I love cassette tapes I’ve always been a huge fan of old vintage record of technology vinyl cassettes and CDs. I have a bunch of blank cassette tapes I have kitty Kay and Max cells blank cassette tapes which is really great I like longer blankets at tapes because you have an hour or so to do your favorite mixes I might have to get a hold of some Beatles concert tapes. It was a pleasure hearing your voice when you were a younger kid recording a hard days night that was great.
Taping from the television? Recording the Radio 1 Top 40 show on Sunday evenings (broadcast in GLORIOUS FM stereo with the SENSATIONAL Tony Blackburn! 😀)? Making mix tapes for friends and for fun? So I wasn't alone...! Thanks for the memories and your analysis of the MoFi Rubber Soul cassette, Andrew.
Back in the day I had a boombox that had TV channels in its tuner bands, so additionally to the FM/MW/SW radio, there was also the MTV to tune in and record from, as I did extensively.
First of all, I love your channel. In 1981, MFSL held a contest soliciting creative copy from consumers who loved for the company. I wrote a poem and won third place. The prize was a promo copy of Magical Mystery Tour on cassette in a case with no packaging. I still have it.
I still have cassette tapes, I even have a boom box to play them on. I have a mix tape that I made that sounds good almost to the original albums used in the recording. After a time when I wanted to record music, I only would by type II or chrome tapes and type IV metal tapes. They helped control hiss from playing the tape, but the cassette walkman was worst to play back a tape between the hiss or hum from unit.
Fixing broken cassettes, that brings back memories! As a teenager with little in the way of resources and knowledge (!), I used whatever was available so I managed to fix a few with good old sellotape and pritt stick but it worked! It may have been primitive but it prolonged the life of a few cassettes.
Restoration is what I do (did) for many years. I’ve done personal band collections, some well known folks, etc from the 50’s to the 90’s; to basketball games (auditorium audio)…and I’m always amazed at how well they still perform. I loved transferring those Beatles MoFi cassettes to mo fi recordable gold discs and Japanese recordable discs. I learned so much! Maybe we can chat about that one day😄! Great show! Absolutely cool! (Repairing cassettes is nerve wracking as you get older😅)
The cassette revival began with small, boutique labels featuring obscure artists. Not with Swift and Eilish. This was a grassroots revival that came from the people first.
My homebrew cassettes always sounded better than pre-recorded tapes. I used high quality tape, for a start and applied a very good EQ to make them sound as good or better (so I'd thought) as the originals.
Yup… My homemade tapes - on the highest end cassettes that I could find like Maxell, TDK - always sounded better than anything store-bought. Make a direct copy off of vinyl onto that. Problem was with cassettes, the more you played them, the more issues they would develop, like what I used to refer to as “beveling” (meaning that the tape got “folded” somewhat and you would lose clarity on one of the channels)
Perhaps another reason for cassette tapes having a bad reputation is that, when they first came out people used them primarily in their cars where they remained, regardless of the weather. In my final year of high school (1971-72) I bought an add-on cassette deck for my 10-year old car. I was buying 45s and LPs to listen to at home, but they could not obviously be played in the car, so that's why many of us back then bought cassettes. Since we didn't play them in the house, they were kept in the car where they were subject to the elements.In the 80s, after I'd moved to Dubai, I really found out what happened to them when they were left in the car during the Dubai summer!
I remember in the 70s and 80s a pre recorded cassette cost about the same as vinyl but nowhere near as robust and the art work looked rubbish on cassette, so we always bought vinyl then transferred to cassette for the car.
Did you ever have any experience, using the DBX Type II noise reduction system? I did. 20-19 K, with 80-85 DB. for noise reduction and dynamic range. IN my opion, was the real game changer. I was getting those numbers, in POST using a DBX 3BX , in a loop. THE NR. system on the cassette recorder, was bypassed. IN 1980, I got the TEAC A-550 RX, and that WAS something amazing. It was one of the first commercial Cassette Decks, with integral DBX Type II NR, built in. It was CD quality, before the CD , even existed. Tech, back then , was pretty amazing. Thank you as well, for your great presentation.
Really enjoyed your explanation of the Mobile Fidelity Beatles cassettes and the comparison of 'Nowhere Man' on different releases, Andrew! The sound quality of a cassette was never as good as a cd or vinyl record but it was fun to make your own mix tapes and recording the Top 40 on a Sunday afternoon from Radio 1 was a must! From that point of view cassettes were very user friendly and made up for the fact that the sound quality might be a bit lacking!
As a 69-year-old audiophile since age 13, had MFSL LPs including UHQR, etc etc, I thought I'd seen it all, but as several others have posted, this was the first time I heard of MoFi cassettes!
Man, I love this channel! I had the MoFi cassettes of Rubber Soul and Revolver in the late ‘80s. My local record store had them, priced about the same as a CD at the time. I had the same experience at home-turn off the Dolby and the music sounded good but it introduced tape hiss. Yet they sounded phenomenal on my car’s cassette deck. And I was thrilled that they had the proper UK running order. The UK versions were available on Capitol cassettes at the time too, but they all had those rearranged track listings that were so annoying.
That ending was such a pleasure to watch, especially with the good choice in music to accompany the footage. I knew right from the post that this wasn’t winning anything but its always a pleasure to watch a video from you!
For a while i was expecting an AVGN type of comedy destroying in anger that MoFI cassette for being worthless with that price tag, like when he destroyed the Nintendo World Championships cartridges as part of the script.
I've still got my tape splicing kit from the 1960s complete with different colours of leader tape - but that was for reel to reel tape. I had lots of fun chopping up the tape and splicing in different sounds............
