Cassettes and related matters

[Dave2002]

A fairly recent Today programme mentioned interest in cassettes! Cassettes – not vinyl!

However then I started to realise how others had used cassettes in the past – and why they might have become popular and retained some affection in some users the ability to make up “mix tapes” for example. I have used cassettes since the mid 1970s, but I was never very convinced of the sound quality, though they were useful for mobile applications – in the car etc. I also used cassettes for live recordings, as I used to play instruments more frequently.

It wasn't until much later that I discovered that it is possible to get very good sound quality out of cassettes, but only with a very good player/recorder. Eventually I purchased a Sony recorder which could record at a quality level which many would find it hard to distinguish from CDs – verified by playing a CD and a recording at the same time and switching between them. However, many commercial tapes did not sound very good, even on good equipment, possibly because of the production processes, and possibly also because it's very hard to match the characteristics of each recording to the player – which is why often cassettes sound better when played back on the player which recorded them.

I still have quite a large number of cassettes, both commercially recorded, and many home recordings from broadcast and other sources.

I'm now wondering what to do with all these – as part of a big tidy up operation. SWMBO (not!) will bin the lot, but I'm more inclined to keep them and resurrect the Sony deck so that I can play them.

However – a very recent discovery is Amazon unlimited – currently on offer for new members at 99p for 3 months. I am listening to Abbado's Barber of Seville from tape currently through a boom box which still works (we used it for a long while to listen to tapes at bed time – which puts us to sleep …). I thought of recording this to a digital format, but then I wondered how much the CD would cost so went to Amazon. - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rossini-Bar...Seville+abbado Answer £16.68 currently at am.uk

However it is also available used for about £7, but it is also on Amazon Unlimited.
This makes me wonder whether it is worth simply giving up and subscribing to Amazon Unlimited instead – and saving a lot of effort. It would also remove the effects of “pre-echo” due to tape print through. I do also wonder whether the dialogue is omitted in recordings such as this Barber if Amazon Unlimited is used as the listening mode. To be investigated further. After all 99p for 3 months is hardly going to break the bank – while I decide whether it's worth continuing after the 3 months period.

Anyone else want to comment?

[pastoralguy]

My father was a navel officer who frequently sailed to Japan and would often bring back the latest gadgets that hadn't quite filtered through to Europe. One of these was a very early cassette player which was fascinating in its compactness and the fidelity of the sound. (It was only later I realised how much my father must have liked music since he used to lug a huge Grundig open reel tape machine around the world!)

I can still remember the three cassette tapes he'd got with this machine. Nana Mouscouri, James Last's 'Trumpet agogo' and Beethoven's Pastoral symphony with Herbie und Die Berliner Philarmoniker on Deutsche Grammophone . This was a curious tape since the last movement faded out in the middle and the tape had to be turned over. However, unannounced on the tapes insert was Beethoven's First Symphony in its entirety!

As an aside, the Indian crew members would often buy these consumer goods to take back to India since there were no distribution outlets. Often, they would sell these items for three of four times what they paid for them.

I often used cassettes but, apart from 'home made' recordings, I ditched them when CD appeared. I had too many that got chewed or simply wore out. The few tapes I have left are stuff I made as a student including Saint-Saens 'Introduction and Rondo Capriccio'. (Ok, Itzhak Perlman had nothing to fear but I could play ALL the notes in tune!)

Alas, so many tapes were left in boxes and simply disintegrated. Those that did still work sounded so poor to an ear used to CD and the gradual upgrading of Hi-Fi equipment. I do regret it since there's so much Radio3 stuff that would be worth hearing now. Again, mini-disc is my medium of choice for keeping off air recordings. (For personal use only!)

Another tape I have, which still has my father's Dymo label on it is Peter Katin playing Greig's piano concerto with the LPO conducted by Sir John Pritchard on CfP c/w the Peer Gynt Suite. Afaik, it's not been re-released on CD.

I do remember reading somewhere the comment that one USES a cassette tape but LOVES ones records!

[richardfinegold]

A few years ago I was in a shop buying my current power amp and they were selling a traded in Sony Cassette Player. I don’t remember the model number but the shop owner, who I otherwise have found to be reliable, said it was a high end player from the twilight of the cassette era. They had made a minor repair as it wasn’t working, and cosmetically it had all kinds of scratches on it, but they were selling it cheap because of lack of interest. I had several boxes of cassettes sitting in a closet. Some were prerecorded it the ones of interest were the ones I hade made of my own lp collection that was subsequently destroyed in a flood that spared the cassettes. Some of these were treasured recordings that I hadn’t replaced digitally and I hadn’t had a cassette player since my last Nakamichi, Saturn like, ate one of it’s progeny, and they stopped putting cassette players in cars. I bought the player.
It worked fine, but all the tapes sounded awful to me, much worse than MP3. The prerecorded sounded the worse, but they all were muffled, like a singer whose been buried under multiple quilts. I fiddled with all the settings on the player and
the receiver, tried playing it in a different system, but to no avail. It may have been some degradation of the aged tapes, because when I used the player to make new tapes (my big box office supply store still sells blank cassettes), there was a major improvement, but still far below current digital recording standards.
The tapes are in a landfill now. I have been able to purchase digital versions of the treasured missing recordings from my lps. The player was donated to charity.
As Dave says, cassettes were always a medium of convenience. I have heard reel to reel recorders that sound amazing but there are tape degradation issues there as well, and the prerecorded tapes available are very expensive. I understand the revival of lps. They can sound great (if you can tolerate surface noise, etc), and the album liner notes and artwork are a real experience that all digital media just can’t duplicate. Cassettes, otoh, always sounded lousy and are even worse for the artwork and notes than CDs

[Pianoman]

I upgraded all the way to an expensive Nakamichi and still couldn’t make cassettes sound anything but dire. Minidisc was the saviour for recording concerts, library cds etc. and I still have 3 machines around the house....unlike the tapes, the minidiscs sound like day one !

