I agree. The memories and nostalgia are a factor, but there's something else about cassettes for me. I enjoy the excitement of being in the drivers seat and responsible for chasing the best quality possible. Not only from my recordings, but out of the machines that I play and record on. I enjoy the work and challenge of each tape I make and reviving the machines they are playing on with my two hands. I have even managed to take cheaper type I cassettes and make them sound as good as a Chrome tape. It's the feeling you get when your hard work pays off. You get it right (bias / record level - calibration) and the stars align with a recording that blows you away. Modern day digital files also have made cassettes more interesting for me because, as the newer recordings sound better, that better quality finds its way onto the tape for a bit of an edge never experienced before with what was available at the time. It often surprises me how much modern digital formats have helped to improve my cassette recording experience. Finding out what the max record level the tape can handle, and squeezing every drop out of it you can without distorting is fun. After you spent hours getting everything just right, giving that cassette to someone from the era of cassettes who knows you spent time (maybe even hours) on it just for them is a great feeling. I still make modern mixed cassettes for my wife today just like I did when we were in high school. It makes it more special than dragging and dropping files and sending it to her via email. It's the difference between preparing a meal from scratch versus heating up a TV dinner in the microwave. It takes a specific kind of individual to understand this mentality. I often relate vintage audio excitement to my other hobbies, which are RC airplanes, cars and trucks. I grew up with Nitro engines and kits you had to put together. It wasn't instant gratification. Learning to build it was part of the experience and satisfaction. You had to build your plane / vehicle. Learn how to tune it for best performance and, just as it has always been, learn how to deal with the occasional frustrations that go along with the whole thing. Knowing how to make repairs when needed and the satisfaction you got when you figured out what was wrong. Finally, how to operate it once complete and put your project and skills into motion. The whole experience opens a new window of opportunity. The feeling you get from that experience rivals the experience and fun of something that's already assembled, plug and play and ready to go with no effort, skill or time invested. Sure, a modern prebuilt ready to run example may out perform what you built yourself, but it's an entirely different feeling when you are in the drivers seat and did it yourself versus letting someone else do all of the hard work for you...even if it is better. A Picasso painting might be worth a lot of money worldwide but there is also something special about the drawing your kid made and gave to you. Both good in their own way but one is just a little more personal and has more meaning.
I stopped recording cassettes in 2006/7. This is roughly when I actually stopped listening to music non-stop. Sure, I now had a job and much less free time. But what is undeniable is that cassettes did one thing very very well. They "taught" you the songs they had in them. When you recorded a cassette, you put it in your walkman and you listened to it over and over again. No second thoughts like "Should I listen to this album, or that album?" You usually had one cassette with you on the go and you played it to death". I still have the cassettes I recorded back in the late 80's as a teenager and everytime I look at them I get transformed to that indifferent-about-anything-else long-haired dude! I came back to cassettes in 2020 and I have started recording on them again from time to time. Thank God, the flea market provided me with some NOS chrome ones. With much better equipment at my disposal, I'm very surprised as to how good a well-recorded cassette can sound. Since I cannot be 15 again, I can at least retrieve some of those cherished memories of yesteryear! And cassettes can very easily do that, at the touch of a button, namely "Play"...
Yes, me too. I am 42, and I kept all of my cassettes. I never really stopped listening to them. Even though I may not listen to them as much, I still enjoy listening to them.
Just found your channel and so happy I did ... so nice to see others appreciate the beauty that was the late 70s / 80s systems 🤩 100% agree how great it is to have a tape deck or two 🤔 er, or more ... Lol I have a few but the setback with them or Reel to reel now is finding a trust worthy repair source to fix them or the upkeep ! I've kinda decided to repair a little myself now and order a few belt an tools / info on them ready... keep me busy once I have a lot more time from the working day. Right now I'm in the UK and there is more guys selling than offering to repair ... sad but im not ever letting go of mine 😊 Best
A few of the best things about tapes: 1) simple to record songs off the radio with any device. Even walkmans .. heck you could record full radio programs 2) you could record your own songs as when you pressed record on any tape player it simply recorded everything (if you didn’t use a microphone it recorded everything it “heard” like older video cameras or phones today. 3) you could copy others tapes and mix tapes easily but it did require you play through the entire tape at normal speed. You didn’t have to have the volume up unless you were doing it the cheap way which was to put two different tape players together and play one and record through the other using the sound coming from the speakers. 4) there is a certain warmth that comes through listening to tapes that you either love or hate. Hi fi fans hate tapes but some love records.. it’s all preference. 5) the absolute best was that tapes gave you a simple way to record the world around. I’ve found so many tapes of my family singing together or just talking to one another that I’ll cherish forever as some of them have passed away. Being able to record on your phone has replaced this but back then tape recording was the cheapest way to record voices.
