Cassette Players

[mikealdren]

Listening to this morning's BAL, I happened to mention that the Schubert Quintet was one of my A-level set works. For some reason Mrs A and I began a reminiscence upon how we listened to music in the Stone Age, and realised to our dismay that cassette players were not around in our schooldays. In the 70s cassettes enjoyed a massive popularity, but a relatively short one until superseded by the CD. In fact they persisted far longer in car dash-boards, because CD-players used to 'jump tracks' until a solution was found.

There's quite an extensive and technically interesting Wiki article about the rise and fall of cassette tapes. Extraordinary to remember that early answer-phones used to work via them...and even more extraordinary that, relatively recently, the OED dropped 'cassette player' from its lexicon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_tape

You must be older than I am. Dad came back from a trip to Japan in the mid 60s with a Sony cassette machine and, after being disappointed that it wasn't reel-to-reel and didn't have a microphone, I did get into the habit of recording from Radio 3 although we had few tapes and they got well used!

Interestingly the Schubert was an A level set work for me too in 1971.

[ardcarp]

Something I found useful with cassettes was being able to use the counter to pinpoint exact parts of the recording when I was either learning new choir pieces or doing language classes.

Going back to the Stone Age, does anyone remember the gadget (a sort of calibrated quadrant) whereby you could accurately place the pick-up arm of a record-player to start at exact points on an LP disc, e.g. to give lectures or talks about classical music? Ideally you needed two people, one to operate the system, the other to do the talking. Not sure it did the LP any favours.

[ardcarp]

Dad came back from a trip to Japan in the mid 60s with a Sony cassette machine

That must have been a very early one. I think Pillips pioneered the cassette system, but Sony got in on the act quite soon.

[richardfinegold]

I remember getting interested in a device that was never, to my knowledge, released to the consumer market, that I think was Digital Audio Tapes. I t was rumored to be revelatory, next big thing but CDs and Computer Audio probably made it superfluous.
Back to cassettes, I had an entry level Nakamichi deck that I used to record lps for use on the car cassette player with. I remember playing with the Dolby iterations to to reduce the surface noise which always seemed louder on cassette replay than it was on the actual lp playback. When CD arrived the deck made great copies of CDs, but eventually cars changed to CD players and I the Nakamichi ate a cassette that became intertwined with every part of the deck. I couldn't fix it and it wasn't worth the cost of the repair so the tapes went into the attic. A few decades later I saw a Sony Cassette Player that I had remembered as being well regarded in the day for sale for a pittance in the used equipment section of a brick and mortar dealer and I picked it up. I attached it to an AVR in a secondary system because the AVR had all the tape inputs and it was just awful sounding. I mentioned this to the dealer who gave me a newly recorded cassette tape to try and that sounded much better. He told me that cassettes will deteriorate over time depending upon storage conditions. I tossed the tapes and returned the deck. I mention this as a cautionary tale for anyone looking to play old tapes.

[Bryn]

I remember getting interested in a device that was never, to my knowledge, released to the consumer market, that I think was Digital Audio Tapes. I t was rumored to be revelatory, next big thing but CDs and Computer Audio probably made it superfluous.
Back to cassettes, I had an entry level Nakamichi deck that I used to record lps for use on the car cassette player with. I remember playing with the Dolby iterations to to reduce the surface noise which always seemed louder on cassette replay than it was on the actual lp playback. When CD arrived the deck made great copies of CDs, but eventually cars changed to CD players and I the Nakamichi ate a cassette that became intertwined with every part of the deck. I couldn't fix it and it wasn't worth the cost of the repair so the tapes went into the attic. A few decades later I saw a Sony Cassette Player that I had remembered as being well regarded in the day for sale for a pittance in the used equipment section of a brick and mortar dealer and I picked it up. I attached it to an AVR in a secondary system because the AVR had all the tape inputs and it was just awful sounding. I mentioned this to the dealer who gave me a newly recorded cassette tape to try and that sounded much better. He told me that cassettes will deteriorate over time depending upon storage conditions. I tossed the tapes and returned the deck. I mention this as a cautionary tale for anyone looking to play old tapes.

I had/still have, a fairly low-end DAT deck which was essentially a consumer product. There were also pocket DAT recorders aimed at the enthusiast/consumer marker. The was also a digital recorder system that was more closely aimed at the consumer market. Unlike DAT, it used parallel tracks, rather than helical scan. It had a very short product cycle. So short that I have, so far, been unable to find a reference to it via Internet searches. It came out around the same time as early pocket DAT recorders.

[hmvman]

I had/still have, a fairly low-end DAT deck which was essentially a consumer product. There were also pocket DAT recorders aimed at the enthusiast/consumer marker. The was also a digital recorder system that was more closely aimed at the consumer market. Unlike DAT, it used parallel tracks, rather than helical scan. It had a very short product cycle. So short that I have, so far, been unable to find a reference to it via Internet searches. It came out around the same time as early pocket DAT recorders.

Yes, I remember those non-helical DAT machines. I recall that they were called S-DAT and the helical system was R-DAT.

[Bryn]

Yes, I remember those non-helical DAT machines. I recall that they were called S-DAT and the helical system was R-DAT.

Thanks: https://wiki.evageeks.org/SDAT and https://www.dccmuseum.com/the-dcc-story/

The latter is what I was thinking of. A friend in the Scratch Orchestra has this one:

[RichardB]

The portable DAT machines were so intricate and complicated mechanically that it's a wonder they didn't keep seizing up, although I bought one in 1992 or so and it lasted quite some years, at least until it wasn't needed any more. These days I have a Tascam DA-20 which, together with its predecessors, was in its time an industry standard and ubiquitous in recording studios.

While on the subject, maybe two other (professional) digital tape formats should be mentioned: the Alesis A-DAT system, which used S-VHS cassettes, and Tascam's DA-88 which used Hi8 video cassettes, both of which could record 8 parallel tracks (and could be linked together to record more). I still have a few tapes in these formats which I had better transcribe before the last usable machines end up as landfill.

[Serial_Apologist]

Going back to the Stone Age, does anyone remember the gadget (a sort of calibrated quadrant) whereby you could accurately place the pick-up arm of a record-player to start at exact points on an LP disc, e.g. to give lectures or talks about classical music? Ideally you needed two people, one to operate the system, the other to do the talking. Not sure it did the LP any favours.

That idea was taken up by scratching with an MC, of course.

[mikealdren]

That must have been a very early one. I think Pillips pioneered the cassette system, but Sony got in on the act quite soon.

Yes it must have been, portable and only mono but in those days that didn't seem too important.