Resurgence of Cassettes

Thought about geting a nice vintage playback deck, but then I remembered the contant hiss no matter how I adjusted the gain. I ended up donating all of my cassettes to the SallyAnn many years ago.
 
I still have my Dragon and even play it on rare occasion.
A recent visitor marveled that I still had "that outdated technology." Not everything from the past is available on CD.
 
I wore out a couple of Tascams back in the day. They were great cassette decks. But they are cassette decks. Their time has passed. The guy opening that thread on Audio Asylum, who says his used Nak is better than any of his digital sources must have some really bad digital sources.

Tim
 
HI All,
Well, I still have and use several Nakamichi cassette machines including a Dragon and a ZX-7A. I think I can prove that these machines, when used with Dolby C and Metal tape, are capable of first rate sound. So good, in fact, that you would not be able to tell the difference between the recording and the original. In my book, that's good enough.

Unfortunately, metal tape is getting hard to find. I feel lucky to have stocked up before the supply dried up.

Sparky
 
HI

I hate to be a bubble-buster ..Cassette were ok for their time, they never came close to R2R. We had a Nakamichi 1000, then a Dragon and went through the long list of European competitors, Tandberg, Uher, Philips even Revox.. none would touch a copy made from the venerable Revox A77 ... Nostalgia that's all that it is ...
 
I have used several cassette decks in my early audio life, mainly to tape my LPs and listen to them in my car. Hiss is the number 1 problem for me and I even bought a deck with DBX encoding/decoding but it didn't satisfy me in the long run. When car stereo went CD, I stopped paying attention to my cassette tapes and decks.
 
HI

I hate to be a bubble-buster ..Cassette were ok for their time, they never came close to R2R. We had a Nakamichi 1000, then a Dragon and went through the long list of European competitors, Tandberg, Uher, Philips even Revox.. none would touch a copy made from the venerable Revox A77 ... Nostalgia that's all that it is ...

No matter, Frantz. It's analog. Regardless of its obvious limitations, someone will always declare it superior. I've seen web discussions run into many pages, with many audiophiles, most of whom probably hadn't heard a cassette in a couple of decades, loudly exclaiming that their old Tanberg/Teac/Nakamichi was better than any digital every created. One guy even swore he could copy a CD onto cassette and the copy was better.

Time to read the signature line...

Tim
 
As I went to the movies yesterday to see Midnight in Paris, directed by Woody Allen, I consider myself prepared to participate in the thread. :)

The main theme of the film is nostalgia and the people who will always believe that life was much more enjoyable in a previous epoque. Some audiophiles suffer from this symptom and can go in extreme positions defending their views and can be very easily pinpointed and criticized.

But sometimes life is not so easy for logic people. I own a Nakamichi CR7A, that some people consider one the best sounding cassette players ever manufactured, and many years ago recorded the Harry James Sheffield direct cut LP in a metal tape using a state of the art turntable, cartridge and preamplifier. Even using today top digital players this copy has a freshness and aliveness that no CD version of the same work can show, and any one who listened to both preferred the tape. :eek:

BTW, if we had audio forums at the time of the Aiwa's, Sony's, Tandberg's, Nakamichi's and several others famous cassettte decks we would have discussed their sound quality and measurements, and I would be in the camp of those who provocatively considered that the world of cassette decks was divided in two : the Nakamichi's and all the other cassette decks ...
 
Yeah, they were convenient for on the go sound, but audibly inferior to the open reel deck. I thought that 8 track actually sounded better than cassette, although I think the 8-track tape was not even twice as wide as cassette. They served their purpose and they had their time and place but honestly if someone prefers cassettes to me it is a compressed and dark sound IMO.

Tom

8 track tapes sounded better than cassettes? Are you kidding me? The heads never stayed aligned very long on 8 track tapes and you constantly had to adjust them to keep one track from bleeding into the one you were listening to. They always seemed to change tracks in the middle of a song and they were noisy. Any Nakamichi cassette deck blew away the sound of any 8 track tape. The sound quality of the upper end of Nakamichi decks was damn good and far better than it had a right to be since it was carrying sound on both sides of the tape, the tape is 1/8” wide, and the speed is 1 7/8 ips.
 
HI

I hate to be a bubble-buster ..Cassette were ok for their time, they never came close to R2R. We had a Nakamichi 1000, then a Dragon and went through the long list of European competitors, Tandberg, Uher, Philips even Revox.. none would touch a copy made from the venerable Revox A77 ... Nostalgia that's all that it is ...