Sorry, one last post. I remember when all the Beatles movies were screened on TV that Christmas. I watched all of them apart from A Hard Days Night. I was trying to remember why I didn’t watch that one movie and now I know why: it was Christmas Day and I was busy with presents. Strange how a questing that has been bugging me for years gets answered decades later. I bought my brother a copy of Sgt Pepper vinyl that Christmas. He’s still got it. To this day I’ve still not seen A Hard Days Night. I’ve decided I’m going to save it and watch it on the 60th anniversary in two years time.
I notice you still use a biro for winding the tape on. After all these years, it’s still the best tool for the job. I’m sorry for clogging the comments up with so many posts. It’s just that cassettes were such a big part of my life and your video has brought back so many memories. Thank you Andrew.
Thanks for this video Andrew. I head from another channel about the Beatles Mobile Fidelity album being cut from a digital tape from the original analog master but wasn’t convinced until watching this. Interesting to learn about these cassettes although I am not nostalgic enough to start purchasing them again. Thanks for sharing!
While I never invested in MoFi cassettes, my choice of blank tapes was TDK MA110, which may seem thin, but were an excellent formulation, and even accommodated virtually any single/double LP, and even long-form CD’s for portable play.
Great video Andrew! Never knew MFSL made tapes? With old tapes that have a glued shell, you open them without damage by using some Ronsonol on a cue tip and applying it to the seams over and over, which after a short time, will seep in a simply 'pop open'. Then when done, use small (less is more) dabs of Gorilla Super Glue (not regular expanding Gorilla Glue, but the clear gel Super Glue) to seal it back up. Cheers!
I used to love taping the Top 20/40 back in the 70’s when Tom Browne was the presenter.. Like you Andrew, I used TDK SA & BASF tapes but later I used Hitachi EX as they were basically Maxell rebadged.. Loved the video as usual great content and superb presentation Sir 😎👍👍
I was expecting a comparission between the cassette and how a CD edition recorded on cassette sounded like, since you said that basically that was how those MoFi tapes were recorded back then.
Excellent video as always and glad to hear the Technics cassette deck I own is the exact one recommended in this video! Auto reserve is a great feature rarely seen on home units.😮
What's brilliant about Andrew's work is the detailed research and the production on all his videos. I especially like the retro recreations of intros from UK TV like the ITV Programmes for Schools & Colleges countdown clock, the BBC Video logo, ATV and Thames ..... great stuff!
I also recorded the sound of that AHDN broadcast onto a cassette in 1979 lol. Thanks for all the videos, I do enjoy them. We have met before btw, we had a few drinks together and talked Beatles before the Kate Bush concert with my wife and myself in September 2014. Hope you are well.
Hi Karl, Great to hear from you. What an unforgettable evening that was. Hope you and your wife are doing well. Your channel looks amazing - I'll definitely give it a watch.
Hi Andrew. Brilliant take on Cassettes. I was lucky enough to get a copy of the Heineken cassette "Only The Beatles...." before the men in grey Pierre Cardin suits decided it probably wasn't the the best album in the world. I have always thought that the sound quality was very good especially on "And I Love Her" where the Claves always seemed sharper than the vinyl and the CD. Looking forward to the next episode.
Thanks Andrew for confirming the cassette was an audiophiles nightmare. Even with the Nakamiche tape deck, it was disappointing. I sold the deck and tapes sometime back with no regrets. I too thought BASF chrome tape was the best. 😆
As usual Andrew fantastic work. I found this extremely interesting. As someone who was 18 in 1978 i watched cassettes come up in the world. I loved that you talked about mixtapes being an art because to me they were. I used to make them all the time. I too was never into pre recorded tapes because it was just as easy to tape my lps onto a better quality tape then buy the shitty pre recorded ones. Plus you could usually make your own deluxe versions with extra tracks and such. By the late 70’s most of the bigger companies had better tapes available like a maxell IIs and TDK SAX which were chrome tapes. They sounded fantastic and that’s how I continued to use cassettes for years. Later metal tapes came along which were super expensive but sounded even better so i used them for special occasions. Like taping a live show or live FM. But honestly the chrome tapes were so good it wasn’t an absolute must. Too bad back in the day Mofi didn’t try the metal tapes they were incredibly good. See you next time!!
I enjoyed your video post on the MOFI High Fidelity Cassettes of which I own The Beatles “Revolver”. I also bought it back in the day to satisfy my curiosity about the sound. To my ears they sound very close to the vinyl but without any intrusion clicks or pops.
Excellent job telling the story of MoFi cassettes. Funny how they went through all that trouble in finding the perfect mechanical components for their cassettes, but then made them from a PCM master. Of course, PCM was considered state of the art at the time, so it was not a case of getting cheap or lazy, but still.
Great video as always about something I forgot about after first seeing from 35 years ago till now. I remember seeing these at the Mainstream Records Megastore in Milwaukee Wisconsin. Being a younger person that was lucky enough to own his own turn table, along with a portable CD player, cassettes were always a last resort if that for a music purchase. In the fall of 1987 when I saw The Beatles MFSL cassettes , I thought, Who Would Want These? Well, lots of people. Oh man, talk about youth being wasted on the young! 😄
That was a truly awesome Andrew. I had an 8 track player which was ok, but my cassette gave me the freedom to make my mixed albums which, like you mentioned expressed my musical taste at the time More playing less changing. bye for now.
