Cassette Tape Making A Comeback?

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

Can Beta be far behind?



(What, like nobody recorded hours of music on video cassettes?)

 

[NutBucket]

I saw a couple Betamax tapes pop up in Facebook marketplace. I don't think anyone misses the days before DVRs

 

[NutBucket]

It got really nerdy though when it came to making CD mixes. Like, who were the people that had CDRs and know how to use them during that relatively brief time that it was viable before being completely replaced by mp3s?

Fair point on that one.

MD was horrible. The codec was just no good and when MP3s hit the scene, out goes it.

<--- has a MD walkman and a cd changer/ MD recorder deck. And hundreds of MD.

Well yes, obviously killed by the MP3 (Thanks to ATOT I got a deal on the OG Diamond Rio...actually preferred the MD due to limited storage capacity). Anyway, before flash memory got super cheap it was the way to go. I occasionally look for used commercial MDs online. Funny how some of them are really big bucks.

 

[TXHokie]

Ah yes, old tech. Auto skip/repeat and auto-reverse walkmans? Game changer! How about those dual cassette boom box that can make quick copies? Seems like a lifetime away....oh wait it was.

 

[sdifox]

Ah yes, old tech. Auto skip/repeat and auto-reverse walkmans? Game changer! How about those dual cassette boom box that can make quick copies? Seems like a lifetime away....oh wait it was.

I remember stero suitecase. It had two speakers forming half the suitcase, the deck has radio, cassette player and a turtable. All driven off dry cells. I think it also had a plug.

 

[NutBucket]

Ah yes, old tech. Auto skip/repeat and auto-reverse walkmans? Game changer! How about those dual cassette boom box that can make quick copies? Seems like a lifetime away....oh wait it was.

The pinnacle were the full-logic decks that could skip over songs.
Just saw this which seems appropriate:

 

[Stiff Clamp]

Ah yes, old tech. Auto skip/repeat and auto-reverse walkmans? Game changer! How about those dual cassette boom box that can make quick copies? Seems like a lifetime away....oh wait it was.

I still have a boombox from 1996 or so. CD player function died first, then years later the radio went, now it's just two cassette decks I have no cassettes for. Planning to recycle it.

Guess I'm all set for a cassette comeback though!

Let's see what music Amazon's selling on cassette.

 

[pauldun170]

If it brings music that's no longer in circulation on other formats back to light...cool.

 

[skyking]

I have a yellow walkman sport with the matching yellow headphones stashed away somewhere.
Edit: not worth much yet ~50

 

[lxskllr]

I had one of those sport walkmen. I took it apart, lost some of the pieces, and ended up throwing it out.

 

[Tsinni Dave]

I had one of those sport walkmen. I took it apart, lost some of the pieces, and ended up throwing it out.

Those were some of the best to make a guitar headphone amp out of, and with a good humbucker you could overdrive them into glorious distortion. I used one as a distortion/overdrive pedal for awhile. Just connect a 1/4 inch jack to the tape head wires and melt a hole in the case to mount it.

 

[Gardener]

If so, we need to stock up n these:

And some people use a rope for a belt.

The correct tool is:

 

[james1701]

I miss these.


It won't be long and the Zune will come back in fashion.

 

[lxskllr]

A friend of mine's father had a reel-reel. Not exactly convenient, but pretty good sound. His father had a band in 'Asian country'(don't want to dox myself), and they were pretty good. I asked my friend to transfer some from reel to cassette for me, but he never got to it :^(

 

[ElFenix]

shitty digicams from the early 00s are also coming back. guess some people in gen Z really want to experience just how good they have it.

How about those dual cassette boom box that can make quick copies? Seems like a lifetime away....oh wait it was.

pretty sure i have one of those stuffed in the closet somewhere

 

[Muadib]

shitty digicams from the early 00s are also coming back. guess some people in gen Z really want to experience just how good they have it.


pretty sure i have one of those stuffed in the closet somewhere

My dad stole mine. Loaned it to him and never saw it again until he died. RIP

 

[darkswordsman17]

A friend of mine's father had a reel-reel. Not exactly convenient, but pretty good sound. His father had a band in 'Asian country'(don't want to dox myself), and they were pretty good. I asked my friend to transfer some from reel to cassette for me, but he never got to it :^(

He spent

?

 

[Muse]

So, apparently cassettes are getting popular again. I guess vinyl wasn't shitty enough for the hipsters, so they had to find something that sounded even worse. Crappy materials, and incessant tape hiss. "But what about Dolby!?" you exclaim. Ah, yes, that fabulous innovation that kills all the high end, and makes it sound like it's playing through a pillow. The world's shitty enough without bringing back cassettes. I'd rather have a 64kbs mp3. At least that won't get shittier every time you play it, or flat out break.



