WHAT? They refused to pay extra 3-6 cents to get much better tape, while prerecorded cassette already 6-7$ in market and later was asking why CD and other formats taken over so fast? Perfect example how extreme pursuit for margin and refusal to investment and adapting to new enviroment can put you out of business. Pretty much same as we see today, when copyright holders try to fight all new technologies.
Yes, in order to save some cents, these pre-recorded cassettes were of such poor quality that hardly anyone would buy them (they tried to charge vinyl LP prices for the crappy stuff). Of course, some money went to the interprets, but this lousy quality was never accepted (and, as the video here proofs, they could have done a lot better).
We could have had magnetic sound recording back in the World War I days, it's just the music industry did not want average joe being able to make cheap rewritable copies of music you could transport and share easily. Just look up a man named Valdemir Poulsen.
@@Emptiness_Machine_2001 Modern tech is always going to be more expensive, just becasue it's modern, and these greedy corporate companies would want to squeeze every least penny out of an older, cheaper format before it dies, and then only make the jump when it becomes unprofitable due to failing popularity. They're not against the modern tech itself. As always it's simply about money and greed rather than technological advancement. Most "new" stuff that you see today was probably invented years ago.
I've seen the inside of the porn VHS duplication room at a mayor porn publisher. The two longer walls of the room were covered with wallmounted IKEA shelves from floor to cealing holding 200 almost new good and cheap consumer model Mitsubishi VHS players. At the short wall opposite the door there was a table with a deluxe consumer VHS player for playback (National/Panasonic?) and some equipment that made all Mitsubishi's start the recording at the same moment. The recording was done at normal speed to preserve the quality and because consumer models only had normal speed. The employee then had to swap the tape in each Mitsubishi before he started the next batch. (Then I'd guess that he affixed the labels, put the cover paper in the sleeve of the cases, put the cassettes in the cases, packed it all in a couple of large cardboard boxes, and then took a ccoffee break or did other odd jobs while he waited for the next batch to reach the end of the recording).
I went to a job interview at a duplication facility in 1989 (I think); I didn't get the job but they showed me around and it was very interesting to see how duplication works. This place did mostly video tapes (prerecorded cassettes were never very popular in the Netherlands). They had a special machine that would copy a professional tape (Betacam or U-Matic or whatever) to a special intermediate format that was essentially mirrored VHS. They used a ferric tape for this. Then they would use this tape in machines where it was essentially just heated up to a certain temperature while it was pressed against a blank chrome tape. They explained that at that certain temperature, the magnetic particles on the chrome tape would be re-magnetized by the ferro tape, but the ferro tape wouldn't be affected. So the tape was essentially mechanically copied, the signals wouldn't get distorted by electronics because of the high speed (and there weren't any issues with the need to copy video - a high-frequency signal - at an even higher speed), there was almost no chance that the copy would fail if the operator would make an error (unlike electronic duplication where distortion was possible if the volume was too loud), etc. The chrome tape was literally a mirror of the ferro original, and they could run the tape through the machine at basically any speed (and even if the speed wasn't constant, it didn't matter); the only requirement was that the head (basically a heated wheel which the tapes were spinning around) would have enough time to heat up the tapes to the right temperature. Anyway, I had never heard of Digalog, so this was an interesting video. And I liked the bit at the end; very Meta! :-)
there's a good chance at that friend, I'm from the Netherlands too, and Duplicase has since re-emerged as 'De Bandjesfabriek' producing blank and pre-recorded cassete's only, meanwhile the old Duplicase is also still around, but only doing CD and DVD duplication. I must stress, these are currently seperate companies, the tape division of Duplicase was sold and became De Bandjesfabriek
It really is amazing how well these late era cassettes sound. I have a couple of Bollywood tapes from 1999-2001 and they sound great, as good as the CD version.
Wow, I really wondered if anyone still gave a damn about the technology of yesteryear and could provide us, now after all the years, with well researched information. But this is more than that... it is going the distance and taking that interest into action at home by buying the technology, testing and fiddling with it until we can acknowledge and wonder. I love this channel, highly entertaining and educating with just the right amount of both.
absolutely LOVING YOUR CONTENT!! So articulate, well edited, never boring. Don't EVER stop. I've seen almost all of your brilliant videos. And yes, I do love your puppet plays! You sir, are a delight. Thank you!
I also just bought a cool Japanese-built JVC cassette deck from the '80s, sounds much better than my shitty Chinese walkman. I actually feel the urge to listen to tapes again, like when I was a kid :)
@@MetalTrabant I'm 16 and I won't lie I started collecting records after I got some great stuff that was thrown out on my street and just began recording them go cassette and it is so much fun. It's a really cool hobby in my opinion.
@@henrymarocchi7844 I was born in the 80's and grew up with cassettes and I've recently rediscovered my love for cassettes. I bought a bunch of blank cassetes off Ebay and I record entire albums onto them from Amazon Music. The results have been amazing.
I never thought pre recorded cassettes sounded bad. I listen to them now, and i think they sound better than streaming services. The problem is that the average joe had a low end deck, and the improved tape wouldnt have made a difference. CD took over because a cheap player sounds lightuears better than a cheap cassette player.
A lot of words, nice but arcane history and obvious pretty deep research. Your channel deserves its success because there is real depth to your content that most folks recognize and value. I never, ever bought pre recorded cassettes but had over 500 recorded cassettes that I used in my car and traded amoungst my friends at the time. We always just recorded from disc. Making mix tapes from discs was labor intensive but really made getting a gift of one a big deal.
for children or teenagers like me with limited amount of money during the 90s, i still used tapes all the way up to 2001. it threw me off that the host stopped using cassettes sometime in the early 90s. i guess when i think about it, i only used cassettes to make mix tapes and record off the radio, but was not buying artist albums on cassettes anymore. some people would not go back to vinyl records, and similarly, i would not go back to cassettes. they got stuck in car players, would unwind, the tape would get all over the place, and the sound was atrocious. no thank you. now im ranting. these videos are nostalgic to me. great work!
Another brilliant episode Mat! the tech at the very last looks intriguing. Mr Green and his pop are superstars! Soon we'll be voting on the title of their owe sitcom. Cheers
These videos are so well done. Brimming with incredibly detailed information, Tech Moan knows there's tons of us who used to freak upon seeing a Bang & O dealer in the mall & would go in and get every catalog and handout. Or those of us who would actually look into a piece of equipments frequency response and other bits of info before choosing to buy. Thank you brother for making this well produced & incredibly informative videos, judging by your views there's tons of tech geeks and regular folk who want to see them. Cheers...
