option radio/cassette deck), as a child.
Most important things about the cassettes are : they are cool, physical audio format and portable. In these years people usually listen mp3s in their cars, cd's in home then play with cassettes as nostalgically toys!. Recording on tapes with professional cassette decks is very enjoyable. Also cheap-low quality cassette players are very painful!!!.
I recently dusted-off my Aiwa “Walkman” (after watching Techmoan) and have been enjoying listening to mix-tapes I recorded 35 years ago, they still sound good! It’s pure nostalgia for me though, as you can’t buy Chrome or Metal blank cassettes new, and the secondhand ones are extortionately expensive. For that reason I’ll be sticking to streaming, high-res Flac files and the organic sound of vinyl.
interesting podcast. I really enjoyed your talk.
I've heard most of the points you've mentioned before, but it is still good to see/hear someone who's thinking about this too.
I was born in 64, which is the same year the compact cassette was released onto the market.
I remember getting into recording on cassette in the 70s right through the disco era and beyond.
Now as to your point regarding sound quality. Its easy to remember the uptick of sound quality timeline if you think of it like this.
the compact cassette released in 1964 it had a signal to noise ratio around 45-50dB
first noise reduction(Dolby B) for the home user came along in 1968 which is the end of the 60s and offered around 65dB of Signal to noise ratio.
the second noise reduction came along in 1979 which is the end of the 70s and offered around 75dB of signal to noise.
now the last level of noise reduction came along at.... you guessed it 1989 called Dolby S and that gave a noise reduction of 82dB.
To put this into perspective, records typically have 77dB of noise reduction whilst CDs which came along 5 years earlier than dolby S gave 92+ dB of noise reduction.
So actually the best a compact cassette can do is give a sound quality better than record but not quite that of digital.
Its interesting to note though that the cassette decks of the early 90s have various features that compliment the dolby S system and these decks cost.. oh around 100-200 USD.
when the dolby S system is used, the average listener simply cannot reliably tell the difference between the CD and the cassette music. new additions like HX PRO that extend the dynamic range in the higher frequencies makes it difficult to pick the difference between CDs/lossless and cassettes using dolby S.
HIstorically of course the update of CDs in the mid 80s and into the 90s meant that dolby S , while reasonably easy to find in home decks on ebay, is virtually impossible to locate in portable players and car players.
your point about random access can be somewhat countered by pioneer cassette decks that allow you to forward up to 15 songs with one button, but you'd still have to wait until the cassette stopped on that song.
I've got a pioneer deck that can random play songs by selecting from any of six cassettes and playing it until the next song break where it swaps out another cassette of random selection. It was a copy of the six stacker pioneer CD player.
Its a lost oppourtunity that the dolby system development and improvement took so long to develop for today you can sit in armchair comfort while you dolby S cassette deck plays a cassette that's controlled via your handheld remote control and you simply would not know the difference to a CD of the same song. These aren't expensive either. the six cassette deck from pioneer costs 180AUD while the dolby S remote control units cost about the same. Considering that this is in today's dollars, that's mighty cheap.
you are right about the cost to cut new vinyl versus tape and that's a fact which will have more and more new talent keen to use the media. Unlike usb stick or streaming, its got a life of its own when being played. a usb stick does nothing !! it just sits there delivering digital content.
another fact worth considering is that with a cassettee and a record, you own the music. you aren't payijng a company for the right to play it until you pass away.
Also the rise in sales of cassettes as a percentage of their previous sales in USA was a whopping 94% versus the rise in streaming against its last year sales was 96%. Now given that the change in sales is a better indicator of future sales than the absolute sales, I'd say that cassettes are on the way up in a big way. vinyl's rise in sales is actually way lower, meaning that the thrust for vinyl has lost its original appeal.
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This is really good stuff, I know some musicians who insist on physical media, partly so they can sell them at gigs and when busking on the street andpartly because they can add a personal touch to them. These are practical considerations not just nostaligia.
I really don't understand this. Maybe it's because I'm a gen-xer, but the idea of going back to cassette's is anathema to me. When I was young I used vinyl. While I recall enjoying the sound I also recall it being easy to scratch the records. Then around the age of 8 or 9 my family transitioned to cassette's. As a teen I owned 100's of cassette's. The positives were obvious. It was portable and easy to use but the sound was sort of...meh. And the tapes breaking? Oh, I had that happen in walkmen's, boom boxes, stereos, the car, etc. I HATED tapes breaking. I heard my first CD around 1988 or so and I was in love from the start. The sound was SO much better than tapes. And I could look at my reflection on the back! What beats that? :-) Granted, They were bigger than cassette's and could scratch, but those were the only real negatives as far as I was concerned.
