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Topic: Cassette Revival (Read 10572 times) previous topic - next topic
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Re: Cassette Revival

Reply #1
I was at a concert some time last year where afterwards the band sold their music on cassettes only.  :)
Every night with my star friends / We eat caviar and drink champagne
Sniffing in the VIP area / We talk about Frank Sinatra
Do you know Frank Sinatra? / He's dead

Re: Cassette Revival

Reply #2
In 2020 we will all listen to wax cylinder.

Re: Cassette Revival

Reply #3
In 2030, we will actually go and listen to the musicians play live.

Wait...

Re: Cassette Revival

Reply #4
Last year Wolf Parade rereleased their first album.
Preorders got a bonus live recording (the full set!). But the only formats for sale were vinyl and cassette (+ lossless download, thankfully).

And that's why i have a sealed cassette on top of my CD shelf. Worth it.

I like this quote from the article:
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There’s also something warm and fuzzy about tapes to me
Maybe it's the sound :P

Re: Cassette Revival

Reply #5
One difference when compared to vinyl is a complete lack of new cassette decks. Decks can't last forever, as some irreplaceable parts wear out. Without new decks, or parts, being manufactured, cassette distribution probably won't survive. Like records however, there is a wealth of material that only exists on cassette. For quite awhile, cassettes were used to record day to day audio. There are always people ripping cassettes in order to preserve the content on them. Without working decks, some stuff could be irretrievable.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  ;~)


Re: Cassette Revival

Reply #7
I ordered a CD + Cassette bundle last year and the sound quality of the cassette was really bad. It was not comparable at all to cassettes (Ferro Type II and cobalt/chrome type II )recorded on a good tape deck. I tried to listen to it both using Dolby B and without.


Re: Cassette Revival

Reply #9
I ordered a CD + Cassette bundle last year and the sound quality of the cassette was really bad. It was not comparable at all to cassettes (Ferro Type II and cobalt/chrome type II )recorded on a good tape deck. I tried to listen to it both using Dolby B and without.

The extreme crappiness of even the later "state-of-the-art" digital bin pre-recorded cassettes never failed to appal me beyond belief.

One recent attempt at pre-recorded cassette resurrection involved duplicating machines with a frequency response barely good enough for talking book usage and horrendously high wow & flutter. Pity the fools who know not what they do.

I'll settle for home recordings direct from CD on a mildly modified Teac V-1050 that returns a measured and confirmed 18Hz to 18.5kHz within 1dB at 0dB (18Hz to 20.5kHz within 1dB at -20dB) on el-cheapo TDK CDing-2 pseudo-chrome tapes using Dolby C thank you very much.

Why bother? Because I can. No other reason except nostalgia.

Re: Cassette Revival

Reply #10
One difference when compared to vinyl is a complete lack of new cassette decks.
Falsified by this web page and many other like it:

New cassette decks for sale

I'd like to think that 2tec may have been referring to decks actually worth buying. Those are all a country mile short of what cassette as a format can achieve on a competent deck.

Re: Cassette Revival

Reply #11
One difference when compared to vinyl is a complete lack of new cassette decks.
Falsified by this web page and many other like it:

New cassette decks for sale

I'd like to think that 2tec may have been referring to decks actually worth buying. Those are all a country mile short of what cassette as a format can achieve on a competent deck.

Brave, but possibly imaginative words.  How about some reliable evidence to back them up? Note: you may have strayed into TOS8 land.

Re: Cassette Revival

Reply #12
FWIW all the cassettes I made back in the 70s were Dolby B encoded. The word Dolby does not show up on that page.

Re: Cassette Revival

Reply #13
Brave, but possibly imaginative words.  How about some reliable evidence to back them up? Note: you may have strayed into TOS8 land.

I fail to see how TOS#8 comes into it.

The basic specs for most of the decks listed are available online with a little digging around, so no imagination is involved in terms of finding reasonably hard facts regarding frequency response, signal-to-noise ratio, wow & flutter figures, etc. We can clearly disregard the mono-only decks in terms of accurate stereo reproduction for starters even if manufacturer's specs are disallowed.

As Glenn infers, the lack of genuine Dolby in any of its forms quite likely makes all of the decks listed incapable of decoding a Dolby recording entirely accurately, so that's likely any chance of accurate reproduction of nearly any high quality recording out of the window for starters as nearly all of those will have been made with either Dolby B or C.

