Cassettes? Is that a thing again?

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GoogaMooga
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Re: Cassettes? Is that a thing again?

Postby GoogaMooga » 15 Jan 2019, 12:03

For mixtapes, I never sourced from cassette, though. Can't imagine that would sound good at all.
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Re: Cassettes? Is that a thing again?

Postby never/ever » 18 Jan 2019, 06:34

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Re: Cassettes? Is that a thing again?

Postby Neige » 18 Jan 2019, 12:07

bobzilla77 wrote:
It's ultra niche hipster indie collector mentality at its purest.


Now that really made me laugh out loud :lol:

The thread reminds me that the only time I ever totally relied on tapes was as a student in Dublin (during the "Big Snow" winter of 1981/82).

Fond memories include
- buying two cassettes with Bruce Springsteen's 1978 Piece de Resistance bootleg in some backstreet shop and playing them to death.
- often being fed up with the unwieldy and impractical side of the tapes and listening to an FM station which had a playlist of about 50 songs at best (I remember Ride Like the Wind, Young Turks and Alien).
- the customs officer opening every single box when I returned to Switzerland.

Naw, I always hated the fuckers.
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Re: Cassettes? Is that a thing again?

Postby Ghost of Harry Smith » 18 Jan 2019, 22:54

trans-chigley express wrote:
Ghost of Harry Smith wrote: My theory is these kids grew up seeing so many DVDs, CD-Rs and CDs getting scratched, useless and then binned, that they unconsciously resent their disposability as a waste of resources, time, etc. So they like tapes because a scratched bootleg copy of Monsters Inc or The Incredibles wouldn’t play when they were 7 or 8!


but CDs are far more durable than tapes...


Not necessarily. Tapes and videotapes are arguably more durable in the hands of young people. Young me couldn’t damage my videotape of The Banana Splits the way that messy little hands could damage the surface of DVDs and CDs.

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Re: Cassettes? Is that a thing again?

Postby Ghost of Harry Smith » 18 Jan 2019, 23:01

bobzilla77 wrote:
GoogaMooga wrote:How about upstart bands who can't afford to press vinyl or CD? Cassettes are a viable option if they want to share their music.


Not anymore. That was a valid reason to do cassette releases in the 1980s and 90s. Today almost no one in your target audience is likely to have a working cassette player.


Similarly very few would now own a CD player. So why is that still a default better option for physical copies?
I don’t buy tapes but I’m glad ‘der kids’ are still interested in physical copies, and vinyl is just too expensive. I’ll probably say the same thing when CDs have a niche comeback in 15 years.

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Re: Cassettes? Is that a thing again?

Postby Brickyard Jack » 20 Jan 2019, 20:25

The biggest problem with cassettes was that it was a massive pain to access tracks. Vinyl was fine because you could drop the needle in the right place, and with cds it wss easy. With cassettes it was a bind.

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Re: Cassettes? Is that a thing again?

Postby Deebank » 21 Jan 2019, 09:49

Positive Passion wrote:The biggest problem with cassettes was that it was a massive pain to access tracks. Vinyl was fine because you could drop the needle in the right place, and with cds it wss easy. With cassettes it was a bind.


On my old Aiwa 'boom box' you'd hit play and fast forward at the same time and it would skip to the next track.
I got adept at doing this (in fact managing all tape transport operations) using my feet while lying in bed. The downside of this dexterity was that I have a few compilation tapes with interludes of ambient noise from where I hit (the 'one-button') record by mistake :x

It may have been a shit format, but you really don't know any better so it's not an issue.

This is my 'ghetto baster' (as I never called it). Mine was easily identified, it had the News Order Technique sticker on it.

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It had a handle that clipped in the top - I suspect they broke easily - mine did - and this one seems to have lost its means of carrying too.
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Re: Cassettes? Is that a thing again?

Postby GoogaMooga » 21 Jan 2019, 11:02

I picked up six cassetttes in a junk shop. Accord will pay as much as they do for CDs, if the names are good enough. The max I'll pay is 20p though, and hopefully get 50p - £1 in trade. Otherwise it's hardly worth the bother.
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Re: Cassettes? Is that a thing again?