It's interesting when I worked in radio in the mid 90's we would use cassette's to record live shows just for the archive's. A station I was at in the early 2000's used reel to reel to play repeat/recorded talk shows. But, that was AM radio. you could get away with that on AM talk. I actually had one reel with Clark Howard breaking while live on the air! Yes, those tapes could break too. Once we moved everything to digital, the sound difference over tape was huge for me in the studio (you wouldn't notice it over the air). As the station started streaming over the internet then it actually mattered more though.
So, anyway, I'm NOT a fan of tape in any form. Digital rules the nest as far as I'm concerned. In fact, having given up on CD's in the early 2000's I've recently been feeling nostalgic for CD's, as strange as that may sound. But never for cassette's.
Vern Levine We don’t have digital ears. CDs are not a real encounter with music, rather they are unnaturally jacked up bits of organized sound.
Cassettes are coming back in my area.Alot of people who were buying 180 vinyl are now buying cassettes.It s way cheaper and alot of local bands find it cheaper to get there music out to the people.Music is all about choice.I say like what you like.I stick with the old 80s vinyl and my cassettes.My cassette collection is awesome.I will Never sell any of my cassettes.Never!!! Cassettes make me happy and i love the fact i can take my cassettes with me wherever i go.I still have my panasonic walkman and my cassettes still play great.☺
I would say the best years for cassette deck's was from like 1978 to 1995
Great coverage of this subject! I work at a record shop that's catching the vinyl resurgence wave and doing alright. I'm trying to get tapes going there as a way to, as you mentioned, get more diversity in the shop with Indy labels I'm finding on Bandcamp. We're also experimenting with releasing small runs of tapes that have recordings of concerts being done by local bands in the shop. the idea is that customers can discover local bands and the bands themselves can sell the tapes when they go out an play shows. We'll see how it goes, but one thing I think you didn't mention is that bands can use tapes as merch to good effect. It's hard to get excited about download cards or even CDs, and tapes have that physical feeling with artwork that can connect fans to the band with the novelty and cost of cassettes. Even for people without decks, by including download cards in the tapes, they can buy tapes just as a way of supporting the musicians. Better than nothing or that vague "We're on Spotify, iTunes and Amazon if you wanna check us out..ok our next song is.." that I hear people doing on stage alot. Again, really enjoyed hearing your thoughts, very thorough and fun))
I hope so!! I hold the same nostalgia towards cassettes as the past generations hold towards vinyl. it was the first format in which I bought some of my favorite albums like Nirvana Nevermind, AC/DC High Voltage, Michael Jackson BAD! BTW, "Random Access" on CDs is what killed the album in my opinion, people just skipped to the main hit or single on the album then turn it off... artists became lazy and started adding filler tracks, knowing that people would just skip them... as opposed to before where bands like Pink Floyd used the album to tell a story where you had to listen from start to finish.
Also, tape decks take a lot of luck to find a vintage one that still works well. They're not cheap, and can need a lot of maintenance. Pinch rollers can deteriorate (often the cause of a tape getting eaten), almost all of them have belts that can be completely disintegrated by now, heads can get scratched or may need demagnatized and realigned, doors and eject machanisms can fail... They're complicated machines and especially later on, had a ton of tiny moving plastic parts. Unfortunately new models, as far as I know, can't have some features that made tapes so good in the 90s. Dolby noise reduction isn't licensed out anymore, and the companies that made high end tape heads just aren't gonna start cranking out new ones.
On the other hand, phonographs / record players have relatively few moving parts. They may need a belt and a new stylus, and in some cases a new motor, but there is much less to repair and they are easier to get into.
I think pop culture has an impact too. Tape sales rocketed after Guardians of the Galaxy came out, then theres 13 Reasons Why and Stranger Things etc etc. Plus theres a whole new generation of lovestruck teenagers discovering the joy of making your latest crush a mixtape
I make mixcd but remember the fun of making mixtapes! The creative process was different! Thumbs up
I have sampler cassettes (and CDs) that I give out to promote my channel. The CDs are pretty easy, but the cassettes have to be produced in real time, but I still like doing it.
I’m actually using cassettes right now that my grandpa let me pick out.🙂
Guardians of the Galaxy Is Helping Revitalize Cassette Tapes...
The folks who led the charge back into LPs were audiophiles, because the sound that they contained could easily (if they were created well, not a given) give you an amazing experience, especially for tracks that were never reissued to CD. I see cassettes as a novelty format, good for a bit of fun, but saddled by all the issues that you cited. I wish all the retro collectors and hobbyists all the fun in the world, because it is all good fun, but I don't see how the resurgence can last. I considered getting back into tape myself, but I decided that I'm not up to yet-another hobby. I would just play with it and get bored because I already played with this stuff back in the 80's and 90's.
