Does anyone here still use cassettes?

[cbmmm3]

Now that is a man with good tastes! Or a big wallet......one of the two . Did you by chance have any of those demo tapes that came with the 1000ZXL? I had a couple of them at one time. They were recorded over in Japan and if I remember we’re done by a Japanese musician in the Nakamichi studios. Then they were dubbed in real-time to a 1000ZXL and included with the decks. Or at least that was my recollection. Those tapes were excellent and darn near CD quality.

I did not have the tapes. I bought the unit on the used market many years ago and sold it about 10 years ago

 

[surround.sound.enthusiast]

I started out on cassettes in the early 90's in seventh grade and kept buying them into the early 2000's.

My house growing up was not much on music, so I was behind the times. The only functioning turntable was a kids' all-in-one record player from the 70's where you had to put a whole stack of coins on the head of the tone arm to keep the spent ~original~ stylus in the groves of worn-out LP's. I swear my older sister had one for a little while for her Duran Duran LP's but it broke or something. No-one else seems to remembers that. A CD player was unheard of, and CD's were unknown to me until sometime in the early or mid-90's when I thought they were a new format, having no idea they started in the 80's. The only cassette decks were built into a cheap boombox radios or dictation types. And for that matter, the only radios were cheap little table radios.

So anyway, I bought cassettes until they began to not be offered for some new releases in the early 2000's, or I couldn't find them, and began to buy CD's of my existing albums and new releases. I switched over from cassettes in just a few years, but still have all of mine because I bought them. I chuckled about this to myself in just the past two weeks, when I bought 3 Circle Surround and 3 Dolby Surround encoded cassettes at various Bulmooses for only 25 cents a piece. I chuckled because I hadn't bought a cassette since like Garbage: Beautiful Garbage, Bush: Golden State, or Stone Temple Pilots: Shangri-la-di-da. About 20 years. Surround sound made me do it!!

Hmm, while I'm thinking about it, I still need to buy a replacement copy of Animals, which the cassette deck in my old 1998 Dodge Avenger ate to the point of having to snap the tape to extract the cassette from the deck...

 

[AVphile]

I still have my Nakamichi DR-1 cassette deck because I own perhaps two dozen tapes that never made it to either vinyl or CD. Maybe once every six months, I listen to one of them.

 

[Owen Smith]

I saw a Nakamichi once in a lab at work in the early 1990s at Acorn Computers. I assume it was for testing how good the cassette interface could be for loading software, but I never saw it in use. The Nakamichi was an impressive beast, sadly I don't recall what model it was.

 

[AVphile]

There was one which, I think, may have been better than mine: the Nakamichi Dragon.

 

[cbmmm3]

depends.

for playing Cassettes - CR7A
for recording - ZX-9

The Dragon is ' right there and just behind'. Its a fantastic deck but its trying to be everything to everybody.

 

[marpow]

I'll pipe in. Was a huge cassette person and kept them in fake alligator skin attaché's cases had about 6 of them starting in late 70's, still dropping acid. Had a truck with a camper shell, that had a switch for two pull out speakers, so when we went day tripping or camping I could pull out the speakers and light things up.
Threw a few out the window on the highway when tape got eaten in the deck.
Sold them all at garage sales over the years, good riddance. then came CD's loved them even more, now at digital files, I can't imagine anything better than digital files.

 

[Bill B]

.... I can't imagine anything better than digital files.

How about something implanted in your brain that allows for you to just think of a song and it be presented flawlessly picked up by your neurons without the need of any other device?

 

[marpow]

How about something implanted in your brain that allows for you to just think of a song and it be presented flawlessly picked up by your neurons without the need of any other device?

Yup, you know it's coming. I wonder if my old mushy brain will be considered vintage and not stellar enough to handle the new music brain wave.

 

[Darkhorse]

I bought a NAD cassette deck which I use linked to my hifi system...it works well...I still have a lot of cassetes. Several older decks suffered broken belts which can be expensive to repair.

 

[Ranasakawa]

I sold my last cassettes a few weeks ago.
Glad to see the end of them.

 

[Mistee]

Still have all of mine. Play the odd, random one now and then on the Denon cassette deck that remains a component of my stereo system. Still have some of my Walkmans too, but haven't played those for quite a while. One of my fave cassettes is of a 90 min continuous recording I made when in London in 1988 direct from a radio station during the height of the house music craze. The house music just keeps going and going and going, with all of these terrific DJ interjections now and them between songs.

 

[MidiMagic]

How about something implanted in your brain that allows for you to just think of a song and it be presented flawlessly picked up by your neurons without the need of any other device?

There was a several week run of comics about 20 years ago in the strip 'Big Top' where one of the characters had such a player implanted in his brain. Unfortunately his friends kept suggesting songs he didn't like and the player played them.

 

[Bill B]

There was a several week run of comics about 20 years ago in the strip 'Big Top' where one of the characters had such a player implanted in his brain. Unfortunately his friends kept suggesting songs he didn't like and the player played them.

Sounds more like it belonged in a "Life In Hell" comic strip. That would be aaawwwful.

 

[QuadraHead]

Yeah still do. Lots of cassettes and decks. I love the tech of compact audio cassettes. Easy to use play and record. Can sound really good full range HiFi thus. And I'm in it also for nostalgia and a kinda zen experience. Plus it's a go anywhere format. I got vinyl that can sound very good also; although it will never beat a good CD (player or recorder(ing). I listen most to CD's, audio cassette, 8-Track, FM radio and streams, Vinyl and R2R (In that order thus).

 

[Guy Robinson]

I managed to unload the BX-100. It was sitting doing nothing for years.

 

[audiomaster]

Im just curious are any members still recording and or buying cassettes? There is supposed to be a cassette revival like Vinyl but I see little evidence of it.

There are a few new cassette players being made but they are not high quality.. One cannot buy new chrome or metal tape anymore only normal or ferric oxide.
Because my car is so old it has both a cassette player and CD player. So I would occasionally record a tape from records to play.
In the old days I would record entire albums on tape not just for the car but to play at home so I wouldn't have to keep getting up and flipping records. I also liked to make mix tapes as many people did.

I always liked fooling with cassettes but is there really a practical use for them when you can play digital files?

Of course practicality and hobbies don't always go together.....

I still have cassettes from the 80s that I recorded from discs. They are TDK MAR C60s with metal shells and metal tape. Most are DBX encoded. Still have a Technics deck with Dolby and DBX decoders. Amazing that they still play as they were in my car a lot. Had a Concord deck there with an outboard DBX decoder.

 

[skywaveTDR]

I have many cassette decks and even got one in today that has it's own mixer as well as 8 tracks on the Chrome tape. Porta Studios and regular Tascam deck come in regularly and are repaired here. To say that Cassette format is no more is just a case of ignorance- why do companies like NAC and ATR make cassette tapes today? How is it that I have so many repairs of this format as well as Open Reel- there is still plenty of interest and many Indy bands are releasing cassette tapes only. I even service the machines of a guy who does real time duplication. Here is one I fixed a couple of months ago-
This was what came in today-

 

[jefe1]

Well for new cassette recordings are you limited to normal bias tapes?
Aren't chrome and metal tapes no longer manufactured?

 

[Snood]

Well for new cassette recordings are you limited to normal bias tapes?
Aren't chrome and metal tapes no longer manufactured?

Well for new cassette recordings are you limited to normal bias tapes?
Aren't chrome and metal tapes no longer manufactured?

You can still get them new or used on the secondary market like ebay or facebook marketplace - Snood still has a ton of them from years ago. A few still sealed