We forgot about the fact that analog is tyranny, there was always some loss of detail or noise present and you could only spend more money to try to make it sound better, now there's a lot of still working second hand analog equipment that performed reasonably good that can be had for cheap. I bought a VHS HiFi VCR for $10.69 after tax and it records 6 hours of stereo sound as good as my $100 digital recorder.
I appreciate how detailed you are and your videos and whenever I hear you say something and I feel like I needs an explanation, or I have an additional question, you never disappoint by going into the detail of the details :-)
What I like in a Cassette is that it was easy to start from were you finished your listening. Something not possible by most CD players and MP3 players. Very useful for listening recorded radio episodes on cassettes or learning a foreign language.
I listen to most of my music on my computer just using VLC player. I have half a dozen of them that have been open for days or weeks, paused where I left them and able to be returned to whenever I remember they are there.
VLC resumes where i left off too. i've used DVD players (fancier ones) that seemed to have a small persistent memory, because they also resumed your playback, and even saved chapter markers to certain timestamps which would skip right there.
Another absolutely top quality video from Techmoan. Very informative. I don't think I ever bought a cassette tape in my life, at least not a prerecorded one, but videos like this are still fascinating. I wish it was possible for you to play longer sample clips without getting hammered by copyright claims. I just also wanted to state my thanks for making these in 4k, it looks so sharp.
Awesome video!! The first USA Digilog cassette I bought was Metallica's "Black Album" in 1991. It was recorded on black cobalt tape and sounded amazing. But it was duplicated LOUD and it maxed out the the meters on my home cassette deck when I played it. Later Digilog cassettes were duplicated on normal bias red oxide tape (like your Ice-T and Prince tapes) with a slightly lower volume. Still most people played cassettes on low watt car stereos, walkmans, boomboxes or cheap 3-piece stereos they bought at discount stores and couldn't hear the difference cobalt or chrome tape made. And CD players got cheaper and cheaper into the 90's so making high quality cassettes wasn't a big priority anymore. The last time I remember seeing cassettes sold in stores was around 2003. And for a few years some Wal-Mart's had a small area of older $4 discount cassettes.
Ah, I remember Wal-Mart's cassette area -- that's where I bought, in 2002-3 thereabouts, Black Sabbath's _Paranoid_ (I was in Middle/High School at the time). At the time, the electronics section was smackdab at the middle of the store -- something I miss from the current Wal-Mart.
Every time you make a video about vintage equipment, I immediately want to get myself a vintage set up. Good job it's pay day Friday, I may be making some impulse purchases later.
I was born in 1987 and I don't recall ever buying cassettes. In fact, I didn't buy very many CDs either. Now, all of my music is digital and, at this point, mostly lossless. However, I have been interested in older technology lately and I've been buying some CDs and vinyl records as collector items. Now I'll be keeping a look out for these high quality tapes as well.
it's my 20th birthday today and the only music I have ever bought (as distinct from what I have, *cough*) was lossless. most of the rest is youtube rips and the occasional torrent
Long videos are GREAT! I like long videos around the 20 minute mark the best as I often use UA-cam like talk radio when I work. Thank you so much Techmoan!
I'm lucky enough to have a cassette deck that does the "digalog" stuff at the other end... On playback, rather than record. It cancels out all tape noise and corrects all frequency response errors digitally. It's a Pioneer CT-W606DR with Digital Flex, which makes all cassettes sound like they were recorded on Metal tape with dbx. It even works extremely well on pre-recorded cassettes from the 1960s. Well worth seeking one out. And like dbx tapes and records, you have to remember not to crank up the volume when you press play and hear total silence. Because if you do, when the music starts it will blast you out!
There is a cassette manufacturer in southern Illinois that says they've actually seen an uptake in Cassette sales. So who knows what will happen with that.
This cassette duplication process explanation was really eye-opening to me. I remember getting a tape copy of a soundtrack in 1996 that I really really wanted only to end up with- what I believe- was one of those dreaded last-run final copies. The audio would fade in and out on one side or the other of the stereo field, leaving about two seconds of near silence in either the left or right speaker and it drove me crazy.
Thanks for putting these videos out. I have a request. Do another reel-to-reel video. You covered a lot already, but something about them fascinates me. Seeing all of these videos on cassettes makes me wonder if anyone ever made a better quality reel tape. My dad had a reel-to-reel player, and would tell us how cool they were, but would never hook it up. I wanted to use it now that I'm more technologically skilled, but one of my siblings pitched it doing spring cleaning some years ago.
Brilliant as always!!! I wasn't aware of this development at the time, cool to learn about it now. the internet pedant skit at the end was funny as well. "very meta" it's like a pedant-ception!
Thank you! Many decades after the last time I wondered what that pulsating sound at the end of a pre-recorded tape was for, you reminded me that I used to wonder about that, along with the answer. Of course, if you *hadn't* mentioned it, I probably wouldn't have given it another thought for the rest of my days.
Still have my Dream Theater - Images & Words Digalog cassette, and it actually still sounds....... pretty good. At the time I bought, back in 1992, the sound quality was absolutely awesome. This was surely contributed to by the band's high production standards, but still, Digalog stood out to me at the time. I think had 2 or 3 other Digalog cassettes, but I've since lost them. In any case, very cool and informative video here. Nicely done.
Techmoan , at about 13 minutes into the video, your Dolby S deck shows a "HX Pro" light on. HX Pro was always marketed as an encode-only system - does your deck detect HX Pro during playback?
ACBMemphis I don't think it's possible for the deck to detect it. As you said, it's a recording method only. More likely the light simply reflects the state of the HX Pro switch on the deck, whether it's recording or not. (Or it's his own stock footage from an earlier video!!!)
Thank you very much techmoan for posting such videos. It truely got me into nostalgic mode where i literally enjoyed my cassette collection,took care of them. & reminded me how i repair those broken cassettes..
Excellent as per usual and the same music taste as myself, as per usual, even your more obscure stuff I know and is on my iTunes. I have Ice T, O.G. Playing now after seeing you put it up, 'what an album, I'll listen to that'. Had to pause to sort that out in case I forgot by the end. I hope you don't put anything else up, I'll have to write it down. You started a worm. Enter the Dragon, Bomb the Bass, there's one right back at ya, ha ha. Right, back to the video.
Finished the video and was listening away and remembered Flava Flav's roast where Snoop says to Ice T, 'it's nice to see Ice T, I was going to listen to your stuff in the car on the way up here, but I don't have a cassette player in my car'. Very topical. :)
Nice to hear about cassettes. I still have hundreds of the things, and a tape deck. As time has gone by, I'm still firmly on the side of old tech - Analogue still sounds warmer and fatter. Digital is good and convenient, but somehow colder and a bit soulless, somehow.
