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Cassettes?
I read a few months ago that they were trying to bring the cassette back, like they did with vinyl. I never bought into the whole rejuvenating of the hipster vinyl craze, but I understood it. Part nostalgia, part having something material to hold onto that's collectable, with bigger artwork. And, I do think they sound better than most digital.
For that matter, I can hear a significant difference between CDs and so-called "lossless compression" digital files.
When I read about cassettes coming back, and heard about it on another podcast last year... I figured it was just a "me too" kind of thing and it wouldn't take off.
However, I was just looking over some new releases from a label called "Opal Tapes" that someone here on the AB forum recommended to me. And, I noticed they are selling cassettes?! At first I just thought they were just adding "Tapes" in their name for the kitsch/nostalgia factor, but noticed they are actually selling cassettes.
Also thought maybe the "cassette" link was just to some artwork for a cassette, but I was wrong. They're really selling cassettes and in most cases they're sold out. Where are they getting the fresh tape media? I didn't think anyone was still making it. And what about cassette decks? Doesn't look like they're too easy to find new. Are people really buying cassettes and using them in old beat-up decks from 20 years ago?
If so... why?
Comments
Yep. Been swelling over the last few years. It's partially nostalgia and retro-neato but I think it's also todo with CDs becoming so terribly unpopular. Indies still want products to sell and listeners still like tangibles. Cassettes are a lot cheaper to produce than vinyl and don't have the ewww factor that CDs have. There is also something about the sonic impression a cassette imparts. Like it or don't like it, it's there and I also think that has a certain amount of appeal after 25 years of 'pristine' CDs.
There are a few companies still making the blanks and offering distribution. And they're stoked right now! Some have never stopped. Some are upstarts—5 years ago you could get all of the equipment to start a duplication company (or distribute your own stuff) for the price of renting a truck; previous owners just wanted the stuff gone!
I buy them at shows and mostly play them in my car.
It's a Thing.
You won't catch me buying any new music on cassette. That's just silly. But I do like the old ones. The big draw for me with cassettes is that unlike records, people made their own, so you can find old radio shows, poetry, people trying to play piano or the ramblings of lunatics snooping on their neighbors. If you like sampling things like this, then it might still be worth having a cassette player. You can find decent ones at thrift stores and good ones at vintage stores. Old self recorded cassettes are best located at estate/garage sales and sometimes at thrift stores.
As for new cassettes, there's only one manufacturing company left, but they're doing booming business because there's no competition.
and if you're the lunatic, you can do cool things like this:
I still have a lot of cassettes from back in the day. I burned all my cd's to digital. Hardly ever get the discs out. I like digital. I never got into vinyl, ever. Hard to bring it in the car with me or out on a run..;)
One big issue with magnetic tapes is that they are the most sensible media in regard of time passing. A ten years old vinyl stocked in a shelf(supposing it is not under a roof or other places with "extreme" temperature condition) will sound perfect. Probably a cd will also sound perfect if t he reflective coat is still in its place. A magnetic tape instead, no matter what, will deteriorate pretty fast due to the fact that electromagnetic waves are all over the place. And this was about never used medias. If you add to the equation usage wear the cassettes still hold the lowest place in this chart, vinyls also suffer a lot from usage while CDs won't have any problem if you play them a million times. On the other hand in regard of bad usage you can do pretty much everything to a cassette, throw it, shake it, paint it and it will be good; you can't say the same of a vinyl or a cd, where a cd for one scratch at the right place can become a frisbee.
I can't be bothered with the old technology but I am definitely into the the warmer sound, the hiss and pitch smear, I get that part of it, it's more than nostalgia, it sounds pleasant to my ears.
i've recently put out a cassette
http://www.notunlike.com/young_truck_MAXIMUM_AVERAGE.html
it was easy for the label to do a short run of tapes and packaging and they sound good to my ears, mind you i like hiss and surface noise, sounds that are too clean are more often than not boring sounding to me. i still have tapes from when i started buying/collecting music and friends have donated to me along the way as they were getting rid of their collections. i started off recording on a cassette 4 track and i still do to this day
I've still got a home cassette deck. Technics RS BR465. May have another one that's double loader up in a closet somewhere. My car still has a combo Bose cassette/CD player. Old school.
What I used to like to do is make mix tapes for close friends. Not really the same as a CD because it's not as easy to skip past the songs you don't like, you have to kind of listen to it in the order I made it.
