Does anyone here still use cassettes?

[Guy Robinson]

I have a lot of used metal tapes that I would like to sell but the market doesn't look that good for them. I'm almost 70 and will never go back to pre CD technology.

 

[Ranasakawa]

I have a lot of used metal tapes that I would like to sell but the market doesn't look that good for them. I'm almost 70 and will never go back to pre CD technology.

I sold my lot (over 500) on Facebook marketplace. There is actually tape collecting forums. I did better than expected

 

[Guy Robinson]

I sold my lot (over 500) on Facebook marketplace. There is actually tape collecting forums. I did better than expected

Thanks for this but I have nothing to do with social media.

 

[mlrocker]

I would be interested in acquiring muti-track recordings on cassette

 

[nikomen]

I have one of AIWA's Nakamichi Dragon slayers, the F770, along with the F990 were very comparable but much less prone to needing repair and overhauls, with Dolby B & C and HX Pro. With high quality metal tapes you can make CD quality recordings. That said, I rarely play it. I find the prerecorded tapes you find were mastered awfully, with tons of compression for low end players and systems, and they don't age well. For prerecorded tape there is no comparison to reel to reel. I have a 52 yr old Grand Funk Railroad "Closer to Home" reel that sounds better on my AKAI 4 track than my HQ ALAC version. The original masters I think had audiophiles in mind and has much heavier bass than current CD remasters. Also the tape holds up better with age. For many years I was more a turntable guy, and still play them, but vinyl, compared to R2R has so much compression when you get to the inner tracks, and I rather listen to a little tape hiss than lose the bass that the artists intended. In JMHO.

 

[cbmmm3]

And No Birds Sing (burningshed.com)

 

[chucky3042]

Love cassettes... They are selling for crazy dollars on ebay

 

[Owen Smith]

Love cassettes... They are selling for crazy dollars on ebay

My still in the shrink wrap pair of TDK MA-XG 90s at current ebay prices would probably pay for a short holiday. Which is nuts, they're only a pair of cassettes at the end of the day.

 

[jefe1]

Yes you can sell or buy at high prices metal and chrome tapes on ebay but they are still old tapes used or still sealed.
My point or question is is appears only normal bias tapes are still being made which do not give as good results as the other kinds.
Having said that you can find cassettes of all kinds in thrift stores and sometimes a commercial one can sound good. or its an unusual title worth picking up. I found a Blue Note jazz cassette with superb sound some cobalt new agey tapes and someones prog rock cassette collection with Focus Flash Nektar and Gentle Giant.
I have a car old enough that it has a combo cassette CD player but the cassette section is not high quality unlike the after market decks I used to buy. I prefer popping in tapes on the road.
Its just about fun....

 

[cbmmm3]

Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (MFSL ) was in the high end cassette market many years ago. You ought to see the prices for these cassettes now !! Crazy money

 

[kfbkfb]

Recently, at some Vintage Stock stores, I saw a few new prerecorded cassettes (I didn't see the Dolby NR logo though), I'll probably buy one as a souvenir of a bygone age.

Apparently, the "DAAD" cassette duplication process provided stable enough phase so that Dolby Surround encoding survived (RCA released a few Dolby Surround encoded cassettes ~30 years ago).


Kirk Bayne

 

[cbmmm3]

Dropout Boogie Cassette - White Limited Edition (PRE-ORDER) – The Black Keys

 

[Electric Moo]

I recently recorded a track live onto analog cassette. Which means I couldn't remix any of it afterwards: it went from the mixer directly to the tape, in stereo. So any levels etc were stuck as-is.

Which sorta sucks as it would have been interesting to mix into 4 channel Involve format.

I may redo another session multitracked. But since it was all patched cables & modular synth it won't be the same. And the tape got eaten by another deck right after I dumped it to the computer

Fwiw here it is, a slice in time, never to be repeated: I called it "Lawn Sprinklers on Venus"

 

[timbre4]

I recently recorded a track live onto analog cassette. Which means I couldn't remix any of it afterwards: it went from the mixer directly to the tape, in stereo. So any levels etc were stuck as-is. Which sorta sucks as it would have been interesting to mix into 4 channel Involve format.
I may redo another session multitracked. But since it was all patched cables & modular synth it won't be the same. And the tape got eaten by another deck right after I dumped it to the computer

Wow, that's amazing. Definitely worth pursuing in multi-track configuration.