Got again into cassettes in 2012, and still using them today. I had to take the plunge and buy a Nakamichi ZX-7 while those were still sold for reasonable prices. That was one of the best decisions of my life: the ZX-7 revealed me so many things about different tape types that couldn't be possible otherwise. It was and it still is an amazing journey. Even an entry level cassette can be made to sound great if recorded with a capable tape deck. Fact: in 2023, using a high-end Nakamichi tape deck, using ones of the best and expensive cassettes back in the day and recording from a hi-res source, and the result is just unbelievable. If everyone of us could have this kind of match between tape deck, cassette and source back in the day, I bet nobody would still say ''ugh, but the cassette is crap, the tape got tangled...'' Cassettes can sound amazing, but it demands good gear being in good shape, then good tape and some recording knowledge.
You don't have to tell me, I never gave up on them, and have several decks, NOT because they're popular again, BUT because I grew up with them, saw them evolve over the years and like them!
Yep..totally agree with all you said…last count I had 7 working decks, 3 more that need some adjustments, I really am hooked on them, love recording tunes and listening to playback…
Perfectly stated! Going through the whole process of recording and listening to cassette tapes is fantastic because of all of those reasons. I have a Panasonic boombox that is very good for playing tapes, but not so great for recording; I just got a Sony TC-FX505R deck in great shape at a garage sale, all it needs is a new belt, and I’m going to enjoy the heck out of it 🥰… Great content, keep up the good work 😊
I remember the 70's as being a decade of good music and mixtapes. My friend, Brad, and I started out with boombox cassette recorders, where we used mics to dub tapes before we purchased patch cords It didn't take long before we were using decent JVC decks, think KD-65 and KD-85, and spend hours "riding gain" to get our records on tape and to call radio stations to request songs without any DJ talk ruining the Intro. I kept up with cassettes until about 15 years ago and I put my two decks in storage. BIG MISTAKE, they were destroyed. A year or so ago my wife purchased a JVC DD-7 for me off of eBay. It ran for 3months before quitting. Now it has been refurbished and I am busy spending my time winding my tapes back and forth using a pencil before playing them again. It's great to be involved in laying down some tracks and finding old songs that were never released on digital.
I grew up with cassettes in the 70's, and still like them. My mix tapes, mostly recorded on Maxell or TDK type II, still sound great today. I use a fully restored Nak CR-7A, which is a dream machine.
In short - I would like to see the person who would NOT prefer the cassette in a blind comparison, between the original HiRes digital source and the recording of it, from my TEAC Z-7000. Seriously! And in length - I only use HiRes streaming as a source for my recordings. What exactly happens to the signal when it's recorded on tape is beyond my knowledge, but frankly, I don't care. What interests me is the result... and that is (almost) 'magical'. Call it what you like (wishful thinking, for that matter) but the tape brings a vibrancy to the music that the digital source lacks. In addition, there are all the points you mentioned: nostalgia, haptics, etc. If there was ever a time to deal with the cassette not just for convenience but also for audiophile reasons, then this is it.
@@TheBoomerConsumer When you record from analogue to analogue (Vinyl -> tape) you get a 99% perfect copy of the source at best. But it seems to be precisely this 'loss' that gives (or rather 'takes') the recordings from a digital source that certain something and makes it sound more pleasant and vibrant.
If the original source sounded best then we would not have the mastering process’s Recording digital to tape is analogue process and a lot of the time it does sound better on tape. I agree entirely with you. Hell, a lot of recording studios have a “tape sound effect” - there’s a reason for that!
Hey Bruce, this is my first time seeing your videos and I immediately subscribed. I'm a vintage stereo addict so I had no choice! Like you, I also have several vintage cassette decks including the Marantz 5420, Nakamichi BX-1, TEAC CX-650R and Pioneer CT-F9191. The nostalgia factor is so strong with these old units, I just love them! The bummer for me is that while the aesthetics and tactile experience are so great, the sound quality for me is just not there. I started adding tapes to my collection about 6 years ago and found that most of them were so degraded that they were unlistenable. Only about 20% were worth keeping and of those only maybe half actually sounded good. I definitely wish that wasn't the case!
Fine I confess! I was watching this video to see your pretty stereo equipment that I am definitely not jealous of... Maybe a little... FINE YOU CAUGHT ME!!!
I recently found my old Denon DRM-800, including a powered head demagnetiser and some cassettes, lol. I guess it needs some TLC first, but it would be good fun to get it up and running. Anyway, nostalgia, but also curious how it sounds and what's on the tapes 😄 Enjoyed your content, thank you.
