Cassette Tapes. The Future Of Music?

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Anybody ever remember sitting next to the stereo all night, waiting for your favorite songs to play on the radio and rushing to press the record button on cassette? Then hoping the DJ doesn't cut the song short or, even worse, start talking over it???

If you took the time to make a mixtape, that person was very important.

The great thing about a Walkman is that no one can call you and interrupt while you're listening to your tape. There are no notifications from apps, no ads, no distraction.

When u say "Those trying to make a living, not a fortune." It reminds me of a Guitar Shop I frequented 5-10 years ago with cheap fixes. He said, "Man, I'm just trying to make a living, not a killing."

The best thing about physical albums and CDs is reading the sleeve notes when listening to the whole album for the first time.

When my father died, my sister was ‘executor’ and decided what was kept, and what was thrown away. While at her house I noticed the skip out front full of his old ‘junk’. I looked through some of it…. And in a plastic bag I found his old tape Walkman.

Inside that Walkman was a mix-tape I had made him over 20 years before. One sisters ‘trash’ truly is another ‘brothers’ treasure.

I still have tapes from 40 yrs ago that I still listen to them to this day!

Thank goodness there are YouTubers who can put together a brief and well argued case.

One of my favorite memories is spending hours at Tower Records thumbing through their records and CDs looking to find a jewel to buy. You can’t get that experience with streaming music.

Nothing can compare with the thrill I got as a kid, saving up pocket money, taking the bus into town, buying an album by a band I loved and not knowing what it would sound like, reading the lyrics and studying the gatefold artwork and inserts on the bus ride home.... and then putting the fresh vinyl on the player!

Great episode, Mary! Here's my viewpoint: the Norelco cassette was invented for mono dictation, not stereo music. But with a medium such as the cassette, some people considered it might be possible to to go beyond that purpose. In 1973, the Advent Model 201 was one of the first hi-fi cassette decks on the market. I bought one for my first project home studio and, along with the available high-quality 2-input mic pre module, was able to make some clean live-to-2-track recordings. Cassette tapes had improved enormously by then with Maxell and TDK leading the way (normal and hi-bias tape formulations) and, of course, Dolby-B noise reduction built in to the deck. The cassette was also a major improvement over 8-Track cartridges used for aftermarket car stereos. After starting my own recording studio in LA in 1977 (still in operation today with me as producer/engineer), cassettes were the main form of reference mixes and copies from master tapes. At one point, I could make 8 cassette copies at a time, all very high quality. I also did the graphic design and typesetting for the J-card inserts and on-cassette labels. And listening to cassette mixes in my car was the final test of "how does it sound on___?" I'm glad I still have a car that has a cassette player and a 6-CD changer from the factory (2002 Gen 1 Toyota Prius). And in my studio, our master cassette deck (Aiwa F990) still works so we can transfer cassettes to other formats for clients. Oh, and I've got plenty of reel-to-reel multitrack decks, but we also have digital multitrack decks and digital audio workstations with Cubase, Samplitude, etc. Thanks for posting this curious title. Got me to watch the whole thing and I'm glad I did!

I remember one of my first cassettes was an MC Hammer album. First CD was Vanilla Ice. What a cool time to be alive in the 80's.

Going on school trips and swapping tapes on the bus is how we discovered new music. Loved it.

Having lived through all the mediums, I would rather go back to burning CDs than making cassette tapes, but I like your take on this.

With the proper player, these things actually sound quite amazing!

When CD's first started coming out I was hoping they would release a new version of the cassette with two little cd's spinning inside them, even having to flip it over to change sides, that would have been cool 🤩

I still purchase CD’s, it is an investment into the band, helping the artists monetarily and spiritually. Music can disappear in the cloud, but my cd is always ready to provide a positive high fidelity musical experience

What most people don't know is that Cassettes can sound close to digital if you use good equipment and they can stay with there quality very long. The problem is, that most people only know cheap recorders like shown in the video which have permanent magnets as erase head which are only mechanical come in touch with the tape by pressing the record button. if you only play the cassettes they are still close to the tape, not in touch but close and it erases the tape a bit with every play. at first you won't notice it but the more often you play it, it will sound more muffled. If you have good equipment with a DC Erase head which is only active if you record on it, the tape can played thousand times and won't get noticeable worse, if the cassette and also the recorder don't have any mechanical issue.

The high quality devices died out with the end of the 90s and now you only get crap. not only the devices, also the cassettes. The real good Cassettes were made between the late 70s and early 00s, also the labels had high quality equipment and used high quality tapes for copies. A pre recorded tape from the 80s or 90s can sound very close to the original and it gets even better, if you have a good tapedeck and make your own recordings. The technical specs of the cassette are much better, than vinyl. without Noise reduction and a good cassette you can get a dynamic range around 62-64 dB, with Dolby B you get over 70 and with Dolby C even 80 and more. If your tape deck is calibrated to the sort of tape you use you won't notice any artifacts from Dolby. if you then have a Wow and Flutter under 0.1% WRMS which was normal even on simpler mechanisms in the 80s and 90s it almost sounds perfect. Tape Hiss only is noticeable if you listen to headphones. There were also High End Walkmans which can be shaked without sounding silly, so you can run with them and the tape still sounds good. Also they can reach a frequency response from 20 Hz to 20 kHz flat and have a good channel separation, so it's enough to have a good listening experience. Of course digital is still better.

Also in ghetto blasters and car stereos have been real hifi tape decks. I Wouldn't listen to a cassette if it has a bad quality. Most cassettes nowadays have because the people who record them don't know how to do it right or don't have the equipment. They think it can not sound better because they only know their cheap plastic recorders with the tiny speakers.

And yeah, tape jam is no big thing. Good mechanisms and cassettes never do that, if they are not broken or something is wrong with them. I never would use cassette players or recorders like shown on the video. It's not possible to make them sound good.

I have many cassettes which are older than 50 yrs, the oldest I got are from around 1968. At that time they didn't have HiFi Quality but they still sound as they used to, when they were new and work without issues. There are also tapes which loose their mechanical or magnetic specs and don't work anymore, sometimes they are not even 30 yrs old but especially the Japanese manufacturers are very durable. You can still use a 40 yrs old Maxell XL II or TDK SA and it will still reach its original specs and sound great no matter if you recorded it 40 yrs ago or made a new recording, if it's in good shape.

I recently bought a Tascam dual tape deck to digitize boxes of old cassettes. I had everything from albums, to garage band rehearsals, to audio letters my friends and I used to send back and forth. It has been enjoyable to revisit the medium and I welcome its resurgence, even if it only takes up a tiny slice of the pie.