Cassette Revival (again)

[Late Boomer]

I never cared for R2R. Those that I've seen looked like they were from grandma's crate, wooden boxes with reels made of faded-color plastic, clunky, not portable. I wanted a portable cassette boombox, and I got one as a birthday present when I was in middle school, although it was not as sexy as I hoped for. The first time I thought of R2R as sexy when I saw it in Pulp Fiction. These days, it would be awesome to have one in a prominent location for parties

Or, maybe something simpler with tons of W&F for projects... but I can barely play sheet music and cannot compose at all.

 

[BOUXY]

"barely play sheet music and cannot compose at all." What doe this have to do with any of this as far as enjoyment of the medium?
Get a real R2R not some almost Toy of one and then we can talk

 

[intro6]

Those that I've seen looked like they were from grandma's crate, wooden boxes with reels made of faded-color plastic, clunky, not portable.

You appear to have seen more in person than I have. These machines seem to be so uncommon that I've only ever seen one in person in my whole life (it was in an antique shop & it did not look in very good shape) and believe me, I've browsed through a whole lot of places over the years. Meanwhile, over that same time span, I've seen a huge number of cassette decks in all sorts of places. Same with the cassettes themselves.

 

[Late Boomer]

"barely play sheet music and cannot compose at all." What doe this have to do with any of this as far as enjoyment of the medium?
Get a real R2R not some almost Toy of one and then we can talk

The guy in the video clearly is enjoying the medium (did I have to make it clear that it was not my video?). I have no plans of getting an R2R tape recorder (and before you ask, no 78-RPM gramophone players and no wax cylinder machines), but I reserve the right to talk about them whenever I feel like it.

 

[Bone Yard]

Reel to Reel has been following the cassette trajectory but just like the old days, at a smaller scale. I've got a small collection of the standard equipment from the early to late 70's, I'm surprised you've never seen any intro6, I used to run into players a few times a year, I haven't seen anything in the last couple years but my thrifting time is really down. I've also got a few portable R2R, some interesting because they're high end, some interesting because they made millions for cheap in Hong Kong with bright colors.

I get excited about the looks, the motors, electronics and all the other parts that went into a machine that makes music. I normally listen while working, either physical or paperwork so having high end sonics isn't a big issue and probably isn't realistic in my workspaces. Usually when I cue up a record, tape or reel, I intend to listen to the whole thing, it's too hard to change songs, with digital, it's too easy to change songs and not get the full effect of an album.

 

[intro6]

I've got a small collection of the standard equipment from the early to late 70's, I'm surprised you've never seen any intro6, I used to run into players a few times a year

Just to eliminate any confusion about what I was referring to, I was specifically talking about R2R tape decks, not all R2R tape machines. I got the impression that you're including all R2R machines, but I'm not totally sure. So when including regular R2R tape recorders, yes, I have seen a small handful in person - I even bought one some while back, and ... surprise, it actually worked! Tough luck though in being able to find any extra tape reels for it. I guess I'll most likely just have to be content with the one it came with.

 

[BOUXY]

The guy in the video clearly is enjoying the medium (did I have to make it clear that it was not my video?). I have no plans of getting an R2R tape recorder (and before you ask, no 78-RPM gramophone players and no wax cylinder machines), but I reserve the right to talk about them whenever I feel like it.

No problem there!

 

[Late Boomer]

I did not know that he got a Portastudio as well. If this is not cassette revival, I don't know what is.

 

[Bone Yard]

Sorry intro6, I'm not familar with the nomanclature, I consider a reel to reel deck the full size static deck usually found around a full size stereo. Then there's the cool little portable reel to reels, I've got a handful of the cheap 3" models, mostly from Hong Kong, that are kind of cool just for what they were. The high end portables would be the UHER, Nagra, even Sony had a highly sought after version, these never went down in value, most are built like Swiss Watches. The full size decks are seeing a revivial but they were never as popular as tapes and the revivial is just a blip but it's there.

Late Boomer, my record store guy told me he could sell every Portastudio I found, the garage bands are mixing tapes on them for the merch booth at their shows, I've been watching them go through the roof in value.

 

[S. Pupp]

I bought a used Teac reel to reel deck about 20 years ago, along with a blank tape reel from Radio Shack. My Walkman was so much superior in sound quality that I returned the R2R, equipped with the now unneeded blank tape. Granted, my Walkman was the WM-D6C Walkman Pro, but still, I expected more from R2R. To be fair, the deck likely needed a service.

 

[titanstats]

If your Walkman sounded much better than your RTR, there was something terribly wrong with the RTR...

 

[Late Boomer]

If your Walkman sounded much better than your RTR, there was something terribly wrong with the RTR...

Not necessarily.

 

[titanstats]

Not necessarily.

Necessarily, it shouldn't even be in the same ballpark unless the RTR is broken/out of spec/low-end 60s junk. It's not possible for anything using 1/8" tape at 1 7/8IPS to outperform a decent unit using 1/4" tape at 7.5IPS; twice the amount of tape at 4X the speed. Basic physics and all...

 

[perryinva]

Sure, with the same tape and head tech and no NR. But a top Nakamichi with metal tape, even without NR gives one a run for the money and with DolbyC, actually beats many good RTRs @ 7 1/2.