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

An issue I have today, when transferring live recordings from cassette to CD or other digital formats, is that hardly any reasonably priced tape players are available with Dolby B (or Dolby C). There's little point in listening to a CD of a performance with artificial boosting of certain treble frequencies.

[gradus]

Still have a working Nakamichi machine but only use it to play domestically recorded tapes often in a vain attempt to locate particular R3 recordings, cataloguing not being my strong point.

[Bryn]

Still have a working Nakamichi machine but only use it to play domestically recorded tapes often in a vain attempt to locate particular R3 recordings, cataloguing not being my strong point.

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).

[oddoneout]

I and many of my friends used to find cassettes very useful for learning music for choir as with the use of the tape counter it was easy to find and repeat the bit that was needed. Tracks on a CD are a faff, especially if what's needed is in a long movement. I suppose modern methods of doing things would use a timer facility instead of the counter?

[Cockney Sparrow]

I and many of my friends used to find cassettes very useful for learning music for choir as with the use of the tape counter it was easy to find and repeat the bit that was needed. Tracks on a CD are a faff, especially if what's needed is in a long movement. I suppose modern methods of doing things would use a timer facility instead of the counter?

The likes of John's Midi File Choral Music site http://www.learnchoralmusic.co.uk/ , Cyberbass etc provide midi style audio files usually by the voice part, with that part having an emphasised sound.

Very useful on occasion (for particularly intractable parts of a piece - because it plays the other parts but emphasises one's own in an oboe/bassoon style sound). You can just use a midi player with a second counter.

However, on occasion I record the audio stream as an mp3 and can set tracks at any point for those intractable passages which makes learning very efficient (given that I don't play piano). (The programme I use, purely because I always have, is Total Recorder and it works well).

(BTW - don't expect to find much music published by Oxford as they appear too have asserted copyright over the dissemination of midi files of their published pieces. Not a great help to choral singers using their scores).

[Cockney Sparrow]

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, too, have two Sony (Three head IIRC) Dolby B, C and S machines packed away, unused for some years now. I only need to retain one (In case my twenty something offspring also "get into" cassettes - at least easier to set up than the resurrected vinyl phase). I'm waiting for the right moment - time involved - to move into a phase of selling accumulated audio equipment, surplus books, perhaps CDs (which I suppose means also tackling Ebay as a seller).

And I also moved onto the unsurpassed convenience of Minidisc, but that's another story. (And, Bryn, I retired a few years ago now and unfortunately transferring/editing my few remaining cassettes (oral family interviews, etc) and minidiscs still don't make it to the top of my list of priorities……..)

[oddoneout]

The likes of John's Midi File Choral Music site http://www.learnchoralmusic.co.uk/ , Cyberbass etc provide midi style audio files usually by the voice part, with that part having an emphasised sound.

Very useful on occasion (for particularly intractable parts of a piece - because it plays the other parts but emphasises one's own in an oboe/bassoon style sound). You can just use a midi player with a second counter.

However, on occasion I record the audio stream as an mp3 and can set tracks at any point for those intractable passages which makes learning very efficient (given that I don't play piano). (The programme I use, purely because I always have, is Total Recorder and it works well).

(BTW - don't expect to find much music published by Oxford as they appear too have asserted copyright over the dissemination of midi files of their published pieces. Not a great help to choral singers using their scores).

Thanks for the suggestions CS. Like you I don't play piano, and using my descant recorder isn't always helpful... You've reminded me that I was registered to use the John Fletcher site, but haven't accessed it for at least a couple of years(not needed to and/or music not available), and perhaps should see if I'm still able to use it ready for starting B minor mass in January. Being tethered to the PC won't be such an issue with that work as I will only want to be doing small sections at a time!

[pastoralguy]

I've often wondered what type of tape machine Carlos Kleiber's son used to record his 'bootleg' version of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. I wouldn't imagine it being a low quality machine. According to The Gramophone's review, the Bavarian Radio Orchestra had recorded on reel to reel but it disintegrated so all that existed was this tape recorded on a C90 cassette machine. Apparently, according to Mrs. Kleiber, this was the only occasion her husband conducted this work!

[Dave2002]

I and many of my friends used to find cassettes very useful for learning music for choir as with the use of the tape counter it was easy to find and repeat the bit that was needed. Tracks on a CD are a faff, especially if what's needed is in a long movement. I suppose modern methods of doing things would use a timer facility instead of the counter?

Can't you use a tool such as audacity to digitise the CD, then put cue points into that? Would require a bit of effort, but perhaps not much. If the music already exists in a download format (even mp3) then just toss it into audacity - a matter of a few minutes - and work from there.

[Alison]

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 ?!

[oddoneout]

Can't you use a tool such as audacity to digitise the CD, then put cue points into that? Would require a bit of effort, but perhaps not much. If the music already exists in a download format (even mp3) then just toss it into audacity - a matter of a few minutes - and work from there.

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.