Hi Bruce are absolutely right about no one making a quality cassette deck today. I purchased a new Teac A-1200 a little while ago and already it has gone wrong and won’t fast forward or rewind. Compare that to my Nakamichi cassette deck which I have from had from new ( Over 30 yrs ago) and is in mint condition, totally original and sounds fantastic.
Ebay or Amazon. Just be weary of the most recent UR’s. Avoid no name brands where the price is too good to be true. They yield poor results and could damage your playback/recording heads. The UR’s though, went downhill in quality before they were discontinued but if you can find new old stock (from the 90’s) those are fine. Type II’s are getting higher in price so if you go with those I wouldn’t wait too long. If sticking with type I you can’t go wrong with TDK D.
I have a Sony es 3 head cassette deck, it stopped working and I was just going to get rid of it, but after watching this video, I will look to get it repaired.
Well worth fixing if you can find a good shop. The only complaint with the Sony’s is though they sound great when they work, much of the mechanism uses plastic gears and on many models these can crack over time. But a good shop can still pull the parts or even 3D print them.
I got rid of a couple vintage Tape decks in '21 one a Pioneer CTF650 in need of a belt change. Still holding on to my Kenwood Direct drive, though all cassettes are gone or converted to digital. Note, I never liked the Dolby setting, adding muffling to the tape, yet had to get rid of the hiss. Heads would block up & need frequent cleaning, especially with store bought cassettes.
*may have been mentioned in video* If you have a tape deck you don't need to flip the audio signal through decompression, dac's, and other crap, with tapes it is simply RCA plugs to a stereo.
Still have 3 cassette decks -- 2 Sonys and an Akai -- cuz I still have and listen to more than 300 tapes -- most with 2 dubbed vinyl albums each -- that I recorded from the mid 70s to the mid 80s.
I have a nice Sony deck that has Dolby B, C and S. It's in my store room somewhere. I had a Harman Kardon that was so great that it had a 20-21KHZ frequency response with Dolby B, C and HX Pro. When it died I felt a personal loss. I donated a large collection of tapes I recorded on TDK and Maxell tapes. I saved about 20 or 30. If you have a tape that squeals, put a trace of silicon oil on the pressure pad on the tape itself.
Too many people remember the way cassettes sounded on there low end decks that they thought were high end decks just because they were popular brands at the time(Sony, JVC, Etc.), tapes had a lot of hiss on are budget decks, most of us never had the chance to really hear high end decks because they were priced way beyond reach of the average Joe at the time, I own a very nice Sony ES 3 head deck with Dolby S which I know is not the best but way better than anything I ever owned in the past by a long shot, when people hear my well recorded Chrome and Metal tapes they are amazed and don't remember tapes ever sounding this good, I hope cassettes make a comeback like vinyl because I really do enjoy them
2nd edit April 2024. Cost of refurb and taking in my NAD late 1980s 3 head deck a seond time and to a second shop deck is $1k. After repairs in one NYNY place in late 2023, I got a little use of it before something mechanical failed. I did not fully trust first shop and went to the other authorized service here.. who seem to be more qualified. Main motor failed and had to be taken from some other unit or source, no more new. They said the 'work' were the same as some NAK. Nice. I just want to play my 30-35 year old mixtapes while they last, and record on the few unused and several new old stock tape I have,. They were recorded on my prior, a cheaper Technics deck. There will not be any even more expensive, serviced, high end deck for me, when this goes.
No, the sound quality of a cassette deck or vinyl record is not as good as a CD or 24 bit wav file. However, that is not the only factor to consider. The fact is, that these archaic formats are simply more fun. And aesthetically pleasing. So I'm with you.
I got back into cassette decks because I thought I couldn't afford RTR. Then I got into RTR and the cassette decks became redundant/inferior. Still have both, but use the cassette decks less & less. Probably six people now in NA that can repair Nakamichi decks and you'll wait over a yr for service. So my question is; WHO is going to repair your cassette decks and keep them to spec? You're not going to bring these back to factory spec by just tinkering around with them. Many require expensive tools to service, even if you know what you're doing.
yes - this is the issue - finding someone who can or willing to do such repairs & you then can't get the parts anymore. Same issue with older CD players - the optical pickups are no longer made & so when they die, the player becomes a door stop.
There are people who work on them, you can find them on eBay , as well as Facebook forums. But I get it. The bigger issue is parts such as heads, and motors.
The only reason to buy a deck is to play old unique tapes, digitize them, throw away the tapes. The format is dead. Warm analog sound is BS that people who don't know anything about sound continue to perpetuate. The best cassettes and the best LPs were made off digital masters. Now you can basically listen to these masters directly, without an extra analog distortion step. Vinyl is just a PR campaign to get people off digital and to force them to buy physical media again. Nope, this ship has sailed.
