[Closed] Compact cassette making a comeback - rewind!

Bet the kids know how to shoot a video in landscape though.

Bet the kids know how to shoot a video in landscape though.

Get with the program grandad, snapchat encourages portrait style shooting, all the cool kidz do it. Landscape is like so 2010! 😂😘

If, like me, you had been a frequenter of the wonderful Bandcamp website, you'd realise that cassette releases have been making a resurgence for a while now. Some labels only release on cassette and the tapes sell out in hours.

I have bought a few, but they are weird old things, you look at them thinking "Which track is this then?" and you have no idea. Part of the appeal I suppose.

Now they're getting stories about them on the "official chart" website, they're obviously way too popular for me and I shall go back to Mini Disk. 😀

Holy crap, it seems that sealed 90s SA90s sell for about £6 each, to actual morons, I should have some of those. WIN!

I’ve still got a couple of really whizzy Metal format cassettes, with a cast metal frame, and clear plastic sides. IIRC they cost somewhere around £6 each back in the early 80’s. It’s why I’ve only got two, they were used for recording 12” singles onto, for maximum ooomph! I think they are TDK MA-X, but not sure, bloody good tapes when used with a good deck, like my Aiwa AD-F660, which has an EQ facility as well as Dolby B and C, with three heads for monitoring while recording.

Now they’re getting stories about them on the “official chart” website, they’re obviously way too popular for me and I shall go back to Mini Disk. 😀

I’ve been to gigs where cassettes are being sold, Half Man Half Biscuit still sell them. Still got my Minidisc recorder too... 🙃

I give it a year before Hipsters are pushing MiniDiscs back into the Charts.🙄

If, like me, you had been a frequenter of the wonderful Bandcamp website

Do you play the flute?

I can see Bauhaus making a comeback at this rate.

TDK MA-X

Ah before they started selling designer brands at reasonable prices

Ah before they started selling designer brands at reasonable prices

I saw what you did there, I was trying to avoid making a comment, but it was too good not to. 😁

It was the TDK MA-R C90, like this one;

Not a tape you’d want to get tangled the first time you used it, at that price!

does that mean I might be able to sell the Aiwa Cassette decks I've got sat in the attic taking up space?

A pretty flawed format. Not flawed in a particularly musical way either. The signal to noise and high end roll off combined with the mostly crap playback devices. Probably worse than vinyl, but for the ability to re-record until the tape stretches, twists, gets wound to tightly, unravels and snaps, not to mention gets noisier and nosier with use WTAF.

At least proper reel to reel sounded warm! cassettes didn't offer the same fidelity! Absolute shite that has been superseded for mobile use, for the right reasons.

In 2017 alone, more than 80 albums have been released on cassette, driving almost 20,000 sales (19,399 units up to the first week of November).

Wow, amazeballs.

Minidisc was by far the best format. I miss my minidis player.

MiniDiscs are still great . My Biggie Smalls freestyles disc and recordings of various houseparties we had still get played a fair bit.

Tapes however can do one, although it was funny to see one 'despooled' all along a street for what felt like 100s of metres. You know , when the environment didn't matter.

minidis

they're not very good.

this just does not make sense - the only decent cassettes where ones you recorded on your home deck in real-time anyway, if your deck was something decent like a Nakamichi, and certainly not any bought cassette.

My girlfriends son buys records because he says they sound better than CDs, sometimes paying 4 times the cost of a CD, and then plays them back on a £70 quid USB turntable, FFS.

A bloke whose stuff I like, released his last album on (nicely packaged) cassette only - I bought it, then emailed him to ask if there was going to be an MP3 release... he said 'no, but here's a link to the download, don't share it though'... So I have both formats, exclusive like 🙂

no, but here’s a link to the download, don’t share it though

what is the logic in that then? why not sell the download version in case someone with some sense likes his stuff ? you shouldn't be forced to buy a cassette.

[i]you shouldn’t be forced to buy a cassette.[/i]

I don't think anyone was forced to buy it 😉

Here's his message: "It will eventually be digital, yes......is being held back while I look for a potential label to help with vinyl."

I think it's just a way to release music on a cheap [i]physical[/i] format, for people who like to own a physical item. Obviously, not so easy to release vinyl. Some buy because tapes are often ltd edition. You have to appreciate that a lot of people aren't as hung up on sound quality as yourself and just [i]like music[/i]. Not saying either is right or wrong, just the way it is.

@dezb its a way to be lo fi / DIY/ a little different.  you gotta be a real fan to have a tape/ tape player etc. Even though it isn't really different anymore as we are discussing it on singletrack 🙂

last tape I bought was from a band called Male Bonding in 2010. Tape is shite though so it wont last.   Still 8 years and counting I guess

https://malebonding.bandcamp.com/track/split-cs-ibb001

I've still got some computer games on cassette - The Way of the Exploding Fist and a few others.

I've bought maybe a dozen new-release cassette albums/demos in the past 6 months. It's still quite a popular format in the punk D.I.Y. scene.

You should make use of as many music medium-types as possible. There is no right or wrong, just opinion...