Even if the simulated Dolby B provided on only four of the decks listed is accurate enough to achieve noise reduction perceptual transparency, this still rules out Dolby C recordings with their greatly extended HF response at high recording levels which are in no way backwards-compatible with Dolby B decoding.

The four decks listed with 'Dynamic Noise Reduction' all have frequency response specs of around 40Hz to 14kHz +/- 3dB at -20dB. Are you seriously suggesting that a person needs to provide ABX test results to prove that they can reliably hear the difference between 40Hz to 14kHz within 6dB and a 20Hz to 20kHz flat source?

Re: Cassette Revival

Reply #14
Brave, but possibly imaginative words.  How about some reliable evidence to back them up? Note: you may have strayed into TOS8 land.

I fail to see how TOS#8 comes into it.

So you're admitting that none of these decks sound different? Or do you have DBTs to back such claims up?

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The basic specs for most of the decks listed are available online

Really? But yet you want us to believe that both easy to find but you can't provide a link to any of them when politely asked for them?


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As Glenn infers, the lack of genuine Dolby in any of its forms quite likely makes all of the decks listed incapable of decoding a Dolby recording entirely accurately, so that's likely any chance of accurate reproduction of nearly any high quality recording out of the window for starters as nearly all of those will have been made with either Dolby B or C.

On what grounds do you dismiss my statement that since the relevanrt Dolby patents have expired, accurate versions of the feature can be supplied without licensing and the costs associated with it?

BTW, if that information is not online, then you just falsified your earlier claim that it is online and easy to find.

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Even if the simulated Dolby B provided on only four of the decks listed is accurate enough to achieve noise reduction perceptual transparency, this still rules out Dolby C recordings with their greatly extended HF response at high recording levels which are in no way backwards-compatible with Dolby B decoding.

Looks to me like you just falsified your earlier claim that it is online and easy to find, again.


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The four decks listed with 'Dynamic Noise Reduction' all have frequency response specs of around 40Hz to 14kHz +/- 3dB at -20dB.

Links?

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Are you seriously suggesting that a person needs to provide ABX test results to prove that they can reliably hear the difference between 40Hz to 14kHz within 6dB and a 20Hz to 20kHz flat source?

Within 6 dB is pretty vague. It could be +/- 0.1 dB whihc is clearly "within 6 dB" or the variations could take the full +/- 6 dB. But, since your comments seem to be free of reliable evidence, who knows?

BTW the largest source of variations in cassette  tape recording is the tape. In general the identically same tape can conceivably be used on all of the machines. If its errors predominate, and they do, then all the machines will work pretty much the same, no?

So,  it is possible that they all have pretty much the same variations. So, even though the variations are there, they still all sound the same. With no reliable evidence, who knows? 

Given the evidence you've provided it seems possible that you really don't know a  lot about the challenges of cassette recording, so why should more experienced people give any credibility to stuff you just make up, if that is what you are doing. With no supporting evidence, your comments are hihgly susceptible to that judgement.

It is also possible that even the allegedly better machines that I don't see linked or even named could be just as bad.

Who knows?


Re: Cassette Revival

Reply #15
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So you're admitting that none of these decks sound different? Or do you have DBTs to back such claims up?

So you're claiming that they will all sound identical with no evidence to back that up? If you provide a link to decks that you seem to be claiming are all perfectly adequate then it's up to you to provide the results to prove it.

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Really? But yet you want us to believe that both easy to find but you can't provide a link to any of them when politely asked for them?

If you had a genuine interest in the subject then you would have done what I did and spent the few minutes it takes to track down the evidence before claiming that they're all adequate performers. Once again, it's not up to someone else to do that for you. Google is not your enemy.

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On what grounds do you dismiss my statement that since the relevanrt Dolby patents have expired, accurate versions of the feature can be supplied without licensing and the costs associated with it?

On what grounds do you claim that the modelling is 100% accurate? Besides, as it's an on/off switch on the few decks listed that have it, how do you propose that it can accurately model Dolby B and Dolby C when it clearly can't?

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Looks to me like you just falsified your earlier claim that it is online and easy to find, again.

Unless you are disputing what is clearly there for all to see in the product descriptions at the link you provided, I fail to understand this line of argument.