@@electrictroy2010 - They might not come close, but they still sound nicer. Like old analogue synthesisers sound nicer than newer digital ones. It's a matter of taste.
After watching your video, I took my new knowledge of cassettes to the local Goodwill store. Lo and behold, the first cassette I pickup is a Warner DIGalog (1987 Monty Python...Sings). Thank Techmoan!
I love everything about your videos. My favorite little Easter Eggs are watching for which straight-up gangsta albums you'll pull out next! Is it Ice-T? Big Daddy Kane? I wouldn't be surprised to see you whip out some Bone-Thuggz! Keep keepin it OG!
To this day, I still feel disappointed most of my Iron Maiden collection - Arguably some of the best heavy music to come out of the 80s & 90s - Is recorded on normal *Type-I* cassettes... Surely these should have been released on *Metal* tape varieties? (-:
already has in some places! super indie far out hipster bands in places like minneapolis and san fran, do cassette ONLY releases. and.... It's kind of cool!
Does make sense, since you can make a garage tape with fairly inexpensive gear once your music has been recorded. Pressing a small edition of vinyls is way more expensive, and requires a third party manufacturer. Plus of course cassettes fit the punk aesthetic, for example, that kind of self-sufficient handmade-ness that makes a virtue of lo-fi, too.
I think vinyl still popular also because of it's beautiful covers. Something that we don't have any more in other formats like CD or Bluray..... damn. We almost lost CD and blurays.
There's tons of indie labels that sell tapes alongside the artists themselves. Most are vaporwave and drone, but there's some good indie rock-pop labels like Rok Lok, Killer Tofu, Kerchow, Human Sounds, and Granite Tapes. This weekend I got a friend who buys Vinyl into cassettes and he already bought like 10 tapes for the price of two or three vinyls. It's just so cheap and portable
@Tony Jaksn it's insane - I saw a box of 10 Sony XR 60's go for over $300! (albeit whoever bid that is a moron and they usually go for about $100 I believe). I've currently got about 50 type iv, and close to 100 different type II (mostly maxell xlii) -- too bad I still enjoy making mixtapes because it certainly seems i could flip them for a good bit
Back in the late '70s I had a fairly high end (for the time) system. Consisting of a Marantz 4400 receiver, Technics SL 1500 turntable, Sharp RT 12 cassette deck w/ metal capability and Klipsch Heresy and Jennings Research Vector One speakers. To my possibly tin ear, I discovered that recording metal tape slightly over VU with the dolby on and then playing it back with the dolby off sounded better to me than recording & playback the recommended way. I also discovered that the $12 per metal tape was worth it for the tapes I wasn't going to use in my car. The chrome tapes were okay. for car use. But ferric tapes were about worthless even with dolby plus they required frequent head cleaning. And the fact you could get five or six of them for the price of one metal tape did not make them worth it.
Wow a pre-recorded tape with Dolby S! Also that transfer method from digital to tape that doesn't actually need a DAC is super interesting! gonna go watch the vid you put a link for in the description now
My The Cure - Standing on a Beach is HX Pro. Of course, my Walkman never noticed. This makes me want to buy a deck and listen to my tapes again. Thanks, man!
Sending digital signals directly to a tape recording head? Could be (and most likely has been) done, probably in the same way that Class D audio amps essentially send a digital signal directly to a speaker. It's not digital in the sense of sending byte after byte like you would find in a digital file. Rather it's a series of pulses (all at 100% power), the length of each pulse being relative to the instantaneous level of the audio signal in that moment.
Class D uses PWM, not PCM. That article states direct PCM to head. PWM are all-on or all-off signals that use the rampup-rampdown effect of speakers to produce sound. PCM is pulse code modulation, basically what a normal DAC will perform.
I still work at a factory making cassette tapes. We have a digital master system from the 80s that was state of the art for its time. Audio is loaded into memory then played back through high speed DACs - beyond the master everything else is all analog. It has 1GB of memory taking up the space of a small washing machine. When you work on this technology you realize how impressive it is even today - for an 80x system four channels of DACs each capable of at least 1.6Mhz are required. You would get more raw processing power in a raspberry pi or cheap cellphone these days, but four channels of high quality audio grade 16-bit DAC at almost 2Mhz is a pretty tough design challenge. What would actually be more useful for people still operating these beasts (like me) would be to replace the filters and bias circuits in each recording slave with digital technology, but tape business is not big enough to make it worthwhile. Everything is basically running at radio frequency and needs all kinds of shielding and filter circuitry. The analog components drift so need to be recalibrated every morning and/or whenever someone turns on the A/C.
It figures that prerecorded cassette sales would go up in 1990, as vinyl records were discontinued in 1989. The drop in sales in 1991 may have been due to the recession. After that, cassette sales dropped likely because listeners were buying CD players. I bought my first CD player in 1996 and before that bought some prerecorded tapes. After 1996 I have bought many tapes quite cheap at second hand stores and yard sales. To this day I still use cassette tapes.
Hi, Techmoan! Just a quick pedant note on the direct to head PCM thing. The link you put in the description is a project of recording PWM signal (pulse-width-modulation), normal for class D, in a cassette and see how it plays back. I was surprised to see it worked. I think what they mean by direct PCM, is the normal digital-to-analog conversion being fed (analogically) to the recording head from the DAC without any mean signal processing or amplification. Basically, the DAC feeds signal in the recording head.
Maybe off topic, but I recorded or didgitized all my cassettes many years ago, so now I can enjoy music I recorded nearly 45 years ago. But even though I connected my cassette deck directly to my pc (about 15 years ago or longer), I can hear me talking in the background with my ex-wife....I even recorded one of our many fights.... but apart from that from time to time I like listening to these old recordings. The first from a taperecorder (mono), connected to the radio, later copied on a cassette and now stored on my pc.... Of course I taped the hiss, but somehow the sound is very good. As I traveled around the world I carried a cassetterecorder with radio. Especially in the US I bought good tapes and when I found a good radio channel I just started recording. Every 45 minutes turning or changing the cassette. When I digitized my cassette recordings, I divided the music, but didn't delete the talking or advertisements...giving even nowadays a trip to to past, every time I listen to those recordings.
What an awesome channel, what's boggling to me is as old as some of this tech is I still couldn't build a player if my life depended on it. So mush mechanical wizardry.
I believe that was Interscope, before it became part of MCA (now UMG); they initially backed it by Atlantic Records (I believe early on, it was through an imprint label, EastWest).
