2011 RIP auto cassettes

A 120 minute cart sounds like some kind of educational tape. I wish I had paid more attention to the sound quality of the format. I recall it sounding pretty good. The cassettes always had problems with tape speed and tracking and tape jamming. Thank God for digital formats.

In message , bob urz writes

Cassettes didn't ever have Dolby A, but did acquire Dolby B from fairly early on, chrome tape within a few years, first on Hi-Fi then on lower end stuff, the only difference needed being in the level of bias to saturate the tape.

Early on NO. the cassette was developed in 1963 by Phillips

Dolby designed Dolby b in 1968 for cassettes and other magnetic media

the first Dolby b successful marketed cassette deck was the advent series 200 in the early 70's

This was a home unit. NOT a car unit. It was not until the mid 70's the the cassette took off as a mass market affordable media and started to displace the 8Track off its throne.

There is more to CRO2 tape than bias. It required different equalization to to be properly utilized

120us for std tape and 70us for cro2 tapes. early car decks did not have Dolby or a CRO2 switch.

Yes, cassettes did displace 8Tracks. But it did NOT happen overnight. And the cassette was NOT a HiFI run away success early on. There was a learning curve on both the decks and the media.

bob

Mine are "Capitol" brand blanks meant to be used in home 8T recorders. I've never seen a factory-recorded cart of that length.

Whatever floats your boat. I don't care for digital media and won't be adopting it; I'll be sticking with records and tapes indefinately.

Actually the broadcast cart predates the 8-Track by a good many years. In fact, the earlier 4-track audio tape cartridge introduced by "Mad Man" Muntz was essentially an unmodified broadcast cart. Bill Lear's engineering team took that as a starting point to develop the 8-Track tape format that we all know and love today, so it would be more proper to say that the

8-Track is a "bastardized" version of the NAB cart.

An interview with a member of the original Lear 8T design team can be found here:

I recall listening to compact cassette when they first came out (I had reel to reel) and saying they would never make it in the market because their sound fidelity was so awful. The sound was awful but it turned out people didn't care.

And that, in short, is the nature of consumer release formats. Nobody ever want wrong underestimating the end user's interest in audio quality.

The Elcaset died, the Philips Compact Cassette and the 8-track lived. Now we have low-rate MP3s and whatever horrible compression Sirius and XM use. It sounds like trash because the customer doesn't care.

--scott

The whole perversion about modern recording "tech" is less is more. I suppose you can partially blame Sony for some of the early Bit compression technology's such as ATRAC and such in the Mini-disk.

Modern MP3's are NOT high fidelity. They trade utility of putting 100's of songs on a chip for fidelity reduction.

Young people are more concerned about how many apps they have on their I Phones than how good it sounds

bob

RCA actually had a large cartridge machine that used 1/4" tape in the early 60's Looked kind of like a cassette on steroids. My dad who was in the TV business had one.

bob

That's right! I used those carts when I took broadcasting classes. They were kinda fun and worked very well especially considering the alternative.

My main problems with tape were the dropoffs and stretched or damaged tapes and variable frequency response depending of the condition of the heads and variable speeds through the head, and problems with the pinch roller and with the transport mechanism and problems with the cassette housing and pressure pad - other than that, they sorta worked OK.

I have several cartridges of this type but no machine to use them on.

Wire recorders are fun as well.

Very few of those machines existed. RCA never actually sold it. If you had your father's, it would be worth big money.

More likely you have Type A broadcast cartridges, which are continuous loops, not reels. Also an RCA invention.

The smaller Type C broadcast carts were the fathers of the Lear 4-track cartridge and the 8-track (which, unlike the Lear and the carts, had an integral pinch roller in the cartridge instead of as part of the machine). They were a horrible abomination and could not keep azimuth worth a damn.

I can do transcription of any of these tapes if you're desperate.

--scott

Ashton Crusher wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Reel-to-reel was a pain in the ass: bulky, sloppy, messy. 8-tracks were better, but...

Compact Cassettes were the most convenient, and were easily transported in your pocket. Plus they made popular the portable cassette player, something that was impossible with reel-to-reel, and inconveniently bulky with the 8- track cassette. Hello Sony Walkman!

Technical excellence is only /one/ of /many/ criteria consumers consider when making purchases.

No, they are definitely the RCA cassette-on-steroids 1/4" reel-to-reel cartridges, most still sealed in their boxes. Picked 'em up at a flea market years ago for a few pennies.

You might want to talk to the Museum of Sound Recording in NYC. They have an Elcaset display but they do not have any of those and it would be worth a tax deduction at least.

--scott

Some of the popular music now is not worth technical excellence in recording and playback, IMO. (Shows you how old I am!)

These RCA cartridges predate the Elcaset by a couple of decades. This is what I have:

(It's the large RCA "Sound Tape Cartridge" on the right in the photo.)