Cassette tapes: Will You keep them alive?

[Retrofan]

Yep... I've been thinking for a minute about the tittle of this new thread.

As you should know, there are few people making modern music while also offering the possibility to get it in a cassette tape.

Well, please first watch this video about cassette tapes and about what you think that you know:
[ Show youtube player ]

...And now I would like to ask you for a minute of your time (60 seconds, where the magic begins) to just listen to this song in SoundCloud by Anders Ender Jensen. Yep, I've said 60 seconds, but the truth is that since then you just can't stop playing it

https://soundcloud.com/eox-studios/t...edium=facebook

I just couldn't help myself and I had to buy this so wonderful album from Norway as a cassette tape (Type II).

Edit: I'm actualy using this humble player: https://postimg.cc/image/cot5h2sjz/

This is a video from a guy just trying it: [ Show youtube player ]

[haps]

When I moved house a couple of years I threw out a bunch of big boxes full of cassette tapes along with other stuff in an attempt to cut down on how much stuff I had to move.

I immediately regretted it once I was settled in the new house. There was lots of good music on them, including heaps of demo tapes from bands all over the world that are impossible to finds now days.

[Daedalus]

I never liked cassette tapes, and so didn't have much recorded on them, so it was no great loss to me to get rid of them. Most were just songs recorded from the radio when I was a kid anyway. The notable exception are the tapes I used for storing my programs on my old Atari 800XL. I still have those tapes, and have recovered the code from them using a tape player and a PC, so I can use the code in an emulator. But all my original (and copied) games are already ripped by others and available online, so I was never really bothered with them. I still have them, but they've been in storage in an attic and I haven't looked at them in ~20 years.

[Predseda]

I only have 80's casettes (in their boxes) in my vintage cabrio car as a decoration. I have a typical Blaupunkt car radio there and colourful casettes in a handler next to the handbrake Those are also typical interprets of the decade: Kylie Minogue, Sandra, Belinda Carlisle, C&C Music Factory etc. I am not even sure if the tape player works and I don't care. I disliked casettes and I am glad their era is gone.

[chip]

I buyed a stereo with cassette player just recently

This because i have more than 100 cassettes that could be used

They still work, but quality is very low

All music records buyed by my parents, actually, especially italian singers

[Retro1234]

Originally Posted by Retrofan

Edit: I'm actualy using this humble player: https://postimg.cc/image/cot5h2sjz/

I have this very Cassette deck

a few years back I used some tapes while on holiday with no internet etc I listened to some Audio Books. That is the only thing I would use them for

I have a load of old tapes and not sure what to do with them?
Also have a load of Dragon 32 games not sure what to do with?

Still use Vhs now and then.

But I wouldn't buy new Audio cassettes there bulky and expensive and bad quality.

Sony made a new 185terabyte Data tape but its not a cassette tape, Data tapes are still used today.

If you have micro cassette maybe Jigsaw will buy them for his dictaphone

[alexh]

I work in the storage industry and design hard drive controllers (and now SSD controllers) but it is interesting to note that casette tapes for data storage have the longest logevity of any archive storage we make today.

My personal experience with casette tapes for data storage (aka 8-bit home computers) is that they were highly susceptible to damage and not good for longterm storage.

But my esteemed colleagues in the tape department assure me that casette tapes made today will last 100+ years

[UberFreak]

I still have all my (pre)recorded tapes, starting from age 10 up until I stopped recording...
Also have a few tape decks and walkmans, so I'm set for years to come.
My car has a cassette player installed, so cassettes are in constant use.

I also still have many new cassettes I bought back in the day, Chrome and Metal.
According to Ebay, their value keeps increasing so I might be tempted some day.

[UberFreak]

alexh:

I have many tapes (VHS and audio) from the early 80's that still play fine today, with minimal or no dropouts.
Many of my C64 floppy disks from the mid 80's also work fine without errors.

I trust these formats more than optical discs and HDDs, as I've lost many of them.
They were filled and sat on a shelf for a few years, and became unreadable.
The exception are RW optical discs from the early days of the format, which were gold colored (plated?) and are still good 20+ years after being recorded.

[alexh]

I think you must have had a much higher quality tape deck than me.

I remember having to wind up 10's of meters of tape, using a pencil, when it got spooled out when something went wrong with the tape deck.

Or having to replace the little pads behind the tape because they no-longer pressed the tape against the head.

All side effects of having a cheap 1980's portable audio cassette player common with home computers.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by alexh

I remember having to wind up 10's of meters of tape, using a pencil, when it got spooled out when something went wrong with the tape deck.

...I definitely don't miss having to do that

[Predseda]

Problem of cassettes were usually cassette players. Their loose rubber bents, namely. Tangled tapes were mostly caused by this.

[Wiking67]

Well I have mostelly mix tapes

[gimbal]

i have fond memories of cassettes growing up with them, but I never had to manually rewind them after a failure so I guess I was lucky. Had plenty of fun "trading" music with friends and classmates, and spent many an hour just sitting on the couch listening to my portable cassette player. We're talking age 4-14 here, somewhere around that range.

But you know... MP3s and burnable CDs were so much easier so I had little problem letting them go... And nowadays I just stick to Spotify and Youtube. No more MP3s, no more CDs, no more DVDs, no more physical media of any kind. Definitely no cassettes.

[DamienD]

I still have over 1000 vinyl... love them but take up a lot of space, heavy to transport etc.

[nogginthenog]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Also have a load of Dragon 32 games not sure what to do with?

You could check on http://archive.worldofdragon.org/ to see if you have something they don't. Something for a rainy day!

[Retrofan]

Just to tell that I love MsMadLemon's videos about vintage cassette players.

Watch this restoration as an example:

[ Show youtube player ]

[Foebane]

I don't miss cassettes used for data storage.

On some large Atari 8-Bit games, you could expect to wait more than HALF AN HOUR for them to load???

[dirkies]

all my tapes (about 250) and tapedeck went to the trash last week, no reason to keep it anymore

[Nova]

Originally Posted by dirkies

all my tapes (about 250) and tapedeck went to the trash last week, no reason to keep it anymore

all praise the throwaway society