Pre-recorded Cassettes' Last Stand
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- Опубліковано 23 січ 2017
- In the 1990s cassette sales were falling just as their quality was improving. This video takes a look at some of the techniques used (including DIGalog) to make pre-recorded tapes sound better, with the hope of slowing their demise.
CORRECTIONS:
07:46 - "July 1992" (not July 2002)
07:55 - "August 1992" (not August 2002)
LINKS
A cassette Loader In action: • Tapematic Audio Casset...
Recording onto tape using pulses sent to the record head: • 555 timer class D ampl...
(CORRECTION: This video was one linked to in a discussion on this subject (which I don't really understand)..but it apparently shows something different - nothing to do with PCM pulses sorry)
US Recorded Music Sales Graph: goo.gl/Qn9YTR
Discussion of DIGalog on Tapeheads.net www.tapeheads.net/showthread.p...
The clear tapes with red hubs came from tapeline.info/v2/
(But they've sold out of this colour now)
Duplication machine images from HDT duplicators
headlessduplicatedtapes.cz
HDT are the largest manufacturer of audio cassette tapes in Europe.
My Previous Cassette Video: • Cassettes - better tha...
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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.
@@timweber4318 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 .
Wow. A time when CDs were more expensive than vinyl or cassette! Those were the days!
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.
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.
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
That feeling when you see the outro, but there is still time left on the 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!
Every time this channel publishes a new video I feel excited and pleased. Keep producing more quality videos and I love the puppets!
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!
Even more interesting than usual. DIGalog was completely new to me, as were the various methods of tape duplication. Many thanks.
Thank you for uploading in 4K, this really does look phenomenal :)
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!
This is brilliant Mat. I'm a fan of these informative videos, especially where lost and older formats are concerned.
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!
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
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!
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!
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
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.
i love your cassette videos, i find them incredibly interesting, so thank you!
Fascinating! I love the way you explain things so clearly. Could watch your videos all day.
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.
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
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.
It never ceases to amaze me how short sighted big business can be. Another entertaining and informative video . Many thanks for posting.
This was fascinating. Thank you.
The puppet bits at the end are pretty awesome. Cheers
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 :-)
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 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
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.
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.
As always, incredibly informative and entertaining at the same time! Thank you.
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?
I was still buying cassettes in the late 90s...
Yeah, it was much cheaper than CD's back then...
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..
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.
Funny sketch, very meta, thumbs up, great video!
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!
Excellent and fascinating as usual. You have become youtubes go-to audio format historian!
I love your videos! Every time I watch one I learn something new.
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.
Oh man I absolutely love this type of stuff.
I love your videos, they're always very informative. Thanks and please keep up the good work.
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.
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??
Very interesting video, thanks for this. Great watch.
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.
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.
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.
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 love your videos. They're really very informative and entertaining.
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.
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...
Really great to see another one of your really great videos. Keep it going :)
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 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
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
Yet another great video with epic research and info. Thank you!
I appreciate all of your knowledge about tapes etc. I know it must take some hours of research. Your videos are fantastic and informative, Thank you!
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.
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
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🚀🎧
Another great cassette video. Great amounts of info. I'd wondered about the sound at the ends of tapes. I love that scope based logo at the end.
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.
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).
Man your videos are always so interesting!!!
As allways great video. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I almost forgot about high speed dubbing lol. Please keep up the good work.
Aaaah that Dr Octagon tape 💗
Well I stayed to the end for that awesome Techmoan logo.
Sweet new upload. I always look forward to your videos Techmoan
I was a follower, but am now a fan seeing your cassette collection
Good stuff!
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!
After the snippet at the end, I gave it a thumbs up... Great video!
Your channel is absolutely wonderful
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.
According to the RIAA website, there was $0.9 million worth of cassette sales in the US in 2008.
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.
fascinating video - well done! Makes me very nostalgic for the 80's and 90's.
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.
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
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.
Love this channel... it's the nostalgia... & they're executed extremely well. I always get a kick out of his 80s Hiphop collection... some hardcore sh!t lol. Thanks again.
New techmoan video
YEA BOIIIII
ua-cam.com/video/UXU8qttgOk8/v-deo.html
I strongly believe it was the quality of the playback device that gives tape a bad rap. On the production side, lots of money was spent to ensure quality sound was recorded, on the consumer side, majority was how to produce a low cost player, so lower quality components were used, heads, discrete components, speakers, housings etc.
Not to mention when consumers don't look after their player and let the head collect dust and stuff like that.
Very true. I have a high end Yamaha deck with sendust 3 head and linear EM transduction. Has dolby B and dbx and it very much rivals my vinyl setup for sound quality. I have some new old stock prerecorded cassettes from the late 90s and early 2000s with HX pro etc and they sound great. Many do sound better than the CD and some even have higher dynamic range than the CD counterpart due to mastering differences. There was a high end Aiwa deck that could do 13Hz to 24kHz on metal tape. Even had a mechanism to clamp down on the tape shell to reduce resonance and movement of the cassette shell. Unfortunately most people have only heard walkmans and other cheap home units that sounded like trash. With analog the quality of the playback equipment matters and only the super expensive high end decks were able to deliver high fidelity.
your research is as usual excellent...amazing how you do all these with a full time job I presume
Another great video! I've been really enjoying watching your channel; always interesting stuff to watch. Your video on a radio cassette player inspired me to look on Ebay for a similar one my parents had years ago which my dad blamed my sister and I for breaking - we swear we didn't! They were really surprised this Christmas when they got it. I wouldn't have thought of checking Ebay for one if it hadn't been for your video. Btw I love that new outro on the oscilloscope! The video about it is one of my favourites. Looking forward to the next vid! :)
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!!!)
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.
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
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.
Thumbs up! Very meta!
These Tapes sound great, Thanks for yet another Excellent Video.
Thank you Mat, your knowledge and research is mind boggling. Not so long ago I was at a shop in Brick Lane that had a wall of Bollywood pre-recorded cassettes.
"Certain number of copies before it would degrade in quality" Sometime in the 80's I bought a cassette of *The Cars* greatest hits; it absolutely was from the end of a run of a degraded bin loop tape *because* it ABSOLUTELY was the worst sounding tape I had ever bought in a store... by a wide margin. That tape was so bad that it effectively drove me to transfer my music collection into CD's
I bet that this is a big part of compact cassette's reputation . everyone remembered having a bad tape like that.
OMG... I had a lackluster copy of the same tape! It held up through many many years, but there were so many cracks and pops at the end or beginning of tracks, and the treble was muddy. And man, did it squeal like a banshee when rewinding or fast-forwarding!
I was one of the few that didn't... I was really into sound quality, I had a three really high end sound systems in my cars over the years (four now) as well as audiophile level equipment at home. I always could hear the difference between store bought tapes and self recorded tapes on quality tape. It's just that the Car's tape was the worst of the worst.
Yep, it really was the worst noise (cracks pops and hiss) of any tape I ever owned...
I would say that MOST of the prerecorded tapes I bought back then suffered from noise of one kind or another... but having said that, I would also add that most of the tapes I bought were from the 70's when noise reduction was in it's infancy.