My introduction to the Beatles was through mixtapes recorded off the radio. That's how I listened to Beatles as a kid until I dubbed them into my computer and made CDs and MP3s from the tape! This is the first video I've watched from your channel, and watched it all the way through! Love the professional camerawork and documentary-style approach. Classic animations and the circular film cues in the upper right corner at the end are nice touches. Also loved the contextual deep dive and critical analysis of results with accompanying waveforms! Only wish you could have played samples of audio from each of the formats in comparison, although we know UA-cam makes that difficult with copyright. 16:28 "...the magic really happens when you switch off the Dolby. Now, those guitars really sing and the whole track sounds like it has a kind of magical glow around it. But, the resulting tape hiss, along with that hefty dose of digital compression, strips this cassette of all its audiophile credentials." Yeah, if the tape was recorded in Dolby you're supposed to listen to it with Dolby decoding engaged. That "magical glow" you describe is the classic sound of Dolby-encoded tape being played with the Dolby switched off. Although it may sound "better", it's not what the tape duplicating engineer intended. The "digital compression" you hear might just be the sound of compressed highs revealed in the un-decoded Dolby signal. But if the highs are lacking when played with Dolby on, maybe it's an azimuth misalignment issue -- that can drastically affect the highs. Or perhaps the overall magnetic level has simply dropped across the whole tape over the years, thus causing the Dolby to mistrack on playback. It's give and take.
⚡THNX!⚡so much for these great videos about recorded Beatles.they are not only fascinating to me but they've helped me through some tough times and really cheer me up
Hi Andrew. Thanks for another informative and interesting video. I bought my first reel to reel tape recorder last week as well as a cassette player, and I love it.
I became quite skilled at making mix tapes for the car and timing to finish each side with usually a second or two before the tape ran out. I even made my own sleeve art. Just making the tapes kept me busy as a kid for hours. Sometimes I spent more time making the tape than playing it back. I was really lucky growing up just during that brief period when cassette was there in-car media. Kids of today have missed out on all that creative fun.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the box set that was released when the BC 13 vinyl was released. I've seen them for sale but have never heard them. I have a few of the 1969-70 tape. and not much to write home about but are fun. Thanks again.
Great content as always. Enjoyed the tag at the end fixing the tape/cassette. They were certainly valued things of their time, however quite fidly to try repair. I can't really see them making a comeback. Cheers
Honestly, if you want any kind of audiophile sound, portable analog formats like cassettes or 8 tracks are the last ones you want to get. Sound quality never was their strong points. Vinyl and Reel to Reel tapes will be the best analog formats for audiophiles. Any way, as always, good video man! Keep it up!
I made mix tapes for the car and one problem we had was the damp atmosphere in the UK caused the tapes to stick together then stretch. Sometimes the tape wouldn’t be taken up by the empty reel and instead would stick to the drive wheel and start piling up inside the cassette player. Made a mess of the player and the tape was dead. We were short of cash so sometimes I would cut out the mangled tape and stick the good bits together with sellotape. Those tiny segments used to record blank.
My Blaupunkt car cassette player and Pioneer DEH 200 CD player was so dope. It bumped, out of my RF 10 with built in crossover and high pass band filter and a 2x100 Pioneer amp. Cost me ($400) which was 3 weeks work at Winn Dixie ($4.85:hr plus tips) back in 1994
You're absolutely right Andrew, the Mobile Fidelity cassettes are very expensive, and as you said, very hard to find. i'd like to come across a couple from some unsuspecting person, but as for now I think i'll leave it alone. My pockets aren't that deep.
The musical format everyone loves to .. lol nah , that’s spotify 😂 jk … I think the reason I really want a a1 b3 pressing of magical mystery tour is because I recall mom playing that record as a kid.. one of many great classics that carved me into a musican. But that aside.. wow I never new there was so much to go into research wise for cassette. Aside from what I learned from techmoan 😅 it’s so great that “retro” is cool and the old music and its formats from the 60’s to the 80’s can live again.. great stuff as always Andrew 👍
I grew up with cassettes and loved it's analog sound and my favorite sounding album on cassette was the Hendrix compilation The Ultimate Hendrix with its rich and warm bass which was lost on its CD version
I owned the Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band MFSL vinyl back in the late 80s, found it brand new in a used record store still sealed/“bagged” for 18 bucks. I loved that thing for years but eventually hard times forced me to sell it for three times what I paid for it so it was worth it then….wish I still had it though, it sounded fantastic and the packaging was true to its original release in the 60s with all the bells and whistles included. I always regret getting rid of that.
I have three MFSL cassette releases (none from The Beatles), they all sounded amazing when new and even 20 years ago. Today, the BASF CrO2 tape has slowly deteriorated, losing the high frequency information and rendering my MSFL cassettes sounding dull and lifeless even with recent professional servicing of my Nakamichi BX-1 deck. These tapes, and a couple of other "audiophile" Cr02 70uSec prerecorded tapes from RCA and Advent, sounded fantastic 20 years ago. There have been discussions about the loss of high-frequency content on older CrO2 tapes on the Tapeheads forum, the problem is specific to 1970s-80s era BASF chrome tape, not Type II "chrome equivalent" TDK SA or Maxell UD-XLII. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, nobody could have known for certain the long-term archival quality of the chromium dioxide tape formulations, it turned out that the "copycat" high-bias tapes from TDK and Maxell are retaining their sound quality better than the genuine CrO2 tapes.
In the mid-1980’s I would record the BBC Top 20 on cassette from a short wave radio in the US (Duluth, MN). The quality of the short wave was much worse than the cassette. Long story short, I was lucky if I could figure out all the song titles, artists and positions. Since they listed and played portions of 20 songs in 30 minutes, there wasn’t much music to miss anyway. Thanks for the incentive to dig through my basement to find some of those old tapes.
I guess the special modification to the Sony PCM-F1 was to connect it to a U-Matic recorder? The original PCM-F1 used Betamax tapes, as it directly connected to the Sony F1 Betamax recorder. We had an F1 back in the day, an awesome machine - especially when coupled with the Sony HVC-4000P camera. A fully portable system - but only just luggable!
The best factory record label cassettes were made in the mid 80s to the 2000s ..They do have great sound quality and hard to beat in many cases if you have a good deck with proper head alignment and good strong output. ..Head Alignment may not always match up with every tape so you need to be able to adjust it if you have a tape that is off the true alignment ..Record the ones you like to CD to preserve the tape ..