Thanks for the history lesson :) back then I doesn't have any idea there are so many type of cassette tape I only know it's like a video tape but this is for audio,this bring back memories while I was a lot younger listening to a Walkman everywhere a go...
Also, XDR cassettes from the Capitol label are surprisingly good-sounding as well. I bought a Sgt. Pepper's cassette at a thrift once expecting it to sound shit and it amazed me with how dynamic it was.
Anything from EMI would have used XDR, including Virgin starting in 1992 (after EMI bought it from Richard Branson, Atlantic Records actually distributed Virgin releases in North America before that).
I had always wondered what the primary reasons were for lower quality in most pre-recorded tapes, thanks as always for excellent tore through some audio history🚀🎧
Very interesting video. I have listened to quite a lot of music on cassettes over the years and I've just recently started playing my cassette tapes again. But I never even knew what that fluttering sound on the beginning or end of the tape was there for until now. So I've learnt something new from watching this video. Thanks Techmoan for your great explanations.
You don't need that, though. Plug your audio source (radio or whatever) into your computer's Line In port, and record using Audacity (or other audio recording app). Audacity's initial release was in 2000! And now that DAB radio transmissions can be received from nearly everywhere in Britain (ymmv), we don't need to put up with crappy hissy FM radio, either.
Interesting video. I grew up on tapes. I remember hearing a cd for the first time and being blown away by the high end and the crispness. It's interesting that vinyl is making a big comeback. Perhaps in 20 years we'll see the same love for tape.
I had a lot of problems with 80's-era gray CBS cassettes mistracking and gumming up my tape heads. They used some bad in-house made tape that was junk. MCA cassettes sounded terrible in the 70's-early 80's. They were cheaply duplicated with no Dolby B. In 1985 MCA started using the "HiQ" process with Dolby HX pro. And for a few years in the 90's MCA used some kind of black Chrome or Colbalt tape that sounded great.
Warner bros tapes from the 70's were the worst. The tape would either start to stick together after a few years and squeal really loud and stick to the heads or the cassette shells were welded too tight and the tape would jam up. I still have a collection of them and they will not play now. They were manufactured by Ampex.
I used a lot of TDK, tapes, mostly D (which was a good budget tape) and SA high bias. I've used Maxell XL-II and UR tapes for years and never had any major problems with them. The brands I had trouble with were BASF and Memorex cassettes from the late 70's-early 80's that used foam pressure pads. The foam breaks down over 30+ years and goes soft. So you have to open those tapes and put them in new shells to play them.
I love how Teacmoan’s old cassettes all seem to be hip hop.
WHAT? They refused to pay extra 3-6 cents to get much better tape, while prerecorded cassette already 6-7$ in market and later was asking why CD and other formats taken over so fast? Perfect example how extreme pursuit for margin and refusal to investment and adapting to new enviroment can put you out of business. Pretty much same as we see today, when copyright holders try to fight all new technologies.
Yes, in order to save some cents, these pre-recorded cassettes were of such poor quality that hardly anyone would buy them (they tried to charge vinyl LP prices for the crappy stuff).
Of course, some money went to the interprets, but this lousy quality was never accepted (and, as the video here proofs, they could have done a lot better).
It's the reason HD took decades to take off. xD
We could have had magnetic sound recording back in the World War I days, it's just the music industry did not want average joe being able to make cheap rewritable copies of music you could transport and share easily. Just look up a man named Valdemir Poulsen.
I don't get why the industry is always against modern tech.
@@Emptiness_Machine_2001 Modern tech is always going to be more expensive, just becasue it's modern, and these greedy corporate companies would want to squeeze every least penny out of an older, cheaper format before it dies, and then only make the jump when it becomes unprofitable due to failing popularity. They're not against the modern tech itself. As always it's simply about money and greed rather than technological advancement. Most "new" stuff that you see today was probably invented years ago.
Based on the experiments I did, I think VHS suffered from the same analog duplication problems.
The 8-Bit Guy I agree
Presumably they went to a digital bin system as well?
I've seen the inside of the porn VHS duplication room at a mayor porn publisher. The two longer walls of the room were covered with wallmounted IKEA shelves from floor to cealing holding 200 almost new good and cheap consumer model Mitsubishi VHS players. At the short wall opposite the door there was a table with a deluxe consumer VHS player for playback (National/Panasonic?) and some equipment that made all Mitsubishi's start the recording at the same moment. The recording was done at normal speed to preserve the quality and because consumer models only had normal speed. The employee then had to swap the tape in each Mitsubishi before he started the next batch.
(Then I'd guess that he affixed the labels, put the cover paper in the sleeve of the cases, put the cassettes in the cases, packed it all in a couple of large cardboard boxes, and then took a ccoffee break or did other odd jobs while he waited for the next batch to reach the end of the recording).
ua-cam.com/video/UXU8qttgOk8/v-deo.html
@@goishikaiganmademou Rotating porn tapes... why didn't i ever see such jobs advertised?
I went to a job interview at a duplication facility in 1989 (I think); I didn't get the job but they showed me around and it was very interesting to see how duplication works. This place did mostly video tapes (prerecorded cassettes were never very popular in the Netherlands).
They had a special machine that would copy a professional tape (Betacam or U-Matic or whatever) to a special intermediate format that was essentially mirrored VHS. They used a ferric tape for this. Then they would use this tape in machines where it was essentially just heated up to a certain temperature while it was pressed against a blank chrome tape. They explained that at that certain temperature, the magnetic particles on the chrome tape would be re-magnetized by the ferro tape, but the ferro tape wouldn't be affected.
So the tape was essentially mechanically copied, the signals wouldn't get distorted by electronics because of the high speed (and there weren't any issues with the need to copy video - a high-frequency signal - at an even higher speed), there was almost no chance that the copy would fail if the operator would make an error (unlike electronic duplication where distortion was possible if the volume was too loud), etc. The chrome tape was literally a mirror of the ferro original, and they could run the tape through the machine at basically any speed (and even if the speed wasn't constant, it didn't matter); the only requirement was that the head (basically a heated wheel which the tapes were spinning around) would have enough time to heat up the tapes to the right temperature.
Anyway, I had never heard of Digalog, so this was an interesting video. And I liked the bit at the end; very Meta! :-)
Jac Goudsmit did that place happen to be called 'Duplicase'?
there's a good chance at that friend, I'm from the Netherlands too, and Duplicase has since re-emerged as 'De Bandjesfabriek' producing blank and pre-recorded cassete's only, meanwhile the old Duplicase is also still around, but only doing CD and DVD duplication. I must stress, these are currently seperate companies, the tape division of Duplicase was sold and became De Bandjesfabriek
I still used cassettes up until I got a iPod. I had a computer full of free music from Kazza and still used a portable cassette player .
