Recently came across this story from Jan, 2022
This Missouri Company Still Makes Cassette Tapes, and They Are Flying Off the Factory Floor.
Al
This Missouri Company Still Makes Cassette Tapes, and They Are Flying Off the Factory Floor.
Al
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
interesting story on audio cassette tapes, still being made
- Thread starter alok
- Start date
Great article! Thanks for posting. Glad to see this company is still producing cassettes. I lived through the main cassette era, and because I was working in the music industry for many of those years, I probably easily have over 200 promo pre-recorded cassettes (many of which I don't own on CD or LP), not to mention lots of mix tapes and airchecks. I threw one in my deck the other day, and it was a wonderful listening experience. I've ordered some replacement belts for my cassette deck, and plan on using it more frequently.
Sure, what's not to love? Tape hiss? Wow and flutter? Ah yes, what a wonder of technology.
Thanks so much for posting! A very interesting article, if not maybe a little unbelievable that cassettes of all media are making a comeback. IMO going from some more modern media options back to cassettes would be akin to going from High Definition TV back to Standard Def - maybe even back to CRT. Like others, I have lots of cassettes (and CDs and reel to reel tapes and even cartridges) in storage, but in my case most of it is music and content that's easily downloadable from numerous online sources.
Vinyl isn't the most perfect playback medium either, but there seems to be a lot of music fans that are still enjoying it. It looks like there's still a market out there for cassettes too. Sometimes it's not just about S/N, wow & flutter and distortion figures.
Vinyl is appealing for some due to the natural warmth; aka mechanically-induced distortion. Other's enjoy the nostalgia, or the ability to play an existing library.
Cassette tapes were designed for portability. Nostalgia? I guess, but technically cassettes are aurally inferior to even vinyl. Other than a personal trip in Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine, there are zero advantages to cassettes.
I still have some tape cart machines in my basement I'd be happy to sell you. The audio quality is better than cassettes.
You do realize that most recording studios sometimes incorporate digital plug-ins that simulate tape, right? It's very possible that by listening to a cassette (or any tape medium for that matter), one is experiencing those same feel good plug-in characteristics without the digital contribution (ie, pure analog). Just like many music fans, sometimes I'm listening technically and analytically, and sometimes I'm not.
Last edited:
Sure, you can get modern plug-in's to enhance or trash audio to your heart's content. Have never heard of specifically a cassette tape plug in that adds tape hiss, wow, flutter, and poor frequency response through. And I work with a lot of recording engineers. Can't see that as a very popular application, either.
The main advantage cassettes had was portability, especially for playing in cars until CD's and later MP3s and streaming took their place. I actually wish that some car stereos would still have cassette players, but now that Bluetooth and MP3s have taken over CD players are even hard to find in cars.
Many cassette decks had excellent Wow & Flutter and Frequency Response figures. For comparison purposes, I'm looking at a Denon DN-790R deck that had a specified Wow & Flutter measurement of 0.038% WRMS, while a Technics SP-10MKII turntable quotes a Wow & Flutter figure of 0.025% WRMS. Those figures are pretty darn close in my book, and impressive. Frequency response of the Denon DN-790R is specified (with metal tape) at 20-20,000 Hz + or - 3 dB. I see nothing wrong there either. The Denon DN-790R also featured Dolby B, C & S. So the quality did exist, if you wanted to pay for it. Direct drive cassette decks are still very much in high demand on the used market.
Like many consumer products of the day, most times the published specs didn't match in real world use. The main downside of cassettes was simply the physical size of the actual tape being recorded/played. For stereo recording, the tape size is/was tiny anyway, now split that size of recording media in half.
Years ago a friend of mine was interested in the (at the time) new broadcast automation system that used cassettes/decks. We tried high end decks from Denon and Technics, tapes from Maxell and TDK. and we just couldn't get consistent audio quality suitable for broadcast use. With both brands of decks, we would measure response, flutter, and frequency response, and get different results each and every time. One constant was; each time we repeated the test, the results got worse. We chocked it up to the tiny tape area just wore out so quickly. That, and the tape stretched really easy too, so the wow and flutter went from somewhat acceptable, to completely unacceptable after just twenty plays. Again, fail for broadcast use.
Cassette tapes were an important bookmark in portable audio history. Certainly more important than DAT tapes, Minidisc, USB drives, or 8-Tracks. But for modern music listening? Only for the nostalgia.
Though MiniDiscs seemed like just a blip on the radar and weren't around for long in the grand scheme, I appreciated them for the ease of editing or even re-arranging the order of tracks on the fly.
One of the main drawbacks to tapes, cassettes and CD's (at least here in the desert Southwest) is the heat inside a vehicle parked in the sun. The heat will warp most everything. Memory sticks become the best alternative because of their small size and the amount of music they can hold. Take them with you - don't leave in the car which becomes literally an oven in summertime.
Interestingly, MiniDiscs had a much longer life in Latin America than the US. They were even often used in radio stations as an alternative to carts for music playback.
I'm not sure how many of these were produced or for how long, but one station I worked at pulled all their cart machines in early 1992 and replaced them with the "next best thing", which was the Fidelipac Dynamax DCR1000 series. It looked and functioned like a standard cart machine, but the media was 1.44 floppy disks. That station aired all their music from CDs, but used the floppy "carts" for everything else - commercials, liners, legal IDs, etc. I remember them being somewhat problematic. They'd only work well with certain types of discs and you had to wait for the green light to go out on the front of the floppy drive before ejecting, or you'd risk screwing up the disc forever.
I recall in 1993 convincing my owner to buy minidiscs for the station in Houston. If you watched your levels and ran a tight mini disc (no fades). You could program an entire break with re-entry liner and you'd think I was giving our four cart machines a workout. In one afternoon a wall of carts was replaced with one minidisc and 4 cart machines were replaced by one minidisc recorder/player. By the way they were $1,200 back then and a 60 minute minidisc was $17.50. I though minidisc was a real winner for the editing capability. It should have won out for computers instead of a CD and while it made it into lots of radio stations, it never took off as I felt it should have.
H
Harvey_Dogg
Guest
I had a friend who created a great invention. It was a record player with video. The RCA Video Disk Player.
But out came VCR's at about the same time. It didn't fly.
He then became part of the Moving Picture Experts Group as an engineer with Thompson Electronics.
He did better with MP2, MP3, and MP4.
MP3 is better than a cassette tape.
But out came VCR's at about the same time. It didn't fly.
He then became part of the Moving Picture Experts Group as an engineer with Thompson Electronics.
He did better with MP2, MP3, and MP4.
MP3 is better than a cassette tape.
Last edited by a moderator:
We had one, unfortunately. Our "family gift" one Christmas in the mid 1980s was supposed to be a VCR. My dad went to one of his buddies who owned an electronics shop and he talked him into the video disc player instead because he not only sold them, but also had a selection of rental discs as well. All was not lost as that place carried a good selection of rentals and updated their selections often, but the thing never worked well, we had to have it repaired a few times (stylus replacments if I'm not mistaken) and I'm guessing within 2 or maybe 3 years max, we trashed it in favor of a proper VHS unit.
- Status