Hi Andrew, really a very good info, in this case I'm 100%agree with you, I reproduce my tapes on my old Nackamichi Dragón, sounds great,, but only with the dolby and chome tipe tapes, THE mofi Casserres not are a excception, well, great video, great work from your part
Mix tapes, oh how that’s brought back memories. I remember when my dad bought dozens of blank cassettes and my dad let me have a dozen. Oh what fun I had preparing loads of mixes for the car. I was still a kid and years away from driving. The cassettes were for when me, my mum and dad, my brother and two sisters were all in the car together. One year we went to France and i packed a huge bag of mix tapes. I took more cassettes than clothes. The only place for this huge bag was the foot well occupied by my feet. So that’s where it went and I had the most uncomfortable 36 hours travelling in each direction. But we had great music.
The irony is that the 'In The Court' has a very troubled history from incorrectly-aligned recording heads, disappearing master tapes and sloppy mastering jobs.
MFSL imho, I think are fairly good. I owned technically 3 of these so far. Two Dark Sides of the Moons (1 I got for $15 & it broke) then Year of the Cat. Honestly I find these to be the best prerecorded cassettes. I listen to it on a DC2 with Dolby NR off. It sounds so great and the only thing that I’ll say is there is still a hiss. I don’t mind it though, I think it’s truly the best cassette really. This is someone who solely listens to cassettes btw.
Back in the day, Dolby noise reduction was awesome - IF YOU PLAYED YOUR TAPE ON THE DECK ON WHICH IT WAS RECORDED! If you can't, you're screwed. Dull sound (on), or tape hiss and compression (off) - pick one.
We have some tapes from the ‘70s that parents recorded when they were children. Its nerve-racking but i would love to one day restore those tapes and transfer them over to digital. Also have a Paul McCartney interview tape from ‘93 where he casually talks about the Paul Is Live album. Think that one specifically is an unheard interview.
Ryan Whittier: I transferred many of my precious old cassettes to digital. Not very nerve wracking, but definitely time consuming. Besides the cassette deck and probably stereo receiver or similar, all you need is a PC sound card/motherboard with line-level analog audio inputs and appropriate control software like Audacity. Good luck!
Why would anyone buy pre-recorded cassettes at the time? Well if you were a "normal" person (not an audiophile) generally a lot of cheap record players had a lot of wow, there was crackle, records were easy to scratch by mistake and tapes were seen as almost indestructible (unless you did something really stupid or the equipment broke). Also walkmans/boomboxes were cheaper and to be brutally honest a lot of kids had double cassette boomboxes in order to copy games as well as music. Buying a record player seemed an additional expense. Also for students, it was much easier to take a boombox onto a train to take it from your parent's house to university than a record player. Also styluses needed to replaced regularly whereas only fanatics ever really replaced tape heads. Also if people wanted to copy a bought LP they had to do it in real time whereas if they wanted to copy a cassette there was something at the time known as "high speed dubbing" which allowed people to copy it quicker at the expense of quality. CDs at the time cost twice what the same album cost on cassette, so for many if they were not sure if they would like it or not they bought it on cassette as CDs were seen as something people bought if they were sure they would like it. To put it into perspective a lot of CDs cost about £13 and the cassette equivalent was about £6.
I taped the Let it be film when it was shown on TV at Christmas 1975 or 76. The sound quality was average at best buy I loved it and played it for years.
You state that MFSL released six Beatles cassettes altogether--did I miss something or were only five mentioned: MMT, Pepper, Help, Rubber Soul, and Revolver? Meanwhile, I'm shocked to learn that Island released King Crimson's first album on cassette without its iconic cover art!
Hearing the voice of a young “Parlogram” Andrew was one of the unexpected pleasures of this video❤
It is an impressive-sounding intro with a good speaking voice for being so young.
I had visions of a little lad with a cap on, sitting in his pajamas on Christmas morning 😄
Cheers!
this put a big smile on my face, SO cute!
That’s pretty cool too!
I love cassette tapes I’ve always been a huge fan of old vintage record of technology vinyl cassettes and CDs.
I have a bunch of blank cassette tapes I have kitty Kay and Max cells blank cassette tapes which is really great I like longer blankets at tapes because you have an hour or so to do your favorite mixes
I might have to get a hold of some Beatles concert tapes.
It was a pleasure hearing your voice when you were a younger kid recording a hard days night that was great.
Taping from the television? Recording the Radio 1 Top 40 show on Sunday evenings (broadcast in GLORIOUS FM stereo with the SENSATIONAL Tony Blackburn! 😀)? Making mix tapes for friends and for fun? So I wasn't alone...! Thanks for the memories and your analysis of the MoFi Rubber Soul cassette, Andrew.
cassettes were a great source of joy.
Back in the day I had a boombox that had TV channels in its tuner bands, so additionally to the FM/MW/SW radio, there was also the MTV to tune in and record from, as I did extensively.
First of all, I love your channel. In 1981, MFSL held a contest soliciting creative copy from consumers who loved for the company. I wrote a poem and won third place. The prize was a promo copy of Magical Mystery Tour on cassette in a case with no packaging. I still have it.
Great story, Conrad!
I still have cassette tapes, I even have a boom box to play them on. I have a mix tape that I made that sounds good almost to the original albums used in the recording. After a time when I wanted to record music, I only would by type II or chrome tapes and type IV metal tapes. They helped control hiss from playing the tape, but the cassette walkman was worst to play back a tape between the hiss or hum from unit.
God, I hope Apple Corps didn’t notice the
(I meant that comment as a joke but I’m beginning to worry it might lead to this channel being sent to UA-cam prison or whatever!)