It really is amazing how well these late era cassettes sound. I have a couple of Bollywood tapes from 1999-2001 and they sound great, as good as the CD version.
Wow, I really wondered if anyone still gave a damn about the technology of yesteryear and could provide us, now after all the years, with well researched information. But this is more than that... it is going the distance and taking that interest into action at home by buying the technology, testing and fiddling with it until we can acknowledge and wonder. I love this channel, highly entertaining and educating with just the right amount of both.
Your content is so incredibly well made! You sir, deserve more views.
Juicy Bushwank video is still up...the estate seems to be slackin‘ now that the boss is no longer around. RIP Prince, by the way..you are missed!
absolutely LOVING YOUR CONTENT!! So articulate, well edited, never boring. Don't EVER stop. I've seen almost all of your brilliant videos. And yes, I do love your puppet plays! You sir, are a delight. Thank you!
Wow. A time when CDs were more expensive than vinyl or cassette! Those were the days!
There seemed SOOOOO much more expensive bqck in the day!
That feeling when you see the outro, but there is still time left on the video :)
And here i am in 2019, and investing in tech to play cassette again.
Dusted out my old cassette deck just weeks ago. 35 years old and still rocking.
I also just bought a cool Japanese-built JVC cassette deck from the '80s, sounds much better than my shitty Chinese walkman. I actually feel the urge to listen to tapes again, like when I was a kid :)
@@MetalTrabant I'm 16 and I won't lie I started collecting records after I got some great stuff that was thrown out on my street and just began recording them go cassette and it is so much fun. It's a really cool hobby in my opinion.
Last year I bought a 1981 Sony TC-FX 2 from someone on Ebay and its the best cassette deck I've ever owned.
@@henrymarocchi7844
I was born in the 80's and grew up with cassettes and I've recently rediscovered my love for cassettes. I bought a bunch of blank cassetes off Ebay and I record entire albums onto them from Amazon Music. The results have been amazing.
You are killing it with these videos! I love them all. I'm an '80s child tapehead and an audiophile and this is dead-on, bravo!
I never thought pre recorded cassettes sounded bad. I listen to them now, and i think they sound better than streaming services. The problem is that the average joe had a low end deck, and the improved tape wouldnt have made a difference. CD took over because a cheap player sounds lightuears better than a cheap cassette player.
Every time this channel publishes a new video I feel excited and pleased. Keep producing more quality videos and I love the puppets!
LOL.. My eyes were starting to wander to the right sidebar right at the time you said "some of you might be losing interest." You have good instincts.
Jason Blalock why are u watching this channel then??
A lot of words, nice but arcane history and obvious pretty deep research. Your channel deserves its success because there is real depth to your content that most folks recognize and value. I never, ever bought pre recorded cassettes but had over 500 recorded cassettes that I used in my car and traded amoungst my friends at the time. We always just recorded from disc. Making mix tapes from discs was labor intensive but really made getting a gift of one a big deal.
Brilliant video, thank you so, so much for all your work.
Couldn't have said it better|
That avatar makes your statement creepy...very creepy.
:3
for children or teenagers like me with limited amount of money during the 90s, i still used tapes all the way up to 2001. it threw me off that the host stopped using cassettes sometime in the early 90s. i guess when i think about it, i only used cassettes to make mix tapes and record off the radio, but was not buying artist albums on cassettes anymore. some people would not go back to vinyl records, and similarly, i would not go back to cassettes. they got stuck in car players, would unwind, the tape would get all over the place, and the sound was atrocious. no thank you. now im ranting. these videos are nostalgic to me. great work!
Another brilliant episode Mat! the tech at the very last looks intriguing. Mr Green and his pop are superstars! Soon we'll be voting on the title of their owe sitcom. Cheers
These videos are so well done. Brimming with incredibly detailed information, Tech Moan knows there's tons of us who used to freak upon seeing a Bang & O dealer in the mall & would go in and get every catalog and handout. Or those of us who would actually look into a piece of equipments frequency response and other bits of info before choosing to buy. Thank you brother for making this well produced & incredibly informative videos, judging by your views there's tons of tech geeks and regular folk who want to see them. Cheers...
We forgot about the fact that analog is tyranny, there was always some loss of detail or noise present and you could only spend more money to try to make it sound better, now there's a lot of still working second hand analog equipment that performed reasonably good that can be had for cheap. I bought a VHS HiFi VCR for $10.69 after tax and it records 6 hours of stereo sound as good as my $100 digital recorder.
Thank you for uploading in 4K, this really does look phenomenal :)
It never ceases to amaze me how short sighted big business can be. Another entertaining and informative video . Many thanks for posting.
Even more interesting than usual. DIGalog was completely new to me, as were the various methods of tape duplication. Many thanks.
I appreciate how detailed you are and your videos and whenever I hear you say something and I feel like I needs an explanation, or I have an additional question, you never disappoint by going into the detail of the details :-)
What I like in a Cassette is that it was easy to start from were you finished your listening. Something not possible by most CD players and MP3 players. Very useful for listening recorded radio episodes on cassettes or learning a foreign language.
Achilleas Labrou I liked VHS for that reason too.
I listen to most of my music on my computer just using VLC player. I have half a dozen of them that have been open for days or weeks, paused where I left them and able to be returned to whenever I remember they are there.
I might recommend MP-HC (Media Player Classic Home Cinema), its similar to VLC bit will automatically resume any file you play from where you left it
Achilleas Labrou For audio books, this is a huge benefit. Good point.
VLC resumes where i left off too. i've used DVD players (fancier ones) that seemed to have a small persistent memory, because they also resumed your playback, and even saved chapter markers to certain timestamps which would skip right there.
Another absolutely top quality video from Techmoan. Very informative. I don't think I ever bought a cassette tape in my life, at least not a prerecorded one, but videos like this are still fascinating. I wish it was possible for you to play longer sample clips without getting hammered by copyright claims.
I just also wanted to state my thanks for making these in 4k, it looks so sharp.