Relatedly, I'm going through hundreds of my old band recordings - mostly on cassette, some reels. All 2 mics into the recorder and fingers crossed. I graded them on performance, mix fidelity, energy to find the best takes for a compilation. It's amazing the variance in what is supposed to be the same setup every time. I can tell on the later ones that a sub-mixer and more mics were added on the drums but still live to 2 track always.

Please keep going with this. Cheers

 

[jaybird100]

I recently recorded a track live onto analog cassette. Which means I couldn't remix any of it afterwards: it went from the mixer directly to the tape, in stereo. So any levels etc were stuck as-is.

Which sorta sucks as it would have been interesting to mix into 4 channel Involve format.

I may redo another session multitracked. But since it was all patched cables & modular synth it won't be the same. And the tape got eaten by another deck right after I dumped it to the computer

Fwiw here it is, a slice in time, never to be repeated: I called it "Lawn Sprinklers on Venus"

You can thank Philips, and their insistence that all cassette recordings be compatible with all cassette players. The only way you could have recorded in Involve quad would to have had the encoder feeding the recorder; the encoder fed from the output of a multichannel mixing board. Philips blew it on that one; the cassette could have done so much more.

 

[Electric Moo]

Wow, that's amazing. Definitely worth pursuing in multi-track configuration.

Relatedly, I'm going through hundreds of my old band recordings - mostly on cassette, some reels. All 2 mics into the recorder and fingers crossed. I graded them on performance, mix fidelity, energy to find the best takes for a compilation. It's amazing the variance in what is supposed to be the same setup every time. I can tell on the later ones that a sub-mixer and more mics were added on the drums but still live to 2 track always.

Please keep going with this. Cheers

Haha, wow, thanks!

I was testing the thing out: it's a decent HX pro cassette deck. I gave away my Studer B67 a few years ago & sort of regret it, but I wasn't using it at the time & it got put to good use in a studio. So I wanted to see how this cassette worked. It sounds ok, I think.

I probably mixed the highs a bit loud, anticipating the cassette to roll off.

What instrument did you play? Would be good to hear your stuff, when you get it done!

 

[MidiMagic]

I don't have any decks left that work.

 

[Sonik Wiz]

You can thank Philips, and their insistence that all cassette recordings be compatible with all cassette players. The only way you could have recorded in Involve quad would to have had the encoder feeding the recorder; the encoder fed from the output of a multichannel mixing board. Philips blew it on that one; the cassette could have done so much more.

Ah but then there was the discrete 4 channel cassette recorders from TASCAM. I think there were at least a couple of different levels/models but the one my neighbor had looked like this:

As he moved into the digital age we played back over this & I copied to digital. The audio was surprisingly good.The unit did indeed record in 4 individual chs with good track bouncing for even more FX. But of course the musicians using this didn't use it for quad, it was always mixed down to stereo.
I remember reading the Eurythmics first album used a lot of audio recorded on a TASCAM cassette deck. Just simply because some of the music was already done & ready to go, and the quality was decent enough.

No idea if/what kind of NR was used.

 

[par4ken]

There were a lot of four channel cassette decks from different manufacturers. The one in this thread is very cool!

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/fo...-4-channel-cassette-deck-auction-hurry.33440/
I don't know when Philips started to allow decks that didn't conform to their standards, but those decks were meant for home "studio recording" sadly came out too late for "quad" use.

I was recently browsing some home recording equipment on Ebay and there are quite a few different makes and models available. Then came the digital recorders, most of those looked to be 44.1Khz or 48Khz 16 bit, only.

 

[Owen Smith]

I had a friend with a pair of 8 channel Tascam cassette decks that he slaved together into one 14 channel deck. A channel on each deck was lost to sync data for that use.

If I remember correctly these devices run the tape faster which is how they get better sound quality. 8 tracks across the tape would sound pretty awful at standard cassette speed.