I'm all about digital too. All digital photography and video. I don't miss film at all.
But, as I get older... as an artist-type person... I'm kind of liking the idea of media that doesn't last forever.
Hack your tapes and create loops! Real ones, made out of tape
I have thousands of tapes along with thousands of books in a house in Maine which I am due to go up to in a few weeks and sort out (the house, let alone the tapes and books). Was thinking of ditching the tapes (apart from the mixes made, can never let those go), but this discussion makes me think I should be reserving some space in the storage facility for a few cartons of cassettes....
Where I live (Portland, OR) tapes are more like underground currency.
Maine! I would love to visit Maine. For the Seafood, and the sight seeing. Have a great time!
I'm in PDX too. And yep, lots of places sell cassettes. Turn Turn Turn (on the corner of Killingsworth and Williams) has a decent collection for sale. When the same space was the Record Room, the owner had a really impressive set of tapes for sale. She was sorta on the cusp of this whole thing (or it seemed to me).
Maine is where my heart lies. I love it there. The hashness as much as the beauty. It's the Cornwall of America, but with fucktron acres of more snow. The people are good but not ingratiating. The land is real. A great place to write.
Thank god cassettes are gone!... I suffered with them for years, recording all my vinyl on them...
Cassettes are a thing of past, they deteriorate in time, are big, fragile, jammed a lot, small content, 90 minutes for quality, etc..They have to be rewind to end, otherwise the exposed part will oxidate and make a dead spot...They stretched, or tore on different decks...depending on tightness of the cam...
A good cassette deck by Makamichi was over $1000-2000
...Frequecy response was OK on expensive decks , but besides that it was mediocre...You remember the size of them decks?
Few months ago, I put in trash 1500 bucks worth of best quality cassettes.
About 200 cassettes 
I could not give them away for free!!!! No one wanted them...pity... I wonder if anyone makes cassette decks these days?
Personally I really don't want to go back...anything but cassettes...what's the matter with DVDs? You can put 4gb worth of music on one in any format...
I saw someone do it with 3 walkmen so he was able to play tritones, that was great and sounded fantastic because every motor wobbles a little different ...
can't find the video
mono (singlevoice) is meh,
haven't touched a tape in 20 years, these days I would go this way for the sound of it
http://www.toneboosters.com/tb-reelbus/
@lala the Crudman?
Let's not forget the Drumssette!
@syrupcore
yes thats it ^^
thx
it sounds so kaputt, I like it
Datum. Same fella who made the Drumssette made a walkman based keyboard mellotron with 14 walkmans in it. 12 note tapes and two drum loop tapes.
hm, mono I find it really boring and not good at all,
but polyphonically when all the different artifacts come together it gets a nice flavor of dusty kaputt
Yep. Love this stuff. Once I finally get around to refurbing my optigan's chord keys, I'll make some minisampler instruments for Cubasis and put it them up for grabs on here somewhere. I think there's a thread already.
And if only vinyl will scratch that itch:
https://www.izotope.com/en/products/effects-instruments/vinyl/
I have 2 samples I put in very sampler 1. is strings from vp330 and 2. is orchestron boys choir ^^
Dreadful things, I'm glad to see the back of them and I bought an awful lot of them back in the day.
I bought a second hand Bang and Olufsen tape deck a few years ago to try to play my old recordings and they were all stretched to hell. So, no nostalgia here.
Ugh! Tapes! Ugh! I stopped using them the moment I got the minidisc.
I have various Smiths albums on tape. I wonder if they will ever be worth anything.
And lots of other stuff.
The problem is though - they degrade so badly - much worse than vinyl.
dito
I remember spending hours with a bic biro winding cassettes back onto the reels when they had got tangled in the player, you took the cassette out, and had a nice flowing ribbon of ferrite hanging from your hand
I WILL say one thing in favour of the durability of cassettes; namely my cassette of Be Yourself Tonight by Eurythmics got horribly, horribly, horribly concertina'd, twisted, folded and otherwise mangled by a faulty tape deck. In disgust I just threw the damn thing in a box and forgot about it. When I rediscovered the tape about 3 years later it had miraculously returned the tape to a totally flat and pristine condition, and it darn well played too, a very slight muffling of the sound where the worst damage had been but otherwise no worse than it started out. I was gobsmacked.
I still have fond memories of my Tascam 464 too.