Awesome video!! The first USA Digilog cassette I bought was Metallica's "Black Album" in 1991. It was recorded on black cobalt tape and sounded amazing. But it was duplicated LOUD and it maxed out the the meters on my home cassette deck when I played it. Later Digilog cassettes were duplicated on normal bias red oxide tape (like your Ice-T and Prince tapes) with a slightly lower volume. Still most people played cassettes on low watt car stereos, walkmans, boomboxes or cheap 3-piece stereos they bought at discount stores and couldn't hear the difference cobalt or chrome tape made. And CD players got cheaper and cheaper into the 90's so making high quality cassettes wasn't a big priority anymore. The last time I remember seeing cassettes sold in stores was around 2003. And for a few years some Wal-Mart's had a small area of older $4 discount cassettes.
An Ice -E is something that you drink, but you can drink and listen to Ice-T.
Ah, I remember Wal-Mart's cassette area -- that's where I bought, in 2002-3 thereabouts, Black Sabbath's _Paranoid_ (I was in Middle/High School at the time). At the time, the electronics section was smackdab at the middle of the store -- something I miss from the current Wal-Mart.
This is brilliant Mat. I'm a fan of these informative videos, especially where lost and older formats are concerned.
Techmoan keeping it reel
Real to reel
Haha
@@bobbyslater1198 Cacophony! (keeping it simple, mind.)
Hahahah K I L L M E
0:58 very nice
Every time you make a video about vintage equipment, I immediately want to get myself a vintage set up.
Good job it's pay day Friday, I may be making some impulse purchases later.
I was born in 1987 and I don't recall ever buying cassettes. In fact, I didn't buy very many CDs either. Now, all of my music is digital and, at this point, mostly lossless. However, I have been interested in older technology lately and I've been buying some CDs and vinyl records as collector items. Now I'll be keeping a look out for these high quality tapes as well.
it's my 20th birthday today and the only music I have ever bought (as distinct from what I have, *cough*) was lossless. most of the rest is youtube rips and the occasional torrent
9:15 8-track and reel-to-reel. Holy crap, get my application for an AARP card, this takes me back! Great video all around!
The puppet bits at the end are pretty awesome. Cheers
Long videos are GREAT! I like long videos around the 20 minute mark the best as I often use UA-cam like talk radio when I work.
Thank you so much Techmoan!
great video amigo. I love this channel. It's refreshing and it has inspired me to create my own home set up the Vintage Technologies. Thanks techmoan
I was Jamming to The BackStreet Boys while looking at lyrics then I noticed the "DIGALOG" logo and I went straight to this video.
I'm lucky enough to have a cassette deck that does the "digalog" stuff at the other end... On playback, rather than record. It cancels out all tape noise and corrects all frequency response errors digitally. It's a Pioneer CT-W606DR with Digital Flex, which makes all cassettes sound like they were recorded on Metal tape with dbx. It even works extremely well on pre-recorded cassettes from the 1960s. Well worth seeking one out.
And like dbx tapes and records, you have to remember not to crank up the volume when you press play and hear total silence. Because if you do, when the music starts it will blast you out!
Love how deep down the rabbit hole these videos go, right into the technical bits, complete with your own experiments :D
Top top work, Mat!
There is a cassette manufacturer in southern Illinois that says they've actually seen an uptake in Cassette sales. So who knows what will happen with that.
Dear God, they still make cassettes in the west? What brand is it?
This cassette duplication process explanation was really eye-opening to me. I remember getting a tape copy of a soundtrack in 1996 that I really really wanted only to end up with- what I believe- was one of those dreaded last-run final copies. The audio would fade in and out on one side or the other of the stereo field, leaving about two seconds of near silence in either the left or right speaker and it drove me crazy.
This was fascinating. Thank you.
i love your cassette videos, i find them incredibly interesting, so thank you!
HAH that was a funny skit at the end there. Very meta :D
It's like meta²
Yes. Downright recursive.
Any more self aware and it would have been an infinite loop.
Juan Reynoso Are recursive loops truly aware that they start again?
I never meta joke I didn't like.
Thanks for putting these videos out. I have a request. Do another reel-to-reel video. You covered a lot already, but something about them fascinates me. Seeing all of these videos on cassettes makes me wonder if anyone ever made a better quality reel tape. My dad had a reel-to-reel player, and would tell us how cool they were, but would never hook it up. I wanted to use it now that I'm more technologically skilled, but one of my siblings pitched it doing spring cleaning some years ago.
Brilliant as always!!! I wasn't aware of this development at the time, cool to learn about it now.
the internet pedant skit at the end was funny as well. "very meta"
it's like a pedant-ception!
Thank you! Many decades after the last time I wondered what that pulsating sound at the end of a pre-recorded tape was for, you reminded me that I used to wonder about that, along with the answer. Of course, if you *hadn't* mentioned it, I probably wouldn't have given it another thought for the rest of my days.
I was all prepared for a video on the state of the prerecorded cassette today.
There has been a small revival, but nothing like vinyl.
Still have my Dream Theater - Images & Words Digalog cassette, and it actually still sounds....... pretty good. At the time I bought, back in 1992, the sound quality was absolutely awesome. This was surely contributed to by the band's high production standards, but still, Digalog stood out to me at the time. I think had 2 or 3 other Digalog cassettes, but I've since lost them.
In any case, very cool and informative video here. Nicely done.
Techmoan , at about 13 minutes into the video, your Dolby S deck shows a "HX Pro" light on. HX Pro was always marketed as an encode-only system - does your deck detect HX Pro during playback?
ACBMemphis I don't think it's possible for the deck to detect it. As you said, it's a recording method only. More likely the light simply reflects the state of the HX Pro switch on the deck, whether it's recording or not. (Or it's his own stock footage from an earlier video!!!)
Before watching a video about this format i didn't know much about it. Very informative and good video as always. Keep up the good work Technomoan.
Funny sketch, very meta, thumbs up, great video!
Thank you very much techmoan for posting such videos. It truely got me into nostalgic mode where i literally enjoyed my cassette collection,took care of them. & reminded me how i repair those broken cassettes..
Got my first cassette because of this channel :)
I got my first cassette because i'm as old as dust
*feelsbad*
Got my first 8-track because I'm *older* than dust
feelbetter ; )
I bought my last cassette before youtube was invented.
Have you got a pencil for it? I still got my old technics cassette player. sounds great still
Very well done and speaking as one who dealt with cassettes during their heyday, this really filled up any missing parts of the story quite nicely.
I was still buying cassettes in the late 90s...
Yeah, it was much cheaper than CD's back then...
The last cassette I bought was Milla Jovovich's album. But I forgot which album.
Excellent as per usual and the same music taste as myself, as per usual, even your more obscure stuff I know and is on my iTunes. I have Ice T, O.G. Playing now after seeing you put it up, 'what an album, I'll listen to that'. Had to pause to sort that out in case I forgot by the end. I hope you don't put anything else up, I'll have to write it down. You started a worm. Enter the Dragon, Bomb the Bass, there's one right back at ya, ha ha.
