Cassettes and related matters

[Bryn]

Wasn't there a theory that the best way to listen to an early CD was to record it and playback on a high quality cassette ?!

Quite possibly. Some recording engineers used to use what you might term a DAD technique, making the original recording using digital methods, then mixing using analogue before re-digitising for issue. It was held that this gave a 'warmer' sound.

[Dave2002]

Well I can't as I don't possess the skills but that's not to say it can't be done. Cassettes used for choir purposes were copied from members' tapes or more often CDs, and not kept once the concert was done. I rather doubt that my own pre-recorded or live/broadcast recording cassettes are in a usable state and I have no idea if the one remaining cassette player still works. I do remember that the rewind button stopped functioning, necessitating turning the tape over and using the fast forward instead. The sound was not great, but as it was bought to enable the children to play games on the Acorn that wasn't a priority.

If you have a computer - which I assume you have as you're posting round here - it's not really a very big deal to get audacity (or a similar editor - but audacity has the advantage of being cross platform and also free) on to it. Once you have that, from what you have written so far, you might need to learn how to get input from the cassettes - but assuming the main interest is to get audio for practice purposes then you might just as well download mp3s and import them into a tool - such as audacity to put the cue points in. As long as the imported files are only used for practice and deleted afterwards I wouldn't expect a major problem.

If you use downloaded material which you pay for, you would be entitled to keep that in its original format.

It's really not that difficult.

[richardfinegold]

Wasn't there a theory that the best way to listen to an early CD was to record it and playback on a high quality cassette ?!

At the time, yes, but some of the cassettes that I had made this way didn’t sound so good 25 years later

[Dave2002]

I don't have a Nakamichi but a couple of late Sony machines (on of which is a three head, three motor model) which offer Dolby B, C and S. I keep promising myself to digitise my many recordings of friend's concerts, and of Radio 3 broadcasts. My aim was to work on them when I retired, but that time keeps being put off. I have cut back to part time work but now house repairs had become the more urgent need. As some point however ... Then there are the many MiniDiscs to transfer (a more delicate task since my Sony MiniDisc deck has lost its eject and track select functions, necessitating manual intervention to sort the former, and transferring discs' content as single files for later editing).

I had visions of setting up turntables (stored in lofts), getting surround sound to work, making good digital transcriptions of LPs etc. when I retired, and listening to more recorded music. Actually hardly any of these things have happened - I have too many things to do (apparently) and chaos and house maintenance now dominate, much to my horror. I did do a couple of videos and audio recordings, but otherwise retirement hasn’t been the great relief and chance to do things I really want which I’d hoped for. I’m now even less sure of what I want to do than before. I’d also hoped to go back to playing music rather than “merely” attending concerts and operas, though I do more of that than when I was working.

I was warned about this before I retired, and there does seem to be some truth in the notion that things get busier after retirement, though ymmv.

At times I do also feel that some of the things I do as a “volunteer” are worth money, and while mostly this doesn’t bother me too much, I’m not totally convinced that a significant part of the older community should effectively be working for no pay.

[Conchis]

I had visions of setting up turntables (stored in lofts), getting surround sound to work, making good digital transcriptions of LPs etc. when I retired, and listening to more recorded music. Actually hardly any of these things have happened - I have too many things to do (apparently) and chaos and house maintenance now dominate, much to my horror. I did do a couple of videos and audio recordings, but otherwise retirement hasn’t been the great relief and chance to do things I really want which I’d hoped for. I’m now even less sure of what I want to do than before. I’d also hoped to go back to playing music rather than “merely” attending concerts and operas, though I do more of that than when I was working.

I was warned about this before I retired, and there does seem to be some truth in the notion that things get busier after retirement, though ymmv.

At times I do also feel that some of the things I do as a “volunteer” are worth money, and while mostly this doesn’t bother me too much, I’m not totally convinced that a significant part of the older community should effectively be working for no pay.

In the near future, the idea of 'working for pay' for most people will seem like one of those impossibly distant things that people did in 'the old days', along with student grants (remember them?).

[Dave2002]

In the near future, the idea of 'working for pay' for most people will seem like one of those impossibly distant things that people did in 'the old days', along with student grants (remember them?).

Unfortunately at present there are still many who do “work’ for pay, and they possibly have a disproportionate influence or have more power than those who don’t. Occasionally a single person may be able to buy a Leonardo - don’t tell me that was well earned.

[cloughie]

I had visions of setting up turntables (stored in lofts), getting surround sound to work, making good digital transcriptions of LPs etc. when I retired, and listening to more recorded music. Actually hardly any of these things have happened - I have too many things to do (apparently) and chaos and house maintenance now dominate, much to my horror. I did do a couple of videos and audio recordings, but otherwise retirement hasn’t been the great relief and chance to do things I really want which I’d hoped for. I’m now even less sure of what I want to do than before. I’d also hoped to go back to playing music rather than “merely” attending concerts and operas, though I do more of that than when I was working.