Nostalgia is probably the only reason to go back to a casette deck. I absolutely understand and encourage that. That said, if you want decent sounding analog, go vinyl. Pre recorded casettes sounded awful, PERIOD. They mostly recorded on bad sounding low bias tapes. FYI, low bias tapes have a light brown appearance as opposed to dark brown to black for high bias. Rarely, you could find pre recorded material on decent tapes. High bitrate MP3 sounds much better than prerecorded music on low bias tapes (most high bias recordings too). I even have a low opinion of all MP3 recordings. The only decent sounding casettes were pretty much ones you recorded yourself on high bias (or better) tapes that are not even made anymore. The only real value to casettes, even back in the day, was recording your friends' albums and cds. Casette taping was the original audio sharing. In that regard, casette taping WAS very useful. Also, old tape decks were very unreliable for long term use. Yes, if you want to get into vintage casette decks, you better be able to tinker with electronics or more likely the mechanical parts. Belts ARE going to crack and break. They are also full of small unreliable mechanical parts. Tape heads break and are hard to replace. Every tape deck I have ever owned has broken at some point. I still use a Technics direct drive turntable I bought in 1981. Every deck I purchased (2) after that have broken. This doesn't include a high quality Walkman that also broke. The big problem here is that new casette equipment sound absolutly horrible. When it comes to casette recording you are stuck behind new crappy equipment and decent old equipment that is guaranteed to break.The only tape format that approached cd quality sound was high feet per second reel to reel. High quality reel to reel operated at 15 inches per second, casette tapes operated at 1.875 inches per second. If you are interested in casette recording, know what you are getting yourself into.
Not on a Sony or Pioneer in the mid to high range using Dolby S and a good quality tape. Even a deck with Dolby B can sound good if you bias the deck right. It will be clear and you don’t notice much hiss unless you are listening to really quiet passages and even then it’s negligible. Dolby S got really close to CD sound to the point you can’t even tell and was the best tape ever got (in addition to DBX). Tape got a bad rap because most never cared properly for their equipment or got cheap stuff. Digital is great don’t get me wrong but it suffers from compression and loudness most of the time and it’s not the same as putting a great album or mix to tape.
@@thelowprofile9767If you encode it with S and decode with S and the tape was biased that should not be the case. Anytime you use any NR it should be played back with the same as recording (I’m only mentioning that for those who may be new and not know). I’m using a Sony mid range deck and never have experienced that. Another thing like the gentleman explained in another video, sometimes the boards need recapped. Though rare I have heard sometimes the Dolby boards fail after a certain age (at which point if you get a parts unit you could just swap it out). Could also be an azimuth issue if the tape was in fact encoded and decoded properly. The only other thing I can think of that would cause treble loss may be that a demag is needed if it hasn’t been done in a long time or never done.
@@RB-xm3ed What your saying is true, most people only bought the pre recorded albums they purchased in stores(most recorded on type 1 from a bad source) on budget players and that memory is still stuck in there heads
About five years ago I bought a Nakamichi Cassette Deck 1. It makes even badly recorded tapes sound decent. There is magic in going to a shelf, choosing a recording (LP, cassette, CD), putting into/onto a player, and enjoying the music. Scrolling through a playlist just isn't the same.
I've got a Pioneer CT-F1250 and I absolutely love it. Bought it new back in late 70s
I agree. The memories and nostalgia are a factor, but there's something else about cassettes for me. I enjoy the excitement of being in the drivers seat and responsible for chasing the best quality possible. Not only from my recordings, but out of the machines that I play and record on. I enjoy the work and challenge of each tape I make and reviving the machines they are playing on with my two hands. I have even managed to take cheaper type I cassettes and make them sound as good as a Chrome tape. It's the feeling you get when your hard work pays off. You get it right (bias / record level - calibration) and the stars align with a recording that blows you away. Modern day digital files also have made cassettes more interesting for me because, as the newer recordings sound better, that better quality finds its way onto the tape for a bit of an edge never experienced before with what was available at the time. It often surprises me how much modern digital formats have helped to improve my cassette recording experience. Finding out what the max record level the tape can handle, and squeezing every drop out of it you can without distorting is fun. After you spent hours getting everything just right, giving that cassette to someone from the era of cassettes who knows you spent time (maybe even hours) on it just for them is a great feeling. I still make modern mixed cassettes for my wife today just like I did when we were in high school. It makes it more special than dragging and dropping files and sending it to her via email. It's the difference between preparing a meal from scratch versus heating up a TV dinner in the microwave. It takes a specific kind of individual to understand this mentality. I often relate vintage audio excitement to my other hobbies, which are RC airplanes, cars and trucks. I grew up with Nitro engines and kits you had to put together. It wasn't instant gratification. Learning to build it was part of the experience and satisfaction. You had to build your plane / vehicle. Learn how to tune it for best performance and, just as it has always been, learn how to deal with the occasional frustrations that go along with the whole thing. Knowing how to make repairs when needed and the satisfaction you got when you figured out what was wrong. Finally, how to operate it once complete and put your project and skills into motion. The whole experience opens a new window of opportunity. The feeling you get from that experience rivals the experience and fun of something that's already assembled, plug and play and ready to go with no effort, skill or time invested. Sure, a modern prebuilt ready to run example may out perform what you built yourself, but it's an entirely different feeling when you are in the drivers seat and did it yourself versus letting someone else do all of the hard work for you...even if it is better. A Picasso painting might be worth a lot of money worldwide but there is also something special about the drawing your kid made and gave to you. Both good in their own way but one is just a little more personal and has more meaning.