Just thought I'd post a picture of my first tape recorder.

Got if from Tesco Hypermarket (!) in Irlam.

Bought for my birthday in 1976. It cost £14.99.

Keep it real with reel to reel.

Did somebody say...

You have to appreciate that a lot of people aren’t as hung up on sound quality as yourself

it's not just sound quality though, tape is a very fragile medium that wears out every time you play it so it is really poor vfm.

And vinyl is even worse with the cost of some of it these days and the speed at which it must get damaged with all those cheap and poor record decks that people are using.

Retro is the new retro. It's everywhere.

https://www.lomography.com/

that wears out every time you play it so it is really poor vfm.

I’ve got tapes from the 80s that still play ok. They’re ok value too, the new ones, as they are pretty cheap.

Who plays the same thing over and over, enough to wear them out, these days anyway?

The first tape deck I owned:

Philips N2204, I used to record stuff off the char show on the radio, and from albums I borrowed from a mate, Zeppelin 4 being one I remember, using the supplied microphone held in front of the speaker. That was real HiFi!

Bugger! Threw out an unopened 5 pack of SA90's last month while clearing my mums house. Clearly I am not hipster enough to have seen beyond the vinyl revival. Vinyl I get - never stopped, but cassettes? Sorry, don't see the point.

Still got a boxed up decent in its day aiwa cassette deck. Might have to check flea bay.

I have a Denon dr m07 or whatever, not quite Nakamichi standard but best offer and able to collect, a few cassettes too, I was proper nerdy even owned a splicing tool to cut out the twisted and curly bits out . The Amstrad in the car used to chew them cheers Alan Sugar although auto reverse was like Michael Phelps at the olympics turning over

I’ve got tapes from the 80s that still play ok. They’re ok value too, the new ones, as they are pretty cheap.

Who plays the same thing over and over, enough to wear them out, these days anyway?

you know that brown stuff you have to clean from the tape heads and wheels, that's stuff wearing from the tape. Plus tapes stretch and are often chewed up by lower standard cassette decks. too fragile and low quality a medium.

Got if from Tesco Hypermarket (!) in Irlam.

We used to drive there from Sale to do the monthly shop!

Was that the one with the donut machine or was that Kwik Save?

Here's mine:

too fragile and low quality a medium.

Jeezuz! Don't ****ing buy them then!

[reply]I don't 🙁

I'm goin shopping... hope you approve-

https://daily.bandcamp.com/2018/03/26/hi-bias-march-2018/

This is the tape deck I have, the Aiwa AD-F770, 3-head, Dolby B/C auto-bias.

My first tape deck was similar to below, I still have it and it was still working till I pulled one of the motors out when a nephew wanted a 12V motor. It made hundreds of tapes and ate quite a few. I bought it in 1974 and if you bought an album you can bet half a dozen people wanted tapes. The sony deck cost me £12, you could buy a Binatone for half that. I replaced it in ~1985 with a philps deck, which I still have but haven't used for years.

Did anyone have a battery record player?

I only listen to music on a classic FP deck nowadays. Tape is so last week

It was the TDK MA-R C90, like this one;

I tried a couple of those on my Nakamichi 582 but given the ability to manually adjust azimuth plus bias and Dolby level to suit specific tapes, metal didn't seem to offer much over SA.

This just popped up on boingboing:

https://boingboing.net/2018/04/05/reel-to-reel-tape-in-a-standar.html

Teac brought out a reel-to-reel system using a standard cassette format frame, allowing tapes to be swapped in and out of the frame, so you could carry a music library around with you. Only available in Japan, first I’ve everheard of it, but it looks pretty nifty. Bet it’s a bugger finding blank tapes...

i've just received a cheap 90s walkman of sorts, and am eagerly awaiting The Wedding Present's Bizarro on tape. I plan on reliving my walk back home after buying it from OurPrice. Excited!

Just threw out one of these last week

To be fair, there was only one channel working but it was a brilliant machine while it worked

I remember working all summer to buy an hs-px303 portable. I remember the track skip function was like witchcraft.

I still have my Walkman Pro.

Why would you ever even consider trying to get cassettes resurrected as a format. Hateful bloody things. Their only reason for being at the time was size and the ability to record stuff. Other formats have come along since and done it much better.

I struggle with the vinyl resurgeance to be honest. But cassettes? Do one.

I've just bought this off that auction site:

I know, I'm regressing but I've really fallen back in love with the CD medium after I bought an Onkyo C-7030. You just cannot argue with the quality. Especially through AKG K550s.

That Teac O'Casse thing is cute but what a faff. Like building a scale model oil rig out of matchsticks.

I remember the heady day that my earnings rose high enough to switch from AR90s to SA90s.
Holy crap, it seems that sealed 90s SA90s sell for about £6 each, to actual morons, I should have some of those. WIN!

Sure I've still got some sealed ones in the loft. Probably melted in the heat though.

I’ve still got some computer games on cassette – The Way of the Exploding Fist and a few others.

Best use of a cassette, especially a C60/90 and one of these...