 

[Late Boomer]

Necessarily, it shouldn't even be in the same ballpark unless the RTR is broken/out of spec/low-end 60s junk. It's not possible for anything using 1/8" tape at 1 7/8IPS to outperform a decent unit using 1/4" tape at 7.5IPS; twice the amount of tape at 4X the speed. Basic physics and all...

Have you read the specs? W&F < 0.04% NAB (±0.14% DIN), speed accuracy within 0.3%, S/N 58 dB without Dolby, 71 dB with Dolby C on Type II or Type IV tape (the older model on the picture above does not have Dolby C). Do R2R machines even able to use metal tape? Frequency response is the only thing that is not super spectacular, but really 15 kHz and 65 dB S/N was considered good enough for professional recording of classical music back in the 1950s.

And this is a portable machine, not a component deck. Can you put an R2R with the same specs in your pocket or a handbag? Of course, it is all pointless now, my digital Zoom recorder has better specs, and it is smaller.

This is the D6C with Dolby C:

 

[titanstats]

Have you read the specs? W&F < 0.04% NAB (±0.14% DIN), speed accuracy within 0.3%, S/N 58 dB without Dolby, 71 dB with Dolby C on Type II or Type IV tape (the older model on the picture above does not have Dolby C). Do R2R machines even able to use metal tape? Frequency response is the only thing that is not super spectacular, but really 15 kHz and 65 dB S/N was considered good enough for professional recording of classical music back in the 1950s.

And this is a portable machine, not a component deck. Can you put an R2R with the same specs in your pocket or a handbag? Of course, it is all pointless now, my digital Zoom recorder has better specs, and it is smaller.

This is the D6C with Dolby C:

I don't walk around playing cassettes, so that's kind of irrelevant, but

>>Can you put an R2R with the same specs?

Yes, much, much better even if you want to pay -- thousands of movies were recorded using Nagras, but I don't think many Walkmans were ever used...

 

[titanstats]

Sure, with the same tape and head tech and no NR. But a top Nakamichi with metal tape, even without NR gives one a run for the money and with DolbyC, actually beats many good RTRs @ 7 1/2.

>>NR
NR of all kinds generally sound terrible. It's not the same music with and without NR, I prefer not to use it. As for the Nak, let's hear if a recording made on it sounds the same on any other brand of deck...
There's nothing wrong with cassette as a format, but come on, it is what it is.

 

[Late Boomer]

I don't walk around playing cassettes, so that's kind of irrelevant

Do you expect from a Yaris the same performance as from a Corvette? The D6C is a portable machine with component deck-like performance.

>>Can you put an R2R with the same specs?

The question was, could you put it in your pocket? The Nagra you linked to measures 32x22x11 cm and weights 7.3 kg with batteries, not exactly a pocket-sized machine, although I know of smaller Nagras that use cassette tape. Still, the specs are rather pedestrian at 3 and 3/4 ips:

W&F -- ±0.12% (DIN) (similar to the D6C)
Frequency response -- 25 Hz to 10 kHz (ouch!)

This Nagra achieved better numbers only by using a significantly higher tape speed, like a Corvette with a prehistoric pushrod, no replacement for displacement. The D6C was a smarter and smaller device.

Nagra was too shy to list S/N for speeds slower than 7 1/2 ips, and at this speed S/N was 60 dB, the D6C achieved 58 dB without Dolby at 1 and 1/2 ips.

Portability, ease of use and acceptable performance was what made the compact cassette win over R2R.

Again, all of this is not relevant now, as presently we use these things for purposes other than sheer audio quality. I like R2R for their looks, especially with large reels.

I've already posted this video a couple of times, but it never gets old

 

[titanstats]

Oh god I give up. The question isn't if you can put it in your pocket -- why would I care about that at all? The question was about sound quality. Nobody bought a Nagra to use solely at low speed, that's for voice recording. Cassettes weren't used in studios for obvious reasons, they sound terrible and are full of noise comparatively speaking -- if they weren't, they'd have been used. Portastudios sound like lo-fi trash, so no they aren't useful unless you want a lo-fi effect, some people do.
Personally I still do use RTR for sheer audio quality, nothing else beats it IMO; if you like analog recordings they'll always be top of the food chain. Come on over one day and I'll demonstrate the difference.

 

[intro6]

There's nothing wrong with cassette as a format, but come on, it is what it is.

Yes, I agree, and so did the vast majority of R2R consumers back at the onset of the 1980s apparently, when they switched over to cassette decks. Even without today's major difficulties with the format, any minor benefits then were less than those gained from shifting over to the much improved cassette decks for those consumers. When I think about it, the big advantage of R2R is in live recording (which most people are not engaged in), but professionally of course, R2R has been almost completely supplanted by digital. Now of course, if you were to obtain some of those higher speed prerecorded R2R tapes, I don't deny that there could be a little improvement in sound quality, but at what cost? Those tapes are uncommon and quite expensive. It's just not worth it to me to pay that much for a music album just for a little supposed improvement in the sound, and that is apart from the costs and difficulties of the R2R decks themselves. But don't get me wrong. I'm still an admirer of these machines.