I stopped recording cassettes in 2006/7. This is roughly when I actually stopped listening to music non-stop. Sure, I now had a job and much less free time. But what is undeniable is that cassettes did one thing very very well. They "taught" you the songs they had in them. When you recorded a cassette, you put it in your walkman and you listened to it over and over again. No second thoughts like "Should I listen to this album, or that album?" You usually had one cassette with you on the go and you played it to death". I still have the cassettes I recorded back in the late 80's as a teenager and everytime I look at them I get transformed to that indifferent-about-anything-else long-haired dude! I came back to cassettes in 2020 and I have started recording on them again from time to time. Thank God, the flea market provided me with some NOS chrome ones. With much better equipment at my disposal, I'm very surprised as to how good a well-recorded cassette can sound. Since I cannot be 15 again, I can at least retrieve some of those cherished memories of yesteryear! And cassettes can very easily do that, at the touch of a button, namely "Play"...
Yes, me too. I am 42, and I kept all of my cassettes. I never really stopped listening to them. Even though I may not listen to them as much, I still enjoy listening to them.
Just found your channel and so happy I did ... so nice to see others appreciate the beauty that was the late 70s / 80s systems 🤩 100% agree how great it is to have a tape deck or two 🤔 er, or more ... Lol
I have a few but the setback with them or Reel to reel now is finding a trust worthy repair source to fix them or the upkeep ! I've kinda decided to repair a little myself now and order a few belt an tools / info on them ready... keep me busy once I have a lot more time from the working day. Right now I'm in the UK and there is more guys selling than offering to repair ... sad but im not ever letting go of mine 😊 Best
A few of the best things about tapes: 1) simple to record songs off the radio with any device. Even walkmans .. heck you could record full radio programs 2) you could record your own songs as when you pressed record on any tape player it simply recorded everything (if you didn’t use a microphone it recorded everything it “heard” like older video cameras or phones today. 3) you could copy others tapes and mix tapes easily but it did require you play through the entire tape at normal speed. You didn’t have to have the volume up unless you were doing it the cheap way which was to put two different tape players together and play one and record through the other using the sound coming from the speakers. 4) there is a certain warmth that comes through listening to tapes that you either love or hate. Hi fi fans hate tapes but some love records.. it’s all preference. 5) the absolute best was that tapes gave you a simple way to record the world around. I’ve found so many tapes of my family singing together or just talking to one another that I’ll cherish forever as some of them have passed away. Being able to record on your phone has replaced this but back then tape recording was the cheapest way to record voices.
Got again into cassettes in 2012, and still using them today. I had to take the plunge and buy a Nakamichi ZX-7 while those were still sold for reasonable prices. That was one of the best decisions of my life: the ZX-7 revealed me so many things about different tape types that couldn't be possible otherwise. It was and it still is an amazing journey. Even an entry level cassette can be made to sound great if recorded with a capable tape deck.
Fact: in 2023, using a high-end Nakamichi tape deck, using ones of the best and expensive cassettes back in the day and recording from a hi-res source, and the result is just unbelievable. If everyone of us could have this kind of match between tape deck, cassette and source back in the day, I bet nobody would still say ''ugh, but the cassette is crap, the tape got tangled...''
Cassettes can sound amazing, but it demands good gear being in good shape, then good tape and some recording knowledge.
Although I would love to a nice Nak in my collection, the pricese are getting pretty insane for those machines.
You don't have to tell me, I never gave up on them, and have several decks, NOT because they're popular again, BUT because I grew up with them, saw them evolve over the years and like them!
