Music Tapes in 2016!

[mcnach]

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1469536336' post='3099074']
Back in the day the main purpose of audio cassettes for me was to record personalised mix tapes for girls in the hope of boffing them. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Girls weren't so high-maintenance back then.

Today I look upon Audio cassettes as dead-format shag-bait.

It actually seems quite cute and romantic now, compared with today's methods - i.e. texting her a picture of your cock.
[/quote]



excellent post

Ah... the hours I spent making mix tapes!

[4stringslow]

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1469536336' post='3099074']
Back in the day the main purpose of audio cassettes for me was to record personalised mix tapes for girls in the hope of boffing them. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Girls weren't so high-maintenance back then.

Today I look upon Audio cassettes as dead-format shag-bait.

It actually seems quite cute and romantic now, compared with today's methods - i.e. texting her a picture of your cock.
[/quote]


Yes, whatever happened to romance?

[4stringslow]

[quote name='paul h' timestamp='1469536795' post='3099086']
I don't see what's wrong with a little bit of retro fun. It doesn't make any less sense than the indie label 7" vinyl thing. In fact it makes more sense...it's something that a band can produce from beginning to end in the "bedroom". Some nice sleeve design and a cool label for the tape and it could look really good.

Of course I do forget we are on ContraryChat so everyone and everything else is bollocks and full of lies.
[/quote]

I don't have a problem with 'retro fun' either . . . until people start preaching about how the good old days were so good and everything was superior to today. Can we honestly imagine a world where every new technology really was worse that the preceding one?

[Beer of the Bass]

I've got a friend who still makes mixtapes, but he's updated his setup and now has tracks cued up on his iPhone and Mac (and turntable), going into a mixer which feeds the cassette deck. He seemed quite surprised that I found this amusing...

[Happy Jack]

I spent ages trying to achieve sonic perfection by playing cassette tapes using just valves.

Didn't work.

The valves kept melting the tape before I could hear anything.

[EliasMooseblaster]

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1469539804' post='3099146']
I knew about the different quality tapes as a teenager. They were pricey compared to the standard ones, so I saved them for albums that sounded particularly nice on vinyl. I always made copies of my vinyl records, and play the tape normally. When the tape gets knackered, make another copy, thus saving the vinyl from dust and wear.

It wasn't THAT expensive to have good sounding tapes. Just about any decent tape deck would do a good job. When CD players came out they were a LOT more expensive than standard tape decks.
[/quote]

I can certainly see the logic in backing things up onto tape - a friend of mine used to copy all his CDs onto CD-Rs to preserve the originals from getting worn, (which I was a little more sceptical about) and I know bits of my father's vinyl collection are "past it" and have been replaced with the CD version.

That said, what would it cost you to achieve good-sounding tapes from scratch now? This chap's holding up his 21-year-old tape player, which must have been a rare find and he seems to pooh-pooh a lot of modern builds. On the other hand, what's "inferior" to him could likely be "perfectly fine" for the rest of us. Given he insists that "EVERYTHING" we knew about cassettes was a "LIE," shortly before admitting that FeO tapes were a bit crap, I expect he may be exaggerating a little!

[BigRedX]

[quote name='EliasMooseblaster' timestamp='1469542199' post='3099203']
That said, what would it cost you to achieve good-sounding tapes from scratch now? This chap's holding up his 21-year-old tape player, which must have been a rare find and he seems to pooh-pooh a lot of modern builds. On the other hand, what's "inferior" to him could likely be "perfectly fine" for the rest of us. Given he insists that "EVERYTHING" we knew about cassettes was a "LIE," shortly before admitting that FeO tapes were a bit crap, I expect he may be exaggerating a little!
[/quote]

Actually that cassette deck he's proudly holding up is a rubbish modern build. It might sport Dolby S and three heads, but IME a solid transport mechanism and a rigid cassette compartment that keeps the tape as close to perfectly aligned over the heads as possible given the format, is far more important in getting a decent sound off the tape. Any dual capstan, 3 head machine from the 80s sporting an Aiwa or Nakamichi logo will vastly outperform his deck despite being supposedly less well specified electronically, and he certainly wouldn't be able to wield it with such ease, due to its considerably more substantial weight!