Frantz-I disagree a little bit. I too owned an A77. Unless you have an outboard dolby device and dolby encoded tapes, the A77 playing 7 1/2 ips tapes is going to be way noiser than a Nakamichi playing back a Dolby C encoded tape. Wishing it wasn't true won't make it so.
 
I would be in the camp of those who provocatively considered that the world of cassette decks was divided in two : the Nakamichi's and all the other cassette decks ...

I knew quite a few guys who were in that camp then, and the Nakamichis were fine decks. But during that time, I owned a couple of pro decks that ran at double speed. And that was a perspective from which the insurmountable limitations of the medium, even as executed in the great Nakamichis, became obvious. Regardless of noise reduction schemes, drive systems, head alloys, etc., the increase in tape speed created an improvement the consumer deck could not really even reach for. Would even faster have been even better? Probably, but the format became impractical at that point.

Its obsolescence was inevitable.

Tim
 
I knew quite a few guys who were in that camp then, and the Nakamichis were fine decks. But during that time, I owned a couple of pro decks that ran at double speed. And that was a perspective from which the insurmountable limitations of the medium, even as executed in the great Nakamichis, became obvious. Regardless of noise reduction schemes, drive systems, head alloys, etc., the increase in tape speed created an improvement the consumer deck could not really even reach for. Would even faster have been even better? Probably, but the format became impractical at that point.

Its obsolescence was inevitable.

Tim

Very true - I also owned a great Teac X2000 at that time and now a Studer A80, so I can appreciate the difference. But how many hours of reel tape music did people own in average? A few people I knew had nice Revox's and even Tandberg's but I suspect none of them had more twenty reel tapes. The cassette was a convenient consumer format and should be considered at that. BTW some super tape cassette formulations had fantastic FR - another problem was the dynamics limitation caused by the reduced tape width.

BTW, I still have nor recorded the direct cut Sheffield Harry James with the Studer A80 to compare with the CD ... But I will do it some day! :)
 
What tests were those Tom? Please tell us what cassette deck you used, what test gear you used, and how you measured. And tell me, did you measure a cassette deck against an 8 track deck that you claim is superior?
 
I lost count of the cassettes I made on my Mom's (she was the audiophile not my Dad) Revox B710 as a kid and teen. Later I was using TDK MAR-60s to get the most out of it.

I'm glad cassette died. It was never up to snuff. I got better sound for parties recording music onto VHS audio tracks and playing back from there. I could also get two hours non-stop.
 
I lost count of the cassettes I made on my Mom's (she was the audiophile not my Dad) Revox B710 as a kid and teen. Later I was using TDK MAR-60s to get the most out of it.

I'm glad cassette died. It was never up to snuff. I got better sound for parties recording music onto VHS audio tracks and playing back from there. I could also get two hours non-stop.

+1. That's exactly what I used to do.
 
I lost count of the cassettes I made on my Mom's (she was the audiophile not my Dad) Revox B710 as a kid and teen. Later I was using TDK MAR-60s to get the most out of it.

I'm glad cassette died. It was never up to snuff. I got better sound for parties recording music onto VHS audio tracks and playing back from there. I could also get two hours non-stop.

If your mom would have bought a Nakamichi instead of the Revox, your post wouldn't have been written.:)
 
Perhaps, perhaps not :)
 
What Nakamichi did with cassette decks is akin to making a pig fly. There is simply no way that the cassette should sound as good as it does when recorded on a top-notch Nakamichi deck using a metal tape and Dolby C given the inherent limitations of the medium.

For a period of time, cassettes were the highest fidelity medium you could have in your car stereo system. That day has come and gone. Cassette decks have disappeared from new cars and soon CD players will disappear from cars as well. Who needs a CD player when your vehicle comes with USB ports and an SD card reader?
 

About us

  • What’s Best Forum is THE forum for high end audio, product reviews, advice and sharing experiences on the best of everything else. This is THE place where audiophiles and audio companies discuss vintage, contemporary and new audio products, music servers, music streamers, computer audio, digital-to-analog converters, turntables, phono stages, cartridges, reel-to-reel tape machines, speakers, headphones and tube and solid-state amplification. Founded in 2010 What’s Best Forum invites intelligent and courteous people of all interests and backgrounds to describe and discuss the best of everything. From beginners to life-long hobbyists to industry professionals, we enjoy learning about new things and meeting new people, and participating in spirited debates.

Quick Navigation

User Menu