Right, back to the video.
Finished the video and was listening away and remembered Flava Flav's roast where Snoop says to Ice T, 'it's nice to see Ice T, I was going to listen to your stuff in the car on the way up here, but I don't have a cassette player in my car'. Very topical. :)
Nice to hear about cassettes. I still have hundreds of the things, and a tape deck. As time has gone by, I'm still firmly on the side of old tech - Analogue still sounds warmer and fatter. Digital is good and convenient, but somehow colder and a bit soulless, somehow.
Spot on.
@@electrictroy2010 - They might not come close, but they still sound nicer. Like old analogue synthesisers sound nicer than newer digital ones. It's a matter of taste.
After watching your video, I took my new knowledge of cassettes to the local Goodwill store. Lo and behold, the first cassette I pickup is a Warner DIGalog (1987 Monty Python...Sings). Thank Techmoan!
I remember seeing the "Digalog" logo on my cassette copy of "Broken" by Nine Inch Nails back 20+ years ago, always wondered what it meant...
I love everything about your videos. My favorite little Easter Eggs are watching for which straight-up gangsta albums you'll pull out next! Is it Ice-T? Big Daddy Kane? I wouldn't be surprised to see you whip out some Bone-Thuggz! Keep keepin it OG!
To this day, I still feel disappointed most of my Iron Maiden collection - Arguably some of the best heavy music to come out of the 80s & 90s - Is recorded on normal *Type-I* cassettes...
Surely these should have been released on *Metal* tape varieties? (-:
HAH! Good one!
What record (tape) companies SHOULD'VE done is utilized high-quality type-I tape for their recordings.
That's why l would buy LPs and record them to a good quality blank cassette.
@@wildbill9919 - I did that quite a bit, too!
As long as there not recorded in Dubly.
Excellent and fascinating as usual. You have become youtubes go-to audio format historian!
Tape seems like it's going to make a Vinyl like comeback
already has in some places! super indie far out hipster bands in places like minneapolis and san fran, do cassette ONLY releases. and.... It's kind of cool!
PopeTheRevXXVIII the weekend he released his new album on tape only like 1000 copies
Does make sense, since you can make a garage tape with fairly inexpensive gear once your music has been recorded. Pressing a small edition of vinyls is way more expensive, and requires a third party manufacturer. Plus of course cassettes fit the punk aesthetic, for example, that kind of self-sufficient handmade-ness that makes a virtue of lo-fi, too.
I think vinyl still popular also because of it's beautiful covers. Something that we don't have any more in other formats like CD or Bluray..... damn. We almost lost CD and blurays.
There's tons of indie labels that sell tapes alongside the artists themselves. Most are vaporwave and drone, but there's some good indie rock-pop labels like Rok Lok, Killer Tofu, Kerchow, Human Sounds, and Granite Tapes. This weekend I got a friend who buys Vinyl into cassettes and he already bought like 10 tapes for the price of two or three vinyls. It's just so cheap and portable
I was a follower, but am now a fan seeing your cassette collection
I got a few of those Sony metal tapes. can't believe how much they cost now 🎶
How much? I've got a few too
@Tony Jaksn it's insane - I saw a box of 10 Sony XR 60's go for over $300! (albeit whoever bid that is a moron and they usually go for about $100 I believe). I've currently got about 50 type iv, and close to 100 different type II (mostly maxell xlii) -- too bad I still enjoy making mixtapes because it certainly seems i could flip them for a good bit
Thank you so much for the content you produce. I always look forward to your videos, and I'm never disappointed. Keep up the good work my friend!
Back in the late '70s I had a fairly high end (for the time) system. Consisting of a Marantz 4400 receiver, Technics SL 1500 turntable, Sharp RT 12 cassette deck w/ metal capability and Klipsch Heresy and Jennings Research Vector One speakers. To my possibly tin ear, I discovered that recording metal tape slightly over VU with the dolby on and then playing it back with the dolby off sounded better to me than recording & playback the recommended way. I also discovered that the $12 per metal tape was worth it for the tapes I wasn't going to use in my car. The chrome tapes were okay. for car use. But ferric tapes were about worthless even with dolby plus they required frequent head cleaning. And the fact you could get five or six of them for the price of one metal tape did not make them worth it.
Wow a pre-recorded tape with Dolby S! Also that transfer method from digital to tape that doesn't actually need a DAC is super interesting! gonna go watch the vid you put a link for in the description now
Oh man I absolutely love this type of stuff.
My The Cure - Standing on a Beach is HX Pro. Of course, my Walkman never noticed. This makes me want to buy a deck and listen to my tapes again. Thanks, man!
Sending digital signals directly to a tape recording head? Could be (and most likely has been) done, probably in the same way that Class D audio amps essentially send a digital signal directly to a speaker.
It's not digital in the sense of sending byte after byte like you would find in a digital file. Rather it's a series of pulses (all at 100% power), the length of each pulse being relative to the instantaneous level of the audio signal in that moment.
Class D uses PWM, not PCM. That article states direct PCM to head.
PWM are all-on or all-off signals that use the rampup-rampdown effect of speakers to produce sound.
PCM is pulse code modulation, basically what a normal DAC will perform.
I still work at a factory making cassette tapes. We have a digital master system from the 80s that was state of the art for its time. Audio is loaded into memory then played back through high speed DACs - beyond the master everything else is all analog. It has 1GB of memory taking up the space of a small washing machine. When you work on this technology you realize how impressive it is even today - for an 80x system four channels of DACs each capable of at least 1.6Mhz are required. You would get more raw processing power in a raspberry pi or cheap cellphone these days, but four channels of high quality audio grade 16-bit DAC at almost 2Mhz is a pretty tough design challenge.
What would actually be more useful for people still operating these beasts (like me) would be to replace the filters and bias circuits in each recording slave with digital technology, but tape business is not big enough to make it worthwhile. Everything is basically running at radio frequency and needs all kinds of shielding and filter circuitry. The analog components drift so need to be recalibrated every morning and/or whenever someone turns on the A/C.
Where does 1.6 GHz come from? If the audio bandwidth is 20 kHz and the tape speed is 80 times, the DAC bandwidth would be 1.6 MHz, right?
mumiemonstret sorry. Brainfart typo :)
Now for a few bucks you can pick yourself up a HiFiBerry setup that puts some of the best DACs of the last decade to shame.