I was warned about this before I retired, and there does seem to be some truth in the notion that things get busier after retirement, though ymmv.

At times I do also feel that some of the things I do as a “volunteer” are worth money, and while mostly this doesn’t bother me too much, I’m not totally convinced that a significant part of the older community should effectively be working for no pay.

A complex question which probably deserves a separate thread. I think that if a person has made a reasonable living in their working life and in retirement, whilst in reasonable health and not struggling financially, the putting something back by way of volunteering is really an enjoyable thing to do. I do not think that local authority cuts imposed by central government leading to subsidising services with volunteers, with the threat of losing these services is a way forward, such as is happening in the libraries around to country. I also think that there is scope for some ageing consultants who already have bulging bank accounts to offer their experience and services free.
This is digressing from the question of cassettes - I have many with recordings I have made from radio and other sources - not touched for years, recorded on a series of good recorders using mainly TDK, Sony and Maxell tapes. Some I transferred successfully to MD and thence to CD. I never rated commercially produced CDs as most were on very inferior quality tape, and even more importantly housed in cases with poor mechanisms. There were some of the later Chandos cassettes which were on TDK or Maxell, I forget which, but they were one of the few companies which did.

[mathias broucek]

I DID transfer my tapes to digital but the reality is they rarely sound as good as CD or LP and so the only one I listen to is the Schubert C major Quintet with Gidon Kremer which seems not to have been reissued since the original CD and LP edition

BTW when I did this I found that several cassettes were unusable due to "print through"

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Wasn't there a theory that the best way to listen to an early CD was to record it and playback on a high quality cassette ?!

I do remember that.

[Lordgeous]

Cassettes could be suprisingly good but one problem was compatability between machines, especially azimuth alignment. Nakamichi had their own ideas about EQ so while sounding great played back on the machines they were recorded on tapes sounded inferior played back on other makes. I still have a superb top end 3 head Aiwa deck which performs as well as many reel to reel recorders and is regularily used to make transfers from cassette to digital. While mixing a well known 'pop' album in the early days of digital we mixed simultaneously onto 1/4 inch and 1/2 inch tape (with Dolby), early Sony pro digital on Betamax and a Technics consumer cassette deck using metal tape (remember that?). From memory none of us could tell much difference in blind tests and the cassette often came out as preferred! I can't remember which format the album was cut from in the end (not the cassette!) though a German version was emblazoned with a "Digital" sticker though it had in fact been cut from the 1/2 inch tapes!

[Dave2002]

However, cassettes can/could also be excruciatingly bad, particularly if the tape didn't wind on properly, or the reels stuck a bit. I just tried a pre-recorded tape out of curiosity and the wow was - well - wow! Strauss Also Sprach Zarathustra, Chicago SO, Reiner - not sure which side of the tape it was. So horrible I gave up after about 5 seconds.

I know that sometimes this problem can be overcome by fast forward winding, and then rewinding a few times, and sometimes one has to resort to using a pencil to move the reels by hand. These remedial methods are sometimes good enough for speech tapes, though whether they are ever good for music tapes must be questionable because the tape can stretch.

[Bryn]

DG were particularly bad offenders when it came to scrimping on quality of mechanics in their cassette issues. The tape they used shed oxide far too readily too. I tried transferring a few to TDK housing and slip-sheets but that, of course, did little to alleviate the oxide shedding. EMI cassettes tended to be somewhat superior in my experience. Full fast forwarding and rewinding prior to playback sometimes helped improve the wow and flutter, but not always.

[Nick Armstrong]

I happened to catch the Final of this year’s Counterpoint music quiz series on R4 (broadcast Monday 3.4.23)… and was surprised by the answer to a tie-break question:

195,000 cassette tapes were sold in the UK in 2022 (according to the BPI)

Not that I go to music shops much any more, but I didn’t know music cassettes were still sold anywhere.

(Presumably the figures can’t include second-hand… but may include online sales…)

[MickyD]

I recently found an old Sony Walkman machine (one of the last generation) at the back of a cupboard and hearing that one of my young students of English was an enthusiast of early forms of music players, I gave it to him. It was worth it just to see his eyes light up at the sight of such buried treasure!

[Sir Velo]

I recently found an old Sony Walkman machine (one of the last generation) at the back of a cupboard and hearing that one of my young students of English was an enthusiast of early forms of music players, I gave it to him. It was worth it just to see his eyes light up at the sight of such buried treasure!

He'll be bringing it back once he's listened to it!