Fixing broken cassettes, that brings back memories! As a teenager with little in the way of resources and knowledge (!), I used whatever was available so I managed to fix a few with good old sellotape and pritt stick but it worked! It may have been primitive but it prolonged the life of a few cassettes.
Restoration is what I do (did) for many years. I’ve done personal band collections, some well known folks, etc from the 50’s to the 90’s; to basketball games (auditorium audio)…and I’m always amazed at how well they still perform.
I loved transferring those Beatles MoFi cassettes to mo fi recordable gold discs and Japanese recordable discs.
I learned so much!
Maybe we can chat about that one day😄!
Great show! Absolutely cool!
(Repairing cassettes is nerve wracking as you get older😅)
Thanks Brian, glad you enjoyed it!
The cassette revival began with small, boutique labels featuring obscure artists. Not with Swift and Eilish. This was a grassroots revival that came from the people first.
My homebrew cassettes always sounded better than pre-recorded tapes. I used high quality tape, for a start and applied a very good EQ to make them sound as good or better (so I'd thought) as the originals.
Have to agree. I also had a Carver “Sonic Hologram” processor I’d put the signal through. It sounded awesome.
Yup… My homemade tapes - on the highest end cassettes that I could find like Maxell, TDK - always sounded better than anything store-bought. Make a direct copy off of vinyl onto that. Problem was with cassettes, the more you played them, the more issues they would develop, like what I used to refer to as “beveling” (meaning that the tape got “folded” somewhat and you would lose clarity on one of the channels)
Dude's already got the presentation skills down in '79. When I was taping stuff like that back in the '70s I would be loud and obnoxious, lol.
@16:40 - "the real magic happens when you turn OFF the Dolby" 😎 100% - is Dolby invented for those that don't like to listen?
Perhaps another reason for cassette tapes having a bad reputation is that, when they first came out people used them primarily in their cars where they remained, regardless of the weather.
In my final year of high school (1971-72) I bought an add-on cassette deck for my 10-year old car. I was buying 45s and LPs to listen to at home, but they could not obviously be played in the car, so that's why many of us back then bought cassettes. Since we didn't play them in the house, they were kept in the car where they were subject to the elements.In the 80s, after I'd moved to Dubai, I really found out what happened to them when they were left in the car during the Dubai summer!
I remember in the 70s and 80s a pre recorded cassette cost about the same as vinyl but nowhere near as robust and the art work looked rubbish on cassette, so we always bought vinyl then transferred to cassette for the car.
Did you ever have any experience, using the DBX Type II noise reduction system? I did. 20-19 K, with 80-85 DB. for noise reduction and dynamic range. IN my opion, was the real game changer. I was getting those numbers, in POST using a DBX 3BX , in a loop. THE NR. system on the cassette recorder, was bypassed. IN 1980, I got the TEAC A-550 RX, and that WAS something amazing. It was one of the first commercial Cassette Decks, with integral DBX Type II NR, built in. It was CD quality, before the CD , even existed. Tech, back then , was pretty amazing. Thank you as well, for your great presentation.
Really enjoyed your explanation of the Mobile Fidelity Beatles cassettes and the comparison of 'Nowhere Man' on different releases, Andrew! The sound quality of a cassette was never as good as a cd or vinyl record but it was fun to make your own mix tapes and recording the Top 40 on a Sunday afternoon from Radio 1 was a must! From that point of view cassettes were very user friendly and made up for the fact that the sound quality might be a bit lacking!
As a 69-year-old audiophile since age 13, had MFSL LPs including UHQR, etc etc, I thought I'd seen it all, but as several others have posted, this was the first time I heard of MoFi cassettes!
Man, I love this channel! I had the MoFi cassettes of Rubber Soul and Revolver in the late ‘80s. My local record store had them, priced about the same as a CD at the time. I had the same experience at home-turn off the Dolby and the music sounded good but it introduced tape hiss. Yet they sounded phenomenal on my car’s cassette deck. And I was thrilled that they had the proper UK running order. The UK versions were available on Capitol cassettes at the time too, but they all had those rearranged track listings that were so annoying.
That ending was such a pleasure to watch, especially with the good choice in music to accompany the footage. I knew right from the post that this wasn’t winning anything but its always a pleasure to watch a video from you!
Thank you very much, Alex!
For a while i was expecting an AVGN type of comedy destroying in anger that MoFI cassette for being worthless with that price tag, like when he destroyed the Nintendo World Championships cartridges as part of the script.
I've still got my tape splicing kit from the 1960s complete with different colours of leader tape - but that was for reel to reel tape. I had lots of fun chopping up the tape and splicing in different sounds............
Sorry, one last post. I remember when all the Beatles movies were screened on TV that Christmas. I watched all of them apart from A Hard Days Night. I was trying to remember why I didn’t watch that one movie and now I know why: it was Christmas Day and I was busy with presents. Strange how a questing that has been bugging me for years gets answered decades later. I bought my brother a copy of Sgt Pepper vinyl that Christmas. He’s still got it. To this day I’ve still not seen A Hard Days Night. I’ve decided I’m going to save it and watch it on the 60th anniversary in two years time.
I notice you still use a biro for winding the tape on. After all these years, it’s still the best tool for the job. I’m sorry for clogging the comments up with so many posts. It’s just that cassettes were such a big part of my life and your video has brought back so many memories. Thank you Andrew.
Thanks for this video Andrew. I head from another channel about the Beatles Mobile Fidelity album being cut from a digital tape from the original analog master but wasn’t convinced until watching this. Interesting to learn about these cassettes although I am not nostalgic enough to start purchasing them again. Thanks for sharing!
While I never invested in MoFi cassettes, my choice of blank tapes was TDK MA110, which may seem thin, but were an excellent formulation, and even accommodated virtually any single/double LP, and even long-form CD’s for portable play.
I'd never even heard of MoFi cassettes
I used these Sony metal tapes for cassette transfers…my 1980s Luxman deck was as good as a Nakamichi.