It figures that prerecorded cassette sales would go up in 1990, as vinyl records were discontinued in 1989. The drop in sales in 1991 may have been due to the recession. After that, cassette sales dropped likely because listeners were buying CD players. I bought my first CD player in 1996 and before that bought some prerecorded tapes. After 1996 I have bought many tapes quite cheap at second hand stores and yard sales. To this day I still use cassette tapes.
I actually found a cassette single from 1998 which has Dolby S NR along with HX Pro which is the US release of Cher's Believe.
Hi, Techmoan! Just a quick pedant note on the direct to head PCM thing.
The link you put in the description is a project of recording PWM signal (pulse-width-modulation), normal for class D, in a cassette and see how it plays back. I was surprised to see it worked.
I think what they mean by direct PCM, is the normal digital-to-analog conversion being fed (analogically) to the recording head from the DAC without any mean signal processing or amplification. Basically, the DAC feeds signal in the recording head.
Well I stayed to the end for that awesome Techmoan logo.
I thought I was the only one that listens to that tape! I can't believe it didn't get flagged.
Long Live the Purple One. Great video.
Maybe off topic, but I recorded or didgitized all my cassettes many years ago, so now I can enjoy music I recorded nearly 45 years ago. But even though I connected my cassette deck directly to my pc (about 15 years ago or longer), I can hear me talking in the background with my ex-wife....I even recorded one of our many fights.... but apart from that from time to time I like listening to these old recordings. The first from a taperecorder (mono), connected to the radio, later copied on a cassette and now stored on my pc....
Of course I taped the hiss, but somehow the sound is very good. As I traveled around the world I carried a cassetterecorder with radio. Especially in the US I bought good tapes and when I found a good radio channel I just started recording. Every 45 minutes turning or changing the cassette. When I digitized my cassette recordings, I divided the music, but didn't delete the talking or advertisements...giving even nowadays a trip to to past, every time I listen to those recordings.
Fascinating! I love the way you explain things so clearly. Could watch your videos all day.
According to the RIAA website, there was $0.9 million worth of cassette sales in the US in 2008.
Excellent video, as usual. It made sense of a lot of little bits of info I have rattling around in my head from that era.
Did you mean to say 1992 instead of 2002?
What an awesome channel, what's boggling to me is as old as some of this tech is I still couldn't build a player if my life depended on it. So mush mechanical wizardry.
I have a couple Nine Inch Nails tapes that use digalog and they sound fantastic.
I believe that was Interscope, before it became part of MCA (now UMG); they initially backed it by Atlantic Records (I believe early on, it was through an imprint label, EastWest).
@@ckfinke7625 yes, NIN were an Interscope band for many years
Thanks for the history lesson :) back then I doesn't have any idea there are so many type of cassette tape I only know it's like a video tape but this is for audio,this bring back memories while I was a lot younger listening to a Walkman everywhere a go...
Also, XDR cassettes from the Capitol label are surprisingly good-sounding as well. I bought a Sgt. Pepper's cassette at a thrift once expecting it to sound shit and it amazed me with how dynamic it was.
Anything from EMI would have used XDR, including Virgin starting in 1992 (after EMI bought it from Richard Branson, Atlantic Records actually distributed Virgin releases in North America before that).
Thanks for this video, when it is a more reasonable hour (not at 12:30am) I will have a look at my old tape collection.
Aaaah that Dr Octagon tape 💗
I had always wondered what the primary reasons were for lower quality in most pre-recorded tapes, thanks as always for excellent tore through some audio history🚀🎧
They sure as hell sound better than mp3's.
Thank you for mentioning Prince's Hits. Much of his work was amazing on tape at the time, and the highpoint was The Hits and B Sides.
To read my comment just spend the next 10 minutes rewinding and fast-forwarding to find the correct bit
?
Too late. Someone already dubbed over it.
Or use a tape counter.
Obviously, you didn't grow up with cassettes. ;)
+strangersound fairly obvious i did!
Great video.. I had never known how cassettes were mass-produced, that was a fun wandering down previous-technology lane.
Is it live, or is it Memorex?
Live
Intuitive Observations CD!!!!
Is life? No. Demorez
After the snippet at the end, I gave it a thumbs up... Great video!
New techmoan video
YEA BOIIIII
ua-cam.com/video/UXU8qttgOk8/v-deo.html
Very interesting video. I have listened to quite a lot of music on cassettes over the years and I've just recently started playing my cassette tapes again. But I never even knew what that fluttering sound on the beginning or end of the tape was there for until now. So I've learnt something new from watching this video. Thanks Techmoan for your great explanations.
cassettes are still good for recording off FM or AM on your tuner.
Indeed!
I do it with my phone nowadays...
You record what off your phone?
@@danlivni2097 FM probably. Some phones still have it
You don't need that, though. Plug your audio source (radio or whatever) into your computer's Line In port, and record using Audacity (or other audio recording app). Audacity's initial release was in 2000! And now that DAB radio transmissions can be received from nearly everywhere in Britain (ymmv), we don't need to put up with crappy hissy FM radio, either.
Interesting video.
I grew up on tapes.
I remember hearing a cd for the first time and being blown away by the high end and the crispness.
It's interesting that vinyl is making a big comeback. Perhaps in 20 years we'll see the same love for tape.
For reasons I don't know tapes on the Epic label always had great sound quality and superb bass (at least, that is what I remember).
Epic is owned by Sony who used their Music label and Movie company to push their hardware, so they always used cutting edge technology.
I had a lot of problems with 80's-era gray CBS cassettes mistracking and gumming up my tape heads. They used some bad in-house made tape that was junk. MCA cassettes sounded terrible in the 70's-early 80's. They were cheaply duplicated with no Dolby B. In 1985 MCA started using the "HiQ" process with Dolby HX pro. And for a few years in the 90's MCA used some kind of black Chrome or Colbalt tape that sounded great.
Warner bros tapes from the 70's were the worst. The tape would either start to stick together after a few years and squeal really loud and stick to the heads or the cassette shells were welded too tight and the tape would jam up. I still have a collection of them and they will not play now. They were manufactured by Ampex.
What were your favourite record-able tape brands? Mine were TDK and AGFA. They never went wrong. I had a lot of trouble with Maxell.
I used a lot of TDK, tapes, mostly D (which was a good budget tape) and SA high bias. I've used Maxell XL-II and UR tapes for years and never had any major problems with them. The brands I had trouble with were BASF and Memorex cassettes from the late 70's-early 80's that used foam pressure pads. The foam breaks down over 30+ years and goes soft. So you have to open those tapes and put them in new shells to play them.
I'm going to have to go in the attic and see if I can find a working cassette deck now. Thanks, Matt, really interesting video