Yep..totally agree with all you said…last count I had 7 working decks, 3 more that need some adjustments, I really am hooked on them, love recording tunes and listening to playback…
Perfectly stated! Going through the whole process of recording and listening to cassette tapes is fantastic because of all of those reasons. I have a Panasonic boombox that is very good for playing tapes, but not so great for recording; I just got a Sony TC-FX505R deck in great shape at a garage sale, all it needs is a new belt, and I’m going to enjoy the heck out of it 🥰… Great content, keep up the good work 😊
I remember the 70's as being a decade of good music and mixtapes. My friend, Brad, and I started out with boombox cassette recorders, where we used mics to dub tapes before we purchased patch cords It didn't take long before we were using decent JVC decks, think KD-65 and KD-85, and spend hours "riding gain" to get our records on tape and to call radio stations to request songs without any DJ talk ruining the Intro. I kept up with cassettes until about 15 years ago and I put my two decks in storage. BIG MISTAKE, they were destroyed. A year or so ago my wife purchased a JVC DD-7 for me off of eBay. It ran for 3months before quitting. Now it has been refurbished and I am busy spending my time winding my tapes back and forth using a pencil before playing them again. It's great to be involved in laying down some tracks and finding old songs that were never released on digital.
I bought a Nakamichi MR-1 at a garage sale for $20 and it's mint!
Score!
Incredible 😱
I grew up with cassettes in the 70's, and still like them. My mix tapes, mostly recorded on Maxell or TDK type II, still sound great today. I use a fully restored Nak CR-7A, which is a dream machine.
In short - I would like to see the person who would NOT prefer the cassette in a blind comparison, between the original HiRes digital source and the recording of it, from my TEAC Z-7000. Seriously!
And in length - I only use HiRes streaming as a source for my recordings. What exactly happens to the signal when it's recorded on tape is beyond my knowledge, but frankly, I don't care. What interests me is the result... and that is (almost) 'magical'. Call it what you like (wishful thinking, for that matter) but the tape brings a vibrancy to the music that the digital source lacks. In addition, there are all the points you mentioned: nostalgia, haptics, etc.
If there was ever a time to deal with the cassette not just for convenience but also for audiophile reasons, then this is it.
I noticed that taping from CD also gives a bit of the warm analog sound, but also seems superior than recording from Vinyl.
@@TheBoomerConsumer When you record from analogue to analogue (Vinyl -> tape) you get a 99% perfect copy of the source at best. But it seems to be precisely this 'loss' that gives (or rather 'takes') the recordings from a digital source that certain something and makes it sound more pleasant and vibrant.
If the original source sounded best then we would not have the mastering process’s Recording digital to tape is analogue process and a lot of the time it does sound better on tape. I agree entirely with you. Hell, a lot of recording studios have a “tape sound effect” - there’s a reason for that!
I too have four cassette decks:
Nakamichi BX-150
Pioneer CT-F950
Dual C939
Luxman K-351
Hey Bruce, this is my first time seeing your videos and I immediately subscribed. I'm a vintage stereo addict so I had no choice!
Like you, I also have several vintage cassette decks including the Marantz 5420, Nakamichi BX-1, TEAC CX-650R and Pioneer CT-F9191. The nostalgia factor is so strong with these old units, I just love them! The bummer for me is that while the aesthetics and tactile experience are so great, the sound quality for me is just not there. I started adding tapes to my collection about 6 years ago and found that most of them were so degraded that they were unlistenable. Only about 20% were worth keeping and of those only maybe half actually sounded good. I definitely wish that wasn't the case!
Fine I confess! I was watching this video to see your pretty stereo equipment that I am definitely not jealous of... Maybe a little... FINE YOU CAUGHT ME!!!
Love the video Bruce
I really love this too I love your videos
Thank you
Thanks Landon
I recently found my old Denon DRM-800, including a powered head demagnetiser and some cassettes, lol. I guess it needs some TLC first, but it would be good fun to get it up and running. Anyway, nostalgia, but also curious how it sounds and what's on the tapes 😄
Enjoyed your content, thank you.
Hi Bruce are absolutely right about no one making a quality cassette deck today. I purchased a new Teac A-1200 a little while ago and already it has gone wrong and won’t fast forward or rewind. Compare that to my Nakamichi cassette deck which I have from had from new ( Over 30 yrs ago) and is in mint condition, totally original and sounds fantastic.
Now we just need a video telling us where to buy cassettes in 2023.
I buy mostly used through eBay. I use a bulk tape eraser on them, and so far after about 50 tapes the results have been pretty good.
Ebay or Amazon. Just be weary of the most recent UR’s. Avoid no name brands where the price is too good to be true. They yield poor results and could damage your playback/recording heads. The UR’s though, went downhill in quality before they were discontinued but if you can find new old stock (from the 90’s) those are fine. Type II’s are getting higher in price so if you go with those I wouldn’t wait too long. If sticking with type I you can’t go wrong with TDK D.