Great video Andrew! Never knew MFSL made tapes? With old tapes that have a glued shell, you open them without damage by using some Ronsonol on a cue tip and applying it to the seams over and over, which after a short time, will seep in a simply 'pop open'. Then when done, use small (less is more) dabs of Gorilla Super Glue (not regular expanding Gorilla Glue, but the clear gel Super Glue) to seal it back up. Cheers!
Great tip, thanks!
I used to love taping the Top 20/40 back in the 70’s when Tom Browne was the presenter.. Like you Andrew, I used TDK SA & BASF tapes but later I used Hitachi EX as they were basically Maxell rebadged.. Loved the video as usual great content and superb presentation Sir 😎👍👍
I taped those same Beatles films on the BBC!
Chrome tapes are a plenty for pre recorded cassettes. They sound nearly as good as a CD and better than records imo.
I wish I had held on to my Beatles cassettes - feel very nostalgic for them now! Great video as ever
I was expecting a comparission between the cassette and how a CD edition recorded on cassette sounded like, since you said that basically that was how those MoFi tapes were recorded back then.
Excellent video as always and glad to hear the Technics cassette deck I own is the exact one recommended in this video! Auto reserve is a great feature rarely seen on home units.😮
What's brilliant about Andrew's work is the detailed research and the production on all his videos.
I especially like the retro recreations of intros from UK TV like the ITV Programmes for Schools & Colleges countdown clock, the BBC Video logo, ATV and Thames ..... great stuff!
Glad you like them, Dave.
Thanks! Great Video, might buy a copy one day of the original mono and stereo of rubber soul
I also recorded the sound of that AHDN broadcast onto a cassette in 1979 lol. Thanks for all the videos, I do enjoy them. We have met before btw, we had a few drinks together and talked Beatles before the Kate Bush concert with my wife and myself in September 2014. Hope you are well.
Hi Karl, Great to hear from you. What an unforgettable evening that was. Hope you and your wife are doing well. Your channel looks amazing - I'll definitely give it a watch.
Hi Andrew. Brilliant take on Cassettes. I was lucky enough to get a copy of the Heineken cassette "Only The Beatles...." before the men in grey Pierre Cardin suits decided it probably wasn't the the best album in the world. I have always thought that the sound quality was very good especially on "And I Love Her" where the Claves always seemed sharper than the vinyl and the CD. Looking forward to the next episode.
Thanks Andrew for confirming the cassette was an audiophiles nightmare. Even with the Nakamiche tape deck, it was disappointing. I sold the deck and tapes sometime back with no regrets. I too thought BASF chrome tape was the best. 😆
Another Sunday and another interesting video Andrew. Thanks always a pleasure watching these.
Thanks again!
Best format with the best sound quality is reel to reel. That absolutely the best sounding format....depending on your set up
As usual Andrew fantastic work. I found this extremely interesting. As someone who was 18 in 1978 i watched cassettes come up in the world. I loved that you talked about mixtapes being an art because to me they were. I used to make them all the time. I too was never into pre recorded tapes because it was just as easy to tape my lps onto a better quality tape then buy the shitty pre recorded ones. Plus you could usually make your own deluxe versions with extra tracks and such. By the late 70’s most of the bigger companies had better tapes available like a maxell IIs and TDK SAX which were chrome tapes. They sounded fantastic and that’s how I continued to use cassettes for years.
Later metal tapes came along which were super expensive but sounded even better so i used them for special occasions. Like taping a live show or live FM. But honestly the chrome tapes were so good it wasn’t an absolute must.
Too bad back in the day Mofi didn’t try the metal tapes they were incredibly good.
See you next time!!
Thanks Richard. Glad you enjoyed it!
I enjoyed your video post on the MOFI High Fidelity Cassettes of which I own The Beatles “Revolver”. I also bought it back in the day to satisfy my curiosity about the sound. To my ears they sound very close to the vinyl but without any intrusion clicks or pops.
Excellent job telling the story of MoFi cassettes. Funny how they went through all that trouble in finding the perfect mechanical components for their cassettes, but then made them from a PCM master. Of course, PCM was considered state of the art at the time, so it was not a case of getting cheap or lazy, but still.
Great video as always about something I forgot about after first seeing from 35 years ago till now.
I remember seeing these at the Mainstream Records Megastore in Milwaukee Wisconsin. Being a younger person that was lucky enough to own his own turn table, along with a portable CD player, cassettes were always a last resort if that for a music purchase. In the fall of 1987 when I saw The Beatles MFSL cassettes , I thought, Who Would Want These?
Well, lots of people. Oh man, talk about youth being wasted on the young! 😄
MFSL... To realise that some people still buy those releases at a premium in 2022 does boggle the mind. Thanks for the video, Andrew!
Another outstanding edition! Thank you, Andrew.
That was a truly awesome Andrew. I had an 8 track player which was ok, but my cassette gave me the freedom to make my mixed albums which, like you mentioned expressed my musical taste at the time More playing less changing.
bye for now.
My introduction to the Beatles was through mixtapes recorded off the radio. That's how I listened to Beatles as a kid until I dubbed them into my computer and made CDs and MP3s from the tape!
This is the first video I've watched from your channel, and watched it all the way through! Love the professional camerawork and documentary-style approach. Classic animations and the circular film cues in the upper right corner at the end are nice touches. Also loved the contextual deep dive and critical analysis of results with accompanying waveforms! Only wish you could have played samples of audio from each of the formats in comparison, although we know UA-cam makes that difficult with copyright.
16:28 "...the magic really happens when you switch off the Dolby. Now, those guitars really sing and the whole track sounds like it has a kind of magical glow around it. But, the resulting tape hiss, along with that hefty dose of digital compression, strips this cassette of all its audiophile credentials."
