Audio cassettes are produced again

With a good deck and good tapes, the cassette format can sound amazingly good. I have a Nakamichi CR-5 three-head, double capstan deck and switching from 'source' to 'tape', you really can't hear the difference between the source and the recording.

I have so many good memories from my teenage days when I was always fiddling with cassettes, I totally see why people have a soft spot for the cassette. It's a shame that many other people think of cassette as a crappy format. Yes, compared with streaming services like Spotify, the cassette is not very practical and the capacity of 90 minutes is of course hopeless in comparison. Yes, there have been many cheap and nasty cassette recorders and the tapes themselves weren't all great. But I don't think it's fair that cassette is now so often remembered for being noisy and having 'tape salad' all the time. Tapes can sound brilliant, even decades after recording, the better cassette decks are often impressive machines and the cassettes themselves are nice, collectible items full of nostalgia.
 
I just read some reviews of high end cassette decks from the mid 70s and they were comparable to reel to reel but in a much easier format. With high quality gear and media, they are very good. But most people only know the junk from the 80s and 90s with cheap ass tapes being played on the cheap ass car deck which sounds as bad as you think.
 
But most people only know the junk from the 80s and 90s with cheap ass tapes being played on the cheap ass car deck which sounds as bad as you think.
That's 99% of the reason for cassette's bad reputation right there, lol. Add that to the fact that a lot of people never bothered to clean or demag their tape gear either (leading to poor sound and eaten tapes), and it's no wonder tapes aren't fondly remembered by many.

One of the issues with the high end tape decks is that they were quite expensive when they were new - most Nakamichi models, and high end/TOTL stuff from Tandberg, Pioneer, Akai, Sony, Teac, etc was likely out of budget for a lot of folks (and I'm guessing it was cheaper to get good sound out of a mediocre to mid-range turntable than the nice tape decks).
 
i still have to try old DAT from back in the day . industry standard stuff . but firstly i should sort my bootleg cassettes from the 90.s into digital . still have mini discs as well
 
Taketheflame is correct. It was the proliferation of cheap decks and tapes that gave them their bad rap. Saying the CC is a poor medium is the same as saying LPs are too noisy and scratchy to ever be considered any good compared to CDs. And a ton of it is the fun of the tactile hands on and getting results vs being a passive Bystander like in streaming. Used to be you could even get once super expensive TOTL decks for pennies on the dollar. Now, mainly the crappy decks are pennies on the dollar.
 
Used to be you could even get once super expensive TOTL decks for pennies on the dollar. Now, mainly the crappy decks are pennies on the dollar.
Seems like that used to be the case with a lot of classic gear - could barely give it away at one point, and now everyone wants it - I've certainly noticed it with good tape decks. There's still some good 90's gear for decent prices out there.
 
Not sure I will ever buy another cassette tape but glad to see there is a market and taste for fans. I still have my Nak CR1A and the wife's Teac deck. I think we down to about 40 or so tapes. Somewhere in moves pre 2000's most my tapes vanished. As I got back into this hobby with better gear, I can hear better than expected SQ pops and hiss too.
 
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