Postby JQW » 22 Jan 2019, 20:02

Cassette players are still being manufactured, but there's only one Chinese factory producing mechanisms,and these aren't that well made. Hence if you purchase an expensive Sony device it'll have exactly the same internal mechanism as a cheap boombox from Aldi. Furthermore Dolby Labs are no longer licensing out their noise reduction technology to integrated circuit manufacturers, hence there's no Dolby B encoder/decoder chips available to put into new machines.

The only tape stock available these days is Type I (Ferric oxide) with its notoriously bad high frequency response. Type II (Chromium Dioxide) or Type IV (Metal) isn't being produced, hence you're left to scrabble for new old stock. (Type III died out 40 years ago - good luck finding any of that!)

20-odd years ago pre-recorded tapes sounded fairly decent, partially due to being recorded on Type II tape stock,but also due to the use of digital duplication systems such as EMI's XDR. Technology like that won't be used for the short production runs of today. Then there's bias, EQ and record level that all need tweaking to match the precise tape brand being used. (Bias is an high frequency added to the record signal, EQ is to compensate for the non-linear frequency response of tape, and record level is obvious).

So, new tapes will be made on Type I 'low-noise' (ha!) tape with no noise reduction, duplicated by hand by some wassock with a silly beard who has no idea about EQ, tape bias or recording levels. They're going to sound shite, aren't they?
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Re: Cassettes? Is that a thing again?

Postby bobzilla77 » 22 Jan 2019, 20:17

^^ Yep, and they'll sound even worse when inevitably digitized.
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Re: Cassettes? Is that a thing again?

Postby Georgios » 22 Jan 2019, 20:54

Around a decade ago you had large multi packs of Maxell XLII's and TDK-SA's popping up in the pound shops. The smart ones bought them all for pennies, horded them and are now making a tidy profit on eBay.

The high end tape decks from the formats golden age are lovely pieces of machinery actually. I've got a JVC KD-V6 kicking around somewhere which still works but I can't see myself ever using it again.

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Re: Cassettes? Is that a thing again?

Postby Lord Rother » 22 Jan 2019, 21:08

I suppose if people are daft enough to start buying vinyl again then cassettes were bound to be next.

Nuts.

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Re: Cassettes? Is that a thing again?

Postby Georgios » 22 Jan 2019, 21:19

Beyond old recordings of radio shows and mixtapes from the pirate stations (in other words stuff that doesn't exist on anything else) I can't see a reason why anybody should care. Also heard reports of bearded hipster types carrying Fisher Price players around in public. The fucking idiots.

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Re: Cassettes? Is that a thing again?

Postby GoogaMooga » 22 Jan 2019, 21:26

Certain pre-recorded VHS tapes are also in demand, and have been for some time. Only an estimated 1/5 - 1/4 of the films that were released on VHS have made it to DVD, fewer still to Blu-ray and even fewer to 4K. The higher you go, the fewer you get.
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Re: Cassettes? Is that a thing again?

Postby naughty boy » 22 Jan 2019, 22:07

Georgios wrote:Also heard reports of bearded hipster types carrying Fisher Price players around in public. The fucking idiots.


:lol:
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Re: Cassettes? Is that a thing again?

Postby Minnie the Minx » 22 Jan 2019, 22:42

I’m reading the wonderful Beastie Boys book at the minute. There are some fabulous pictures of some of the old piles of tapes they had and detailed descriptions of home taping, cutting and spooling and carrying them around in your pockets as the cases were too bulky, all that kind of stuff. But most importantly they say ‘don’t let anyone tell you that tapes are still the way forward, they suck donkey balls’ or words to that effect.
I’m still a bit sentimental about them, but I wouldnt go out and buy any new ones cos they sound fucking SHITE
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Re: Cassettes? Is that a thing again?

Postby C » 25 Sep 2021, 19:13

Did I read of a comeback....?

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