Yeah, if the tape was recorded in Dolby you're supposed to listen to it with Dolby decoding engaged. That "magical glow" you describe is the classic sound of Dolby-encoded tape being played with the Dolby switched off. Although it may sound "better", it's not what the tape duplicating engineer intended. The "digital compression" you hear might just be the sound of compressed highs revealed in the un-decoded Dolby signal. But if the highs are lacking when played with Dolby on, maybe it's an azimuth misalignment issue -- that can drastically affect the highs. Or perhaps the overall magnetic level has simply dropped across the whole tape over the years, thus causing the Dolby to mistrack on playback. It's give and take.
Thanks for watching and for your kind words, Jerome.
⚡THNX!⚡so much for these great videos about recorded Beatles.they are not only fascinating to me but they've helped me through some tough times and really cheer me up
Glad you enjoyed them, Dave!
Wow. The sound of a young andrew was brilliant😊 thanks for another interesting informative cassette video!
Hi Andrew. Thanks for another informative and interesting video. I bought my first reel to reel tape recorder last week as well as a cassette player, and I love it.
I became quite skilled at making mix tapes for the car and timing to finish each side with usually a second or two before the tape ran out. I even made my own sleeve art. Just making the tapes kept me busy as a kid for hours. Sometimes I spent more time making the tape than playing it back. I was really lucky growing up just during that brief period when cassette was there in-car media. Kids of today have missed out on all that creative fun.
Very good episode! Thank you for adding the "how-to" repair segment ✂...
I'm surprised you didn't mention the box set that was released when the BC 13 vinyl was released. I've seen them for sale but have never heard them. I have a few of the 1969-70 tape. and not much to write home about but are fun. Thanks again.
Great content as always. Enjoyed the tag at the end fixing the tape/cassette. They were certainly valued things of their time, however quite fidly to try repair. I can't really see them making a comeback. Cheers
I taped A Hard Day's Night from the TV too, in 1967!
Marvellous video Andrew! I'm your biggest Beatles cassette fan, and this was heaven for me. Many thanks.
Glad you enjoyed it, Steve!
Honestly, if you want any kind of audiophile sound, portable analog formats like cassettes or 8 tracks are the last ones you want to get. Sound quality never was their strong points. Vinyl and Reel to Reel tapes will be the best analog formats for audiophiles.
Any way, as always, good video man! Keep it up!
I made mix tapes for the car and one problem we had was the damp atmosphere in the UK caused the tapes to stick together then stretch. Sometimes the tape wouldn’t be taken up by the empty reel and instead would stick to the drive wheel and start piling up inside the cassette player. Made a mess of the player and the tape was dead. We were short of cash so sometimes I would cut out the mangled tape and stick the good bits together with sellotape. Those tiny segments used to record blank.
08:42 😂😂 your timing is impeccable !
My Blaupunkt car cassette player and Pioneer DEH 200 CD player was so dope. It bumped, out of my RF 10 with built in crossover and high pass band filter and a 2x100 Pioneer amp. Cost me ($400) which was 3 weeks work at Winn Dixie ($4.85:hr plus tips) back in 1994
Your content is always great Andrew, but this one in particular was really special. Your script here was really excellent
Thanks!
Great video! I never knew that MoFi made cassettes. I've never seen one before now
Eighties beatles forever! Thank you Andrew. Grew video. Love the audio of your younger self.
Glad you enjoyed it, Chris!
And I thought I was the only one who still had his cassette taped copy of AHDN off the television :-)
You're absolutely right Andrew, the Mobile Fidelity cassettes are very expensive, and as you said, very hard to find. i'd like to come across a couple from some unsuspecting person, but as for now I think i'll leave it alone. My pockets aren't that deep.
Excellent information, one of your best vids yet. Well done.
Thanks 👍
The musical format everyone loves to .. lol nah , that’s spotify 😂 jk … I think the reason I really want a a1 b3 pressing of magical mystery tour is because I recall mom playing that record as a kid.. one of many great classics that carved me into a musican. But that aside.. wow I never new there was so much to go into research wise for cassette. Aside from what I learned from techmoan 😅 it’s so great that “retro” is cool and the old music and its formats from the 60’s to the 80’s can live again.. great stuff as always Andrew 👍
Best part was the cassette pron at the end!
That has to be the most expensive cassette tape ever!
como siempre muy educativos tus videos amigo andrew
I grew up with cassettes and loved it's analog sound and my favorite sounding album on cassette was the Hendrix compilation The Ultimate Hendrix with its rich and warm bass which was lost on its CD version
Kudos to you for mentioning the Sonic Blue Strat’s 😊
Spotted "In the land of grey and pink" by Caravan in your collection. Great album!
I owned the Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band MFSL vinyl back in the late 80s, found it brand new in a used record store still sealed/“bagged” for 18 bucks.
I loved that thing for years but eventually hard times forced me to sell it for three times what I paid for it so it was worth it then….wish I still had it though, it sounded fantastic and the packaging was true to its original release in the 60s with all the bells and whistles included. I always regret getting rid of that.
I have three MFSL cassette releases (none from The Beatles), they all sounded amazing when new and even 20 years ago. Today, the BASF CrO2 tape has slowly deteriorated, losing the high frequency information and rendering my MSFL cassettes sounding dull and lifeless even with recent professional servicing of my Nakamichi BX-1 deck. These tapes, and a couple of other "audiophile" Cr02 70uSec prerecorded tapes from RCA and Advent, sounded fantastic 20 years ago. There have been discussions about the loss of high-frequency content on older CrO2 tapes on the Tapeheads forum, the problem is specific to 1970s-80s era BASF chrome tape, not Type II "chrome equivalent" TDK SA or Maxell UD-XLII. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, nobody could have known for certain the long-term archival quality of the chromium dioxide tape formulations, it turned out that the "copycat" high-bias tapes from TDK and Maxell are retaining their sound quality better than the genuine CrO2 tapes.
Thanks
Thank you so much, Rob!
Brilliant show...massively entertaining and informative
In the mid-1980’s I would record the BBC Top 20 on cassette from a short wave radio in the US (Duluth, MN). The quality of the short wave was much worse than the cassette. Long story short, I was lucky if I could figure out all the song titles, artists and positions. Since they listed and played portions of 20 songs in 30 minutes, there wasn’t much music to miss anyway. Thanks for the incentive to dig through my basement to find some of those old tapes.
great work, thank you. i wanted to believe there was a cassette that somehow managed to best the vinyl, but of course it was a wish in vain :)
I have the same Technics RS T232 deck & it works like a tank & has excellent playback quality. Bought mine brand new in 1993 for $200
I guess the special modification to the Sony PCM-F1 was to connect it to a U-Matic recorder?
The original PCM-F1 used Betamax tapes, as it directly connected to the Sony F1 Betamax recorder. We had an F1 back in the day, an awesome machine - especially when coupled with the Sony HVC-4000P camera. A fully portable system - but only just luggable!
Wow, that bonus restoration was something else
That King Crimson album is one of my favourites, ever.
The best factory record label cassettes were made in the mid 80s to the 2000s ..They do have great sound quality and hard to beat in many cases if you have a good deck with proper head alignment and good strong output. ..Head Alignment may not always match up with every tape so you need to be able to adjust it if you have a tape that is off the true alignment ..Record the ones you like to CD to preserve the tape ..
Hi Andrew, really a very good info, in this case I'm 100%agree with you, I reproduce my tapes on my old Nackamichi Dragón, sounds great,, but only with the dolby and chome tipe tapes, THE mofi Casserres not are a excception, well, great video, great work from your part
I miss making mix tapes - I did however digitize all my tapes from the 90s and play them often off my phone while driving
Mix tapes, oh how that’s brought back memories. I remember when my dad bought dozens of blank cassettes and my dad let me have a dozen. Oh what fun I had preparing loads of mixes for the car. I was still a kid and years away from driving. The cassettes were for when me, my mum and dad, my brother and two sisters were all in the car together. One year we went to France and i packed a huge bag of mix tapes. I took more cassettes than clothes. The only place for this huge bag was the foot well occupied by my feet. So that’s where it went and I had the most uncomfortable 36 hours travelling in each direction. But we had great music.
Great times, Kevin!
I remember Xmas '79, all the Beatles movies were played on the BBC including Shea Stadium
Would love to hear more about the German “SHZE 327” Magical Mystery LP in a future video
The irony is that the 'In The Court' has a very troubled history from incorrectly-aligned recording heads, disappearing master tapes and sloppy mastering jobs.
Just be glad you didn't have to hear the over compressed and severely distorted reissues we got in North America.
@@djhrecordhound4391 Too late, it will always sound like garbage in my memory 😆
MFSL imho, I think are fairly good. I owned technically 3 of these so far. Two Dark Sides of the Moons (1 I got for $15 & it broke) then Year of the Cat. Honestly I find these to be the best prerecorded cassettes. I listen to it on a DC2 with Dolby NR off. It sounds so great and the only thing that I’ll say is there is still a hiss. I don’t mind it though, I think it’s truly the best cassette really. This is someone who solely listens to cassettes btw.
Amazing video, Andrew
Thanks Dmitry.
Back in the day, Dolby noise reduction was awesome - IF YOU PLAYED YOUR TAPE ON THE DECK ON WHICH IT WAS RECORDED! If you can't, you're screwed. Dull sound (on), or tape hiss and compression (off) - pick one.
We have some tapes from the ‘70s that parents recorded when they were children. Its nerve-racking but i would love to one day restore those tapes and transfer them over to digital. Also have a Paul McCartney interview tape from ‘93 where he casually talks about the Paul Is Live album. Think that one specifically is an unheard interview.
Ryan Whittier: I transferred many of my precious old cassettes to digital. Not very nerve wracking, but definitely time consuming. Besides the cassette deck and probably stereo receiver or similar, all you need is a PC sound card/motherboard with line-level analog audio inputs and appropriate control software like Audacity. Good luck!
Why would anyone buy pre-recorded cassettes at the time? Well if you were a "normal" person (not an audiophile) generally a lot of cheap record players had a lot of wow, there was crackle, records were easy to scratch by mistake and tapes were seen as almost indestructible (unless you did something really stupid or the equipment broke). Also walkmans/boomboxes were cheaper and to be brutally honest a lot of kids had double cassette boomboxes in order to copy games as well as music.
Buying a record player seemed an additional expense. Also for students, it was much easier to take a boombox onto a train to take it from your parent's house to university than a record player. Also styluses needed to replaced regularly whereas only fanatics ever really replaced tape heads.
Also if people wanted to copy a bought LP they had to do it in real time whereas if they wanted to copy a cassette there was something at the time known as "high speed dubbing" which allowed people to copy it quicker at the expense of quality.
CDs at the time cost twice what the same album cost on cassette, so for many if they were not sure if they would like it or not they bought it on cassette as CDs were seen as something people bought if they were sure they would like it.
To put it into perspective a lot of CDs cost about £13 and the cassette equivalent was about £6.
Very thanks Andrew!
I taped the Let it be film when it was shown on TV at Christmas 1975 or 76. The sound quality was average at best buy I loved it and played it for years.
Very educational!! Thanks Andrew!
Glad you enjoyed it, Seth!
You state that MFSL released six Beatles cassettes altogether--did I miss something or were only five mentioned: MMT, Pepper, Help, Rubber Soul, and Revolver? Meanwhile, I'm shocked to learn that Island released King Crimson's first album on cassette without its iconic cover art!