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Within 6 dB is pretty vague. It could be +/- 0.1 dB whihc is clearly "within 6 dB" or the variations could take the full +/- 6 dB. But, since your comments seem to be free of reliable evidence, who knows?

The manufacturer knows. Do you honestly believe that any manufacturer would list a cassette deck capable of vastly superior performance than the specified 40Hz to 14kHz within a +/- 3dB range wouldn't list it with realistic specs?

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BTW the largest source of variations in cassette  tape recording is the tape. In general the identically same tape can conceivably be used on all of the machines. If its errors predominate, and they do, then all the machines will work pretty much the same, no?

Not necessarily so in terms of overall frequency response. The largest variation in HF response is determined by the gap size of the playback head. A full 20kHz bandwidth is easily achievable with almost any reasonably modern formulation of any tape type with adequate supporting hardware. I'm happy to provide my own frequency response charts for budget Fe versus mid-range Cr02 and Metal as evidence if required.

Compression through tape saturation is obviously a different matter with Metal tape winning hands-down, but it's still vastly reduced for Fe and Cr02 tape types if the recording was made with Dolby HX Pro and Dolby C. Of course, you have no way of harnessing the benefits of this with no Dolby C playback hardware, and any deck with just the one Dolby simulation mode will almost certainly be Dolby B only.

Quote
Given the evidence you've provided it seems possible that you really don't know a  lot about the challenges of cassette recording, so why should more experienced people give any credibility to stuff you just make up, if that is what you are doing.

Having scratch-designed and built the electronics for several cassette decks over the past 35 years, I am all too well aware of the inherent limitations of cassette tape as a format. If you are blindly assuming that all of the decks in your link are capable of reproducing high quality cassette recordings to the same level of quality within the bounds likely to pass a DBT then you are very much mistaken.

I still recall making you an offer around 5(?) years ago of starting a thread with test samples of CD source versus high-end cassette recordings for ABX evaluation, but this was completely ignored at the time. Out of interest, was there any particular reason for this offer being ignored?

PS The claim that "It could be +/- 0.1 dB" is clearly put there to catch a person out because you know as well as I do that there is no analogue tape deck in existence that can reproduce even one octave worth of bandwidth up from 20Hz or even 40Hz within that range of amplitude error. Head-bumps?

Re: Cassette Revival

Reply #16
Quote
So you're admitting that none of these decks sound different? Or do you have DBTs to back such claims up?

I wonder if TOS 8 is still operative around here. Last time I read it I sort of grasped the meaning that reliable proof of claims that audible differences existed were of the essence, but not the reverse.

As far as any admissions I made in my previous post goes, what is unclear about: "But, since your comments seem to be free of reliable evidence, who knows?"

In particular, what's unclear about the phrase "who knows?"  How you construe that into a claim that I have reliable facts about the equipment in  question at my disposal?

Given the tremendous improvements that have been made in the price/performance of audio electronics, which have led to high quality CD player reader mechanisms costing under $15, something similar may have happened with cassette tape.

I think it may be possible that there are only a very small number of different player transport and head assemblies that may still be in production, and ditto for the chip(s)  that make up the electronic package.

As far as your comments about flat response out to 20 kHz, certain critical facts seem to be absent which make your claim questionable to say the least. One is that standard  cassette response testing took place at a level of -20 dB with respect to a 0 dB level that represented 1-3% THD at 400 Hz-1 KHz. IOW, it was far from flat response.  Secondly, the measured response of magnetic tape at 20 KHz even with double the track width and 4 times the tape seed was generally in question. IOW it bounced around a lot, and quite audibly so, even at lower frequencies such as 12 kHz.  To repeat that was at double the track width and 4 times the speed.

Seeing no reliable test results clearly indicating otherwise...




Re: Cassette Revival

Reply #17
Can't all cassette decks by ABXed? With the right signal? There are high-ish frequency sine waves, audible to most people under 50, that I've never heard perfectly recorded and replayed by a cassette deck.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Cassette Revival

Reply #18
I saw no listening log when Arnold "Agreed" to pretty much the same criticism here: https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,113344.msg933268.html#msg933268
But that was back in 2016 ...

TOS#8 does by the way refer to any "statement concerning subjective sound quality". It would only take two words to restrict the requirement to applying only to statements "concerning differences in subjective sound quality", if it were supposed to be read that way.

Re: Cassette Revival

Reply #19
One difference when compared to vinyl is a complete lack of new cassette decks.
Falsified by this web page and many other like it:

Arnold, I'd consider the example(s) you provided either are inadequate or impractical. Clearly my point was, as Slipstreem correctly pointed out, that there are very few quality working "decks" when compared to the numbers of quality working turntables. I'd suggest that it's unlikely there is a sufficient market for new, quality cassette decks and therefore it's unlikely a cassette revival could be as large as the vinyl revival.

This is, of course, simply an observation and opinion. If you need to amplify or criticize, that's, of course, your privilege. However, as for your diction, I found it pejorative, since I clearly intended no deceit. Furthermore, I have absolutely no interest in a rhetorical and argumentative discussion with you. Good day.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  ;~)

 

Re: Cassette Revival

Reply #20
Quote
Given the tremendous improvements that have been made in the price/performance of audio electronics, which have led to high quality CD player reader mechanisms costing under $15, something similar may have happened with cassette tape.
Whilst true to a point, nobody seems to be manufacturing high quality playback heads anymore, so the limitation to a 14 or 15kHz bandwidth seems to be almost universal across today's supposedly high-end decks. As for cassette deck mechanisms, well, good luck with those. You aren't likely to find any specced much better than 0.2% WRMS which is clearly audible (to me) when ABXing against a digital music source.

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I think it may be possible that there are only a very small number of different player transport and head assemblies that may still be in production, and ditto for the chip(s)  that make up the electronic package.
True, and none of the currently available hardware that I've personally come across can hold a candle to high-end decks when cassette was at its peak back in the late '80s and early '90s.

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As far as your comments about flat response out to 20 kHz, certain critical facts seem to be absent which make your claim questionable to say the least. One is that standard  cassette response testing took place at a level of -20 dB with respect to a 0 dB level that represented 1-3% THD at 400 Hz-1 KHz. IOW, it was far from flat response.
Far from flat at 0dB unless a CrO2 or Metal tape is used with the aid of Dolby HX Pro and Dolby C, then it's easily possible to achieve sub-20Hz to 18kHz+ within 1dB at 0dB.

This is my blueprinted and mildly modified Teac V-1050 with a budget pseudo-chrome tape. The vertical axis is 1dB per division...


(Right-click and 'Open image in new tab' if not visible)

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Secondly, the measured response of magnetic tape at 20 KHz even with double the track width and 4 times the tape seed was generally in question.
20kHz is reasonably stable here when viewed on an oscilloscope in real-time. That does, of course, depend on a person's interpretation of 'reasonably'. I wouldn't expect a high degree of stability without dual capstans and a pressure pad lifter, Nakamichi-styly, but how often does a music source consist of nothing but pure 20kHz sinewaves? The heavy calendering process applied to many later tape stocks also did a lot to improve HF stability.

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Seeing no reliable test results clearly indicating otherwise...
Seeing no test results of any kind is neither proof nor disproof of anything.

Re: Cassette Revival

Reply #21
Can't all cassette decks by ABXed? With the right signal? There are high-ish frequency sine waves, audible to most people under 50, that I've never heard perfectly recorded and replayed by a cassette deck.

All of the cassette decks I had back in the day *seemed* to so obviously screw up SQ that I never even tried. I know - big fallacy but at the time ABXing players and recorders was difficult because of the requirement for time synch.

There is an extant ABX test that claims to show that even a very high-quality pro machine running with wider tracks and a higher tape speed is detectable in an ABX test:

ABXing pro audio high speed analog tape

I would presume that no cassette machine would do better, but if I put my skeptic's hat on, it is only a presumption. I don't believe that I have a cassette machine that is in good enough shape to test.


Re: Cassette Revival

Reply #22


This is my blueprinted and mildly modified Teac V-1050 with a budget pseudo-chrome tape. The vertical axis is 1dB per division...


(Right-click and 'Open image in new tab' if not visible)


I tried to confirm the above test by reviewing the online published tests of commercial decks with HX Pro and the like that I could find , and while I found some test results, they all fell way short.


Re: Cassette Revival

Reply #24
Bandcamp is reporting a 58% increase in cassette sales.
https://daily.bandcamp.com/2017/01/24/everything-is-terrific-the-bandcamp-2016-year-in-review/

They used the common misleading tactic of reporting percentages, berift of actual numbers. OK, so sales went from 50 pieces to 79 pieces. which is as good of an interpretation of the data provided as any,