I recently bought a Carver TDR 2400 (1992). The brand was around for 10 years then vanished. I was instantly surprised by the quality of the deck compared to my old Sony from 2004. It has Pro HX, Dolby B and C. The difference between a recent deck vs a Golden age Deck is so big I would have never guessed. My parents don't support my fascination for old music and video format but as long as I'm enjoying it then everything is well.
I'll be happy to be taught here. I admit I don't know the recording method for vinyls but I don't think it's true that cassettes are more expensive and time consuming to record than vinyl. Cassettes can record at higher speeds given you have proper quality equipment (and tape) and you can also record more music on a "bigger" cassette. Also you can fit some 4 cassette recording decks in the same space of a single one vinyl recorder, I assume. Both do have the same problem though: how many songs on that tape/vinyl do you actually like? Mix tape to the rescue.
As a 45 year old I’ve picked up some quality tape players (tape deck/boom box and Walkman) plus about 20 of my favourite albums - these are purely nostalgic which I’m holding on to. However I would not choose to hear new music on tape. However I buy both old and new music on records which is my favourite audio playback option. I’m no audiophile but the experience of using records is second to none.
Tascam still makes pro audio tape decks, and they seem to be pretty good quality. I bought one that plays and records cassettes, cd, and mp3s all in one unit
Didn't buy many tape albums however mix tapes for sure. I think the portability of tapes is what did back in the day at lest for me. The Walkman and boombox helped a lot with that. Spent most of my time recording radios shows and even got into a bit of cut and splicing for tapes. Mixtapes did a lot for a number of music genre's especially Hip-hop, House, Techno etc. When CD came out it, it just seemed more cumbersome to make a mix on the fly. Funny enough that's when I stared to buy actual albums because of quality then oddly enough rip them and make a mix CD for use with a Discman. When Mp3 players came out that was probably the end of all that for me. The apple ipod just was just a dream, to be able to carry all that music with you on one, at lest to eyes of the day, compact device was just crazy. I know Mixtapes are still being used but can't fathom other than for nostalgia why tapes would make a comeback. I would think the minidisc would be a better choice, still surprised it never caught on in the US, or maybe DAT tapes.
Back in the 80's, and 90's I had a mix of prerecorded taps, and blank/mix tapes, but honestly once I moved to CD in the mid 90's after getting my first portable CD player being a KOSS unit, I've not looked back, and don't think I will. I have picked up a few CD's here, and there recently that have caught my eye while out thrifting to RIP as 320Kbps Mp3 files for my phone, but the vast majority of my music these days is my digital collection, or via streaming as it's just easier, and places like SoundCloud, and Google Play Music have a lot of it for free, and with an unlimited data cap on my cell plan it's a no brainer for me.
Thanks sir to make honor to a mental ability which many people seems to be missing: common sense.
Your first portable CD player was a KOSS? I'm sorry.
BK-201 The Spliffsta it was a very kind gift from my grandmother, and with 10sec antiskip it worked just fine for years plugged into the stereo RCA ports on my Panasonic boombox. So please take your snarky attitude someplace else.
Those KOSS headphones were complete crap. I'm not being snarky, I'm being realistic. I've had to use those KOSS brand headphones that came with those CD players before...horrible.
BK-201 The Spliffsta My apologies then, but if you think the cans that came with some of the KOSS CD players where bad, then you never had to suffer with cans, and buds from the Dollar Tree as a kid as with some of them I think a rat farting could make a better sound, and they would fall apart if you looked at them wrong, but eventually my mother wised up, and got tired of buying cheap cans everytime we went shopping, and got me a pair of KOSS over the ears cans(can't remember the model # off the top of my head) that had an 8.5 foot long cord for use with my CD player/computer setup that I used for several years, and the sound was actually really good.
However saying that, KOSS is one of those brands where it's either just awesome well beyond its price range like the Portapros, or just utter trash that need to be burned in hell fire.
These days I'm a big fan of Philips cans for my home computer, and ROKU private listening use with their open back SHP9500S, and SHP2600/27 closed back over ear cans, but for something cheap and cheerful to throw in my backpack for work, the gym at my work, going camping, giving to the kids, etc.. JLAB has really impressed me with a lot of there cans like the Rewind, The JBuds Pro(both wired, and Bluetooth), and the NEON on ear cans.
IMO this:
#1 lofi movement
#2 Millennials obsession with anything 80’s or 90’s
#3 nostalgia
#4 hipster trend
#5 Guardians of the Galaxy
#5 Was cheap but getting expensive
My reason: I love music and collecting it, I do not trust a computer chip to store and take care of my collection, I want to see it, hold it, smell it, hell, even lick it if I feel like. I bought vinyl when it was in a ditch, very cheap but now people are asking ridiculous prices...recent trends. Switched to cassettes because blanks were cheap or free in some instances, and I recorded high quality music and amassed a huge collection...recent trends again raised the prices. Now I’m buying CD’s because...again, people are giving them away, right now anyways but guarantee in the next few years prices will go up for this format too.