You're so right,miss cassette players.
At the local Goodwill I found jazz cassettes,OK three were brand new,one wasn't even open yet.
Thanks for your videos my name is Ken ,I love my tape deck which is a luxman 3 head deck .
I have a Sony es 3 head cassette deck, it stopped working and I was just going to get rid of it, but after watching this video, I will look to get it repaired.
Those are amazing decks, well worth restoring
Well worth fixing if you can find a good shop. The only complaint with the Sony’s is though they sound great when they work, much of the mechanism uses plastic gears and on many models these can crack over time. But a good shop can still pull the parts or even 3D print them.
I got rid of a couple vintage Tape decks in '21 one a Pioneer CTF650 in need of a belt change. Still holding on to my Kenwood Direct drive, though all cassettes are gone or converted to digital. Note, I never liked the Dolby setting, adding muffling to the tape, yet had to get rid of the hiss. Heads would block up & need frequent cleaning, especially with store bought cassettes.
*may have been mentioned in video* If you have a tape deck you don't need to flip the audio signal through decompression, dac's, and other crap, with tapes it is simply RCA plugs to a stereo.
Still have 3 cassette decks -- 2 Sonys and an Akai -- cuz I still have and listen to more than 300 tapes -- most with 2 dubbed vinyl albums each -- that I recorded from the mid 70s to the mid 80s.
KDA-77 JVC 3 head deck, with ANRS, great deck. TDK Sa tapes standard for the 80’s
I have a nice Sony deck that has Dolby B, C and S. It's in my store room somewhere. I had a Harman Kardon that was so great that it had a 20-21KHZ frequency response with Dolby B, C and HX Pro. When it died I felt a personal loss. I donated a large collection of tapes I recorded on TDK and Maxell tapes. I saved about 20 or 30. If you have a tape that squeals, put a trace of silicon oil on the pressure pad on the tape itself.
Sony made excellent decks
Too many people remember the way cassettes sounded on there low end decks that they thought were high end decks just because they were popular brands at the time(Sony, JVC, Etc.), tapes had a lot of hiss on are budget decks, most of us never had the chance to really hear high end decks because they were priced way beyond reach of the average Joe at the time, I own a very nice Sony ES 3 head deck with Dolby S which I know is not the best but way better than anything I ever owned in the past by a long shot, when people hear my well recorded Chrome and Metal tapes they are amazed and don't remember tapes ever sounding this good, I hope cassettes make a comeback like vinyl because I really do enjoy them
2nd edit April 2024. Cost of refurb and taking in my NAD late 1980s 3 head deck a seond time and to a second shop deck is $1k. After repairs in one NYNY place in late 2023, I got a little use of it before something mechanical failed. I did not fully trust first shop and went to the other authorized service here.. who seem to be more qualified. Main motor failed and had to be taken from some other unit or source, no more new. They said the 'work' were the same as some NAK. Nice.
I just want to play my 30-35 year old mixtapes while they last, and record on the few unused and several new old stock tape I have,. They were recorded on my prior, a cheaper Technics deck.
There will not be any even more expensive, serviced, high end deck for me, when this goes.
That’s what I like about watching stranger things you can see all that and I’m very happy about that😊!!
i love my tape decks
No, the sound quality of a cassette deck or vinyl record is not as good as a CD or 24 bit wav file. However, that is not the only factor to consider. The fact is, that these archaic formats are simply more fun. And aesthetically pleasing. So I'm with you.
I personally prefer the sound of analog LP over a digital CD. I listen to both and the record sounds better.
there is only one use case: you have a collection of live recordings. other than that, digital is way better than cassettes (and much cheaper).
How about 10 cassette decks you should think of buying? Which ones are decent?
You didn’t convince me to get a tapedeck in 2023. Can you do video explaining the tape sounds va cd or other formats?
Not trying to convince anyone, I can say that on a well made deck and recording to a excellent tape, you can get amazing sound from it.
Sir have Sansui 11000 amplifier integrated.....I want repair sir pls support me no one repair in India I love this amplifier
Check out Just Audio or Skylabs Audio UA-cam channels.
Namaste dosto! ✌️
I got back into cassette decks because I thought I couldn't afford RTR. Then I got into RTR and the cassette decks became redundant/inferior. Still have both, but use the cassette decks less & less. Probably six people now in NA that can repair Nakamichi decks and you'll wait over a yr for service. So my question is; WHO is going to repair your cassette decks and keep them to spec? You're not going to bring these back to factory spec by just tinkering around with them. Many require expensive tools to service, even if you know what you're doing.
yes - this is the issue - finding someone who can or willing to do such repairs & you then can't get the parts anymore. Same issue with older CD players - the optical pickups are no longer made & so when they die, the player becomes a door stop.
