Tell Me Something............Anything!

[Barry]

I heard on the radio today (Radio 4 to be exact) that music cassettes are coming back into fashion. Not only are there some artists who are making their latest work available on cassette (Robbie Williams for exanple), but sales of blank cassettes are on the rise.

Why should this be? Well a couple of reasons suggested were:

• a sense of nostalgia, mostly by those who remembered using them in the '70s and into the '80s,
  
  
• a conscious move away from streaming, so one listens to a whole album rather than hopping to another piece of music part way through,
  
  
• making 'mix up' tapes, as we did in the '70 to either play in the car, or to give to friends.

I can understand the sense of nostalgia, but with the invention of the CD, the return to music cassette doesn't make a lot of sense; especially as one needs a high quality player.

Again the use of blank tapes to make mix up tapes, doesn't make sense as for the maximum fidelity the recorder should be calibrated for the tape used. When I made tapes I used to use TDK MA-XG 90, for which I had my Nakamichi machine calibrated. These were for use in the car, but these days cars are fitted with CD players. Of course one can go to the trouble of making mix up CDs by using a CD recorder and bank CDR discs, but I doubt if anyone has (I have a Pioneer CD recorder and a bunch of CDR which I picked up cheap, but I have never used it to record CDs)

The most hopeful outcome is that people are wanting to slow down their recreational time, by eschewing streaming and hopping from one bit of music to another mid stream, and spend time listening to a complete album. They can do this of course using a portable CD player, but I would imagine something like the Sony Walkman cassette player is smaller and more portable.

So what are your thoughts on this new phenomenon, and is it just a passing fad?

[Pigmy Pony]

I reckon it'll be just a passing fad, partly driven by nostalgia as you say, partly driven by 'influencers' making it look cool (these folk make money not from the products themselves but from Joe Public 'likes' on the Tik Tok or Instagram or whatever).

Very quickly I predict the kids will find the inconvenience really isn't for them. As for Robbie Williams, well we can expect a flood of his cassettes turning up at a car boot near you this summer.

[Macca]

What was the name of his ship and did your grandfather survive the attack?

SS Pedernales, yes he survived.

[Alex_UK]

Well it has finally finished - 3,249 CDs. Slightly less than I thought, I had better get shopping! Found some