If you're a person that cares about sound, the player is irrelevant. Cassettes are bad right off factory line, and it doesn't matter what you play them in. Unbelievable that anyone would entertain a serious discussion of music quality as it pertains to cassettes. I guess wax cylinders will be the next hot new audiophile format :^S

https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-start-cassette-collection/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

I totally agree, and I have guessing more than 500 cassette tapes (and probably more than 1/2 dozen cassette players of various types including a double cassette deck), with all kinds of stuff on them, but 95+% are of my radio show before I started recording them in MP3s directly off my FM tuner. I fairly recently had a Zoom discussion (probably 50+ people were participating, so listened to the two of us go at it) with one of the co-directors of our college radio station record library. I took exception to her glowing about the comeback of the cassette only release. I complained about the hiss, for which (as you say) there's no satisfactory solution. BTDT, totally. I later started a discussion in our proprietary listserve about the cassette, where I got some support ... "I prefer CD's" sort of thing. I personally prefer CDs. LPs have artifacts, every time you play them (like cassettes) they sound worse, in fact faster than cassettes.

We could extrapolate here to discussing the burgeoning fetish in recent years for vinyl, and broaden that to tube equipment versus solid state. Honestly, I think most of that is rubbish. I'm fine with solid state. How many trips have I made to electronics supply stores to test suspect tubes and buy new ones before I got rid of my tube stuff and went solid state?!

Granted, my ears suck compared to when I was 18 years old. But I suspect that most of the fetishism I pronounce upon here is just bullshit.

 

[IronWing]

I’ll rejoin the vinyl world when Honey Combs come with records printed on the inside of the box again.

 

[Muse]

Don’t forget, cassettes allowed you to make a mix tape for the lust of your life.

I have NEVER made a mix tape. Have heard a lot about them and people swapping them but never been tempted. Meantime I do my weekly radio show, 3 hours.

We have probably 60,000 LPs, 5000 7", 60,000 CDs. I play LPs and CDs mostly, maybe a couple 7" on any given show. I started before the CD was invented, so I don't resent cueing up an LP. Even so, CDs are easier. Problem is it's getting hard to find decent quality CD decks for our air studio. We had to swap out a couple of just fine Denon players in the last month or so for Tascam players. The Tascams work (the Denons more and more would balk at some disks) but the Tascams load soooooooooooooooooooooooooo damn slowly, and I'm still not comfortable with the functionality. I think they're configurable but I haven't done a dive into the manual (I assume we have their manuals, I should ask our engineer). Also, the Tascams don't support displaying CD Text... if they do, I haven't found it.

 

[Muse]

There is something to be said about pulling physical media out and knowing you own the album, or game, or computer program, or whatever it may be. Whether it's a audio tape or CD, DVD, game cartridge etc. It's self contained and will just work. So much stuff now is reliant on cloud, or an account etc.

What I like about having a DVD or BR in a case more than anything is the extras. I don't stream. Just streaming a movie, having no access to extras sucks. I watched a movie last night, loved it and then watched every extra on the DVD, around 10 of them. If there were more I would have watched them too.

 

[Muse]

I had one of those sport walkmen. I took it apart, lost some of the pieces, and ended up throwing it out.

I still have an FM Sony Walkman sitting in a drawer from about 1980-81. I repaired that thing so many times it's not funny. All kinds of epoxy, kludges, jury rigging. I think it still works, but haven't used it in years. IIRC, uses a couple AA's, headphones only. I used to repair headphones all the time when the cords developed discontinuities, usually near the plug, would solder on a new miniplug.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

My biggest problem with LPs, CDs, Cassettes, 8 tracks and all other similar media is that you have to listen to the tracks in order, including any you don't like. Some only have a couple of songs I like mixed in with several I hate. I ripped all my CDs to digital and copied all of my albums and tapes to digital. I eliminated the tracks I don't want and use the rest in playlists that range into the thousands of tracks arranged by preference and randomized during playback.

 

[snoopy7548]

My biggest problem with LPs, CDs, Cassettes, 8 tracks and all other similar media is that you have to listen to the tracks in order, including any you don't like. Some only have a couple of songs I like mixed in with several I hate. I ripped all my CDs to digital and copied all of my albums and tapes to digital. I eliminated the tracks I don't want and use the rest in playlists that range into the thousands of tracks arranged by preference and randomized during playback.

FYI, you can skip tracks on CDs.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

Not randomly and unattended.