Cassette Players

[ardcarp]

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 In the 70s cassettes enjoyed a massive popularity, but a relatively short one until superseded by the CD.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

[french frank]

and even more extraordinary that, relatively recently, the OED dropped 'cassette player' from its lexicon.

Does the OED ever 'drop' words or expressions? As a compound it's still in the online OED (article updated Sept 2021). Latest example for any use of 'cassette' in this sense is 1984.

[Old Grumpy]

Allegedly cassette tapes are back in (https://www.gearpatrol.com/tech/a363...layer-revival/), or at least they were last year...
...all the Google references seem to be 2021.

Maybe hipsters have realised cassettes are not quite so good after all!

[Bryn]

Allegedly cassette tapes are back in (https://www.gearpatrol.com/tech/a363...layer-revival/), or at least they were last year...
...all the Google references seem to be 2021.

Maybe hipsters have realised cassettes are not quite so good after all!

For their time (i.e. not now) they were pretty good. I have a good many recordings I have transferred from cassette to one or another digital medium, partly in order to preserve the cassettes themselves by restricting their playback (though remembering to fast forward and reverse them every now and then). I have contemporary Dolby S cassette and DAT recordings of the same material, and the Dolby S cassettes were far more reliable. Hard disc, then solid-state storage of digital recordings have, of course, transformed music storage. Just think how much lossless high-resolution audio you can get on a handy 512 GB USB memory stick.

[Frances_iom]

For their time (i.e. not now) they were pretty good. ...

somewhere in my attic (I think) is my nagamichi? cassette deck - top of the line in the 80s
- also somewhere is one of the early Walkmans - the better one for field recordings was a Sony with Vu meters etc.

[cloughie]

somewhere in my attic (I think) is my nagamichi? cassette deck - top of the line in the 80s
- also somewhere is one of the early Walkmans - the better one for field recordings was a Sony with Vu meters etc.

Close - it was Nakamichi - I had a Neal which were also very good - the trouble with cassette decks were they well used and suffered from head wear - either the heads or the machines neede regular replacement.

[Dave2002]

I have had cassette decks which sounded almost indistinguishable from CDs - and I don't mean low quality ones either. However those only really worked with good tapes, and swapping tapes between machines was not generally a good thing to do.
Pre-recorded tapes were nearly always abysmally poor.

I think the attraction for many people was the possibility to make up mix tapes of favourites, and swap those with friends. It was almost certainly illegal, but many of the young people (and some older ones) who did that probably didn't care.

[cloughie]

I have had cassette decks which sounded almost indistinguishable from CDs - and I don't mean low quality ones either. However those only really worked with good tapes, and swapping tapes between machines was not generally a good thing to do.
Pre-recorded tapes were nearly always abysmally poor.

I think the attraction for many people was the possibility to make up mix tapes of favourites, and swap those with friends. It was almost certainly illegal, but many of the young people (and some older ones) who did that probably didn't care.

Indeed they were and EMI were worse than most!

[Old Grumpy]

I think the attraction for many people was the possibility to make up mix tapes of favourites, and swap those with friends. It was almost certainly illegal, but many of the young people (and some older ones) who did that probably didn't care.

Indeed...

...even Radio 3 has mixtapes now!

[pastoralguy]

My father brought a very early model home from Tokyo in the 70’s. At the time, it seemed like a thing of wonder but cd really showed up up cassette’s shortcomings.

[ardcarp]

Does the OED ever 'drop' words or expressions? As a compound it's still in the online OED (article updated Sept 2021). Latest example for any use of 'cassette' in this sense is 1984.

I probably skimmed the Wiki article, and forgot the 'Concise' bit, but the following is quoted:

In 2011, the Oxford English Dictionary removed the word "cassette player" from its 12th edition Concise version.[50] Some media sources mistakenly claimed that the term "cassette tape" was being removed.

[oddoneout]

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. When CDs came on the scene they were all well and good for listening to complete sections of works but very tiresome and time consuming for those few tricky bars...
I still have the small cassette player that was used as much for the children's computer games as for my choir practice, I wonder if it still works. I know it lost the rewind function many years ago which was a bit of a faff.

[muzzer]

I did some very rudimentary splicing as I recall. You had to have a pretty high end deck to avoid bad hiss or compression, and I didn’t mourn their passing. But yes, ‘the kids’ have rediscovered them, in my opinion more as another artifact to collect than as a serious medium. Because of course, everything is back and ready for purchase. Are 8 track cartridges next? They really were niche ;)

[muzzer]

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. When CDs came on the scene they were all well and good for listening to complete sections of works but very tiresome and time consuming for those few tricky bars...
I still have the small cassette player that was used as much for the children's computer games as for my choir practice, I wonder if it still works. I know it lost the rewind function many years ago which was a bit of a faff.

I had the facility on at least 2 CD players to isolate a passage and repeat it - just what is needed for learning purposes. Can’t do that with my latest streamer, or if it does it’s impossible to find out how. But the app transcribe can slow stuff down whilst retaining pitch, which is great for learning. But means you need a laptop to hand…..

[Keraulophone]

They really were niche ;)

Even more niche was the Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) b.1992 but d.1996.
.