I have 4 cassette decks, Nakamichi 581 ,Yamaha K- 850 and 350 and a Carver. Good cassette deck will sound as good as a CD.
Who would I find to repair my cassette player? The shops have closed down and technicians retired.
There are people who work on them, you can find them on eBay , as well as Facebook forums. But I get it. The bigger issue is parts such as heads, and motors.
I have over 40
40 decks.. wow!
The only reason to buy a deck is to play old unique tapes, digitize them, throw away the tapes. The format is dead. Warm analog sound is BS that people who don't know anything about sound continue to perpetuate. The best cassettes and the best LPs were made off digital masters. Now you can basically listen to these masters directly, without an extra analog distortion step. Vinyl is just a PR campaign to get people off digital and to force them to buy physical media again. Nope, this ship has sailed.
Вы правы, правы, правы. Однако я купил себе подержаный JVC KD 10. И когда я просыпаясь, первое, что я вижу это JVC, и это подымает мне настроение 😂
Nostalgia is probably the only reason to go back to a casette deck. I absolutely understand and encourage that. That said, if you want decent sounding analog, go vinyl. Pre recorded casettes sounded awful, PERIOD. They mostly recorded on bad sounding low bias tapes. FYI, low bias tapes have a light brown appearance as opposed to dark brown to black for high bias. Rarely, you could find pre recorded material on decent tapes. High bitrate MP3 sounds much better than prerecorded music on low bias tapes (most high bias recordings too). I even have a low opinion of all MP3 recordings. The only decent sounding casettes were pretty much ones you recorded yourself on high bias (or better) tapes that are not even made anymore. The only real value to casettes, even back in the day, was recording your friends' albums and cds. Casette taping was the original audio sharing. In that regard, casette taping WAS very useful. Also, old tape decks were very unreliable for long term use. Yes, if you want to get into vintage casette decks, you better be able to tinker with electronics or more likely the mechanical parts. Belts ARE going to crack and break. They are also full of small unreliable mechanical parts. Tape heads break and are hard to replace. Every tape deck I have ever owned has broken at some point. I still use a Technics direct drive turntable I bought in 1981. Every deck I purchased (2) after that have broken. This doesn't include a high quality Walkman that also broke. The big problem here is that new casette equipment sound absolutly horrible. When it comes to casette recording you are stuck behind new crappy equipment and decent old equipment that is guaranteed to break.The only tape format that approached cd quality sound was high feet per second reel to reel. High quality reel to reel operated at 15 inches per second, casette tapes operated at 1.875 inches per second. If you are interested in casette recording, know what you are getting yourself into.
OMG...Don't forget about those marvelous 6 track players. I had one in my Honda Civic and it
deserves a special place in hell. 🙂
I am from the cassette era, and I loved them... Back in the 80s
Now I love Spotify, and no more casettes, cds etc all over the place 👍
No thanks! Unless you enjoy the hiss!
Not on a Sony or Pioneer in the mid to high range using Dolby S and a good quality tape. Even a deck with Dolby B can sound good if you bias the deck right. It will be clear and you don’t notice much hiss unless you are listening to really quiet passages and even then it’s negligible. Dolby S got really close to CD sound to the point you can’t even tell and was the best tape ever got (in addition to DBX). Tape got a bad rap because most never cared properly for their equipment or got cheap stuff. Digital is great don’t get me wrong but it suffers from compression and loudness most of the time and it’s not the same as putting a great album or mix to tape.
@@RB-xm3ed I have a Pioneer and a Nakamichi. With Dolby S, much of the treble is lost.
@@thelowprofile9767If you encode it with S and decode with S and the tape was biased that should not be the case. Anytime you use any NR it should be played back with the same as recording (I’m only mentioning that for those who may be new and not know). I’m using a Sony mid range deck and never have experienced that. Another thing like the gentleman explained in another video, sometimes the boards need recapped. Though rare I have heard sometimes the Dolby boards fail after a certain age (at which point if you get a parts unit you could just swap it out). Could also be an azimuth issue if the tape was in fact encoded and decoded properly. The only other thing I can think of that would cause treble loss may be that a demag is needed if it hasn’t been done in a long time or never done.
@@RB-xm3ed What your saying is true, most people only bought the pre recorded albums they purchased in stores(most recorded on type 1 from a bad source) on budget players and that memory is still stuck in there heads
About five years ago I bought a Nakamichi Cassette Deck 1. It makes even badly recorded tapes sound decent. There is magic in going to a shelf, choosing a recording (LP, cassette, CD), putting into/onto a player, and enjoying the music. Scrolling through a playlist just isn't the same.