I honestly think people are starting to feel empty by just having their music collection on a drive or in cloud storage heaven, there’s nothing to show to anyone, friends and family can’t see what you collect. It’s human to collect things that are tangible and it’s this fact that drives us back to physical formats of music. The bonus of having the tangible artifacts that we collect, is the process by which we obtain these things, the stories of how we found it, the people we meet along the way, the hours of digging and finding a treasure for pennies, the reward of getting it home and loading it into or on your devise for playback. This is a visceral experience and it’s human. Collection of Digital music is mundane and lifeless just like the machines that store it for us. That.....is why you are seeing a surge in analog. It brings us back to humanity!
In the last three months I have purchased 2 new releases on vinyl: Mike Oldfield's Return to Ommadawn and U2's Songs Songs of Experience. I also purchased a new release in cassette: Stranger Things Vol 1. The sound track of the series. I think new releases will keep coming, this is not a fad. People really appreciate analog sound.
Just revived my Technics Double Stereo Cassette Deck RS-TR474 and found a cassette inside with a pretty bad record of a radio station trance music remix from 1998 I made on unfortunately another very low quality cassette deck. The tape plays back just fine except there are a few places where the sound gets pretty bad with no heights or just one channel playing and so one. But I always like the smoother playback of a cassette recording rather than the harsh cd recording. I have never been into vinyl but I guess I would like it even more. I just ordered the soundtrack of Guardians of the galaxy on stereo cassette because I don’t own many cassettes anymore unfortunately :) Very nice video :) Thank you!
Any cassette player can play any tape formulation but you need a deck to record on the different formulations
I after 39 years are back into cassettes...as I am back into electronic restoring tube and transistor radios...I have a JVC TD W354(made in the mid 90's) and enjoy using it....and it has music search where while listening to a song you can push a button and it skip to the next song, and if you know the song you want to listen to is the third song down...you just hit that same button 3 times and it will skip to that 3rd song a play it...I have around 100 blank tapes of various brands, sony, TDK, Maxell, Pioneer, JKC,BASF, and if Im not mistaken they can be recorded over at least 100 times....I can ride around my neighborhood and usually find hundreds of prerecorded music tapes being thrown away on the side the road...So my point is, it is both a new device to listen to...and like the radios repair also...like I use to...and it brings back those times, which I miss so much....thanks for your video...
BTW, I went to "Fingerprints" record store in Long Beach LA. They pack surprise cassette packages for like $2. I loved that. That's genuine fun. I feel cassettes are "music books". Libraries were doing something similar so you could buy blind. Discover books you wouldn't buy judging by its cover. Same thing. You rip the wrap and start discovering for such little money.. Then you get to keep it for effing ever. Nothing like cassette for that purpose. Vinyl is posh. It's for that muysi you have to love to pay as much as it costs. I still do, but not for discovering anything. I buy when I love the record. Cassettes and records are not comparable as experiences.
Thanks Col' for another good retrospective review of micro cassette. But i do remember i did love my cassettes back in the 80's and 90's.... but the elephant in the room, was I wanted a Minidisc or DAT as i could record my CD's perfectly or from the Radio, but just couldn't afford them back then, i had to wait another 10 years before i got my first MD.... it was too late, as MP3's were around in 96/97....
I'm totally with you on this! But i was so stupid as to get on the MD-bandwagon in 1997; just (as you state) when MP3 came around... :P
But MD was great imo! It combined all the good from cassette with all the good from CD :)
I had the portable Sony MZ-R30; 600 Dutch Guilders at the time (+/-250USD?); well, that was a 'waste' of hard earned money even though i loved the thing! :P Used it for some 4 years still, until it got stolen >:( :'(
Although MP3 at that time wasn't great either with the original Fraunhofer-codec which was limited to 128kbps if you didn't want to pay for a license. Or one could use that awful Xing-encoder, which was even worse. LAME wasn't around yet or not easily used...
I still got one (chromium) cassette with music from FGTH (mid 80's), which was/is not available on other media. I'll never throw that away; just for nostalgia's sake. Got to digitise it soon i guess before the tape starts to degrade away completely :o
Wow; this has become a genuine rant :P
In the 1960,s they had people called audio typists using cassettes before they started to get used for music.
Back in 80’s we bought the record and made quality copies, often multiples for friends. Prerecorded tapes were always marginal quality. With quality gear you can capture a really good copy, even today. quality blank tape material is probably more important than new decks, there are many old ones still kicking around. CDs are more likely to have a decent resurgence in my opinion.