Edited July 26, 2016 by BigRedX

[SpondonBassed]

I just happened upon this thread and guess what I was listening to? A Pre-Recorded four track cassette of Pink Floyd's Final Cut. Very pleasing despite tape noise.

[Roger2611]

I still have a box full of cassettes under the stairs, not played any of them in twenty years, I think I still have a really nice Marantz twin cassette deck wrapped and boxed in the loft, I know I have a few songs I really ought to transfer to computer but I can't be bothered to dig it all out and see if it still works.

My mate still has the first imported Tascam 8 track cassette recorder, I doubt it has ever had more than 5 hours use since he brought it, from memory you had to use top range chrome c90 cassettes and it ran at 4 times the speed of a normal cassette player so you didn't get many songs on an expensive (at the time) tape

[jezzaboy]

A few years ago, I could not give away a high end Denon cassette deck and ended up putting it in the council recycle skip.

Tapes were good if you used something like a Maxell XL2 s or a metal tape but I would not go back to using the format. Bloomin murder to find a track in the middle.

[mcnach]

[quote name='Roger2611' timestamp='1469558046' post='3099381']
I still have a box full of cassettes under the stairs, not played any of them in twenty years, I think I still have a really nice Marantz twin cassette deck wrapped and boxed in the loft, I know I have a few songs I really ought to transfer to computer but I can't be bothered to dig it all out and see if it still works.

My mate still has the first imported Tascam 8 track cassette recorder, I doubt it has ever had more than 5 hours use since he brought it, from memory you had to use top range chrome c90 cassettes and it ran at 4 times the speed of a normal cassette player so you didn't get many songs on an expensive (at the time) tape
[/quote]

That's another thing: speed. I had a tape Tascam recorder with multiple speed settings, and the sound was noticeable better when running it 2x faster than normal... The whole consumer tape technology was riddled with compromises. It could have sounded a lot better than it did.

[4stringslow]

Exactly. Cassette tapes traded quality for size and convenience. Slow running tape gave long playing times at the expense of frequency response. Compactness meant thin tracks and increased noise and crosstalk. It was most definitely a low-fi consumer format, but it caught on because it was the first really cheap and convenient format for home recording (anyone remember the 'home taping is killing music' hysteria from the music industry?) and enabled people to compile their own 'playlists'. The Walkman then enabled people to take those 'playlists' with them, anywhere, anytime - which the music industry also hated. But all those things are now possible, and to a dramatically better degree, on a mobile phone, so it's hardly surprising the format is effectively dead - along with steam trains, film photography and VCRs. Nostalgia can be alluring, but those things, and more, died out for good reasons.

[discreet]

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1469564534' post='3099461']
It could have sounded a lot better than it did.
[/quote]

I remember the consumer battle between VHS and Betamax. VHS won out, but Betamax was the superior format.

[Spike Vincent]

I run my own cassette label and I don't want these bloody hipsters making cassettes fashionable again.

[leftybassman392]

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1469569212' post='3099513']
Betamax was the superior format.
[/quote]

...and in widespread use in the broadcasting industry IIRC.

[discreet]

[quote name='leftybassman392' timestamp='1469569617' post='3099518']
...and in widespread use in the broadcasting industry IIRC.
[/quote]

Quite, or at least it was when I was involved in the 90s. Don't know about today.

[BigRedX]

[quote name='Spike Vincent' timestamp='1469569427' post='3099516']
I run my own cassette label and I don't want these bloody hipsters making cassettes fashionable again.
[/quote]

You are already too late....

On a more serious note: What's the label? and do you have a link for the tapes for sale?

I ran a cassette label for a couple of years in the early 80s.

Edited July 26, 2016 by BigRedX

[4stringslow]

[quote name='leftybassman392' timestamp='1469569617' post='3099518']
...and in widespread use in the broadcasting industry IIRC.
[/quote]

No, it wasn't THAT good. You may be thinking of Betacam - same physical tape cassette but an incompatible and higher quality recording format for professional use.

[Spike Vincent]

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1469571018' post='3099535']
You are already too late....

On a more serious note: What's the label? and do you have a link for the tapes for sale?

I ran a cassette label for a couple of years in the early 80s.
[/quote]



[url="https://noiseresearchinstitute.bandcamp.com/"]Music | NOISE RESEARCH INSTITUTE[/url]

It's nasty electronic stuff mostly

[BigRedX]

[quote name='Spike Vincent' timestamp='1469608840' post='3099641']
[url="https://noiseresearchinstitute.bandcamp.com/"]Music | NOISE RESEARCH INSTITUTE[/url]

It's nasty electronic stuff mostly
[/quote]

Thanks!

Nasty electronic stuff was the mainstay of the original DIY cassette scene back in the late 70s and early 80s. I think that the fact my bands recordings were different, having guitars and "songs" certainly helped us to get noticed back then.

Do you sell many cassettes these days? The Terrortones cassette does reasonably well, but I think a lot of that is due to the fact that it comes with a download code and you get 5 tracks for less than the price of a 3 track vinyl single.

[Musicman20]

I still use CDs, but my main source for music is mp3 and vinyl. Vinyl just has something about it. It's larger, it looks better, it has a collectability about it, it sounds fabulous.

Cassettes? Weird. They were great for what they did. Recording off the radio was brill or copying a friend's mix. Mixtapes were also fun! This nostalgia is just another fad for hipsters to get into, but as long as people are buying/collecting/sharing music, so be it!

Edited July 27, 2016 by Musicman20

[KingBollock]

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1469569212' post='3099513']


I remember the consumer battle between VHS and Betamax. VHS won out, but Betamax was the superior format.
[/quote]
From what I gather, this was somewhat down to size (I was first told this while working in a tv and video repair centre while repairing a Betamax machine for the first time).

The Betamax machines had a much larger head drum than vhs machines. And the internal mechanism in a vhs took the tape from each side of the cassette and introduced it to the half of the head drum closest to the cassette, whereas a Betamax took the tape from one end and wrapped it around almost the whole drum. Which meant that you couldn't build Betamax machines as small as vhs.

Betamax tapes were smaller than vhs which, while they were slightly easier to store, meant they didn't have as much tape in them.

Also, having typed this thread I am now more aware that Betamax also takes longer to type, so perhaps that was the cause of its downfall?

I used to have three Betamax machines and hundreds of the cassettes. We still have a vhs, somewhere, and a big box full of videos in the garage, many of which you can't get on dvd.

A few weeks ago I finally unplugged my standalone audio cassette player and moved it out of the way to make space for something else. I also threw away a bin liner full of cassettes that I had recorded on to, too, though I have kept most of my official cassettes and blank cassettes still in their packaging but they're now in a box in the spare room.

I also kept a couple of mix tapes that I had been given by girlfriends when I was a kid, though mainly because I like the songs but some of them I don't know who they're by or what they're called, so I can't get anywhere else.

I was looking at mini Hi-Fis recently and several of them were just amps with auxiliary inputs on them, though some had digital radios and/or Bluetooth as well.

[Norris]

Obviously anyone who is still keen on compact cassette tapes has never had to dig one out of a car stereo. I don't miss them

[PaulWarning]

Just tried to upload the 'home taping is killing music' logo, says I've used up my global upload quota, not sure what's going off, anyway they obviously had no idea what was coming with the digital age the internet

Edited July 27, 2016 by PaulWarning

[4stringslow]

Logo here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bc/Home_taping_is_killing_music.png

You're right, they had no idea how to handle the digital revolution either. Remember when they lobbied governments to introduce a levy on every blank tape sold, which they claimed would recompense artists for lost sales? Despite blank tapes having perfectly legitimate uses other than copying music. Besides, the vast majority of copying was of already purchased vinyl in order to make mix tapes etc, so the value of lost sales was vastly inflated by the industry . . . As it was when CD-Rs became available.

In fact, the music industry failed pretty abysmally in managing the implications of the digital age and it was down to Apple, with iTunes, to really take advantage of the new technologies and new possibilities. Too many fat cat music executives without a clue having grown rich from their monopoly control over artists, production and licensing. Power to the people eh?

Edited July 27, 2016 by 4stringslow