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I still have a working unit that makes great recordings.
In his <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/">blog</A>, Stephen Mejias reports on the resurgence in cassette-only releases and is now looking for a good deck. Do you still use a cassette deck?
Rediscovered cassettes about a year ago. Packing things in the move, I found some forgotten personal as well as bought recordings. I listened to them on a simple device, and was caught straight on the hook. So un-CD-like a sound. Good decks are found easily these days. I have bought some nice, affordable decks I could only dream about as a youngster. A nice Pioneer, Akai,Tandberg, and, of course, a Nakamichi now take a more central position in my line-up than does my CD player! Vinyl rules, but tapes come in a close second. I also record my children on tape, so my wife is kept happy too! Sound varies, but a nice recording played on a nice deck (in good condition) has a nice surprise in store for you!
Cassette tapes, especially metal and chrome tapes, are the best way to make recordings from analog sources like high-end turntables and reel-to-reel tapes. Cassette tapes sound great in car stereos like the Lexus's Mark Levinson car stereo and the Acura's OEM Alpine car stereos. The recordings sound smooth without digital artifacts. It's good that there are still new old stock (NOS) high-bias blank tapes for sale at mom and pop record stores. The best cassette decks being made today are the Tascam 202mkV, Tascam CD-A750, Tascam CD-A550, and Tascam CC-222SLmkII. Get one while you still can.
First, idiots are clammering to buy expensive LPs that were recorded digitally, now, people that are even more stupid are buying cassettes. Sometime before the Earth explodes in 2012, these same jackasses will be buying 8-tracks. Morons abound in the world of high-fidelity.
Cassette was a terrible format. I used them in my car, but once CD came out, that was the end for me. High-end decks were always finicky because the of the need for perfect alignment and the fact that the Dolby circuits exaggerated frequency-response errors. Nakamichi had different playback EQ from others, claiming that their way was theoretically correct and everyone else was wrong. Tapes made on a Nak would often sound dull on another machine. Dolby-C was terrible. Thank God cassettes are dead other than for a little nostalgia for old formats.
I use a cassette deck only every once in a while if I need to make a CD from old band tapes (Nightcrawlers). We used to record live onto cassettes a long time ago. I never liked the format but it was all we had then (no CD-Rs yet). As far as listening is concerned, I always bought the LP over the cassette. Just like now, when I buy the LP over the CD whenever possible.
Yes, I have several. I have thousands of cassettes of live radio broadcasts that I have made over the past 30+ years and I have no intention of digitizing them or giving them up. Tapes I made in the '70s play as well as when I recorded them.
Lonely it sits—lonely and sad. All my cassettes sound so bad! Hissy and dull, no life or sparkle, having shed too much oxide since Flicker Farkled. But still it sits on my shelf at the ready, capstan spinning, Dolby-C steady! So bring on the music with no digititus; No DRM on our backsides to bite us! Bring on the lyrics, bring on the verse. I'll listen again with auto-reverse.
On the handful of times a year that I actually throw in a tape, my old Nak ZX-7 still amazes me. It presents a greater sense of body, solidity, and soundstage than any digital (or vinyl) front-end I've ever owned. Wish I had a larger cassette library.
I have a cassette player in the car (McIntosh) that gets rare use, since the CD playback is great. I want to get a deck just so I can digitize some of the irreplaceable content I have on tape (several hundred collecting dust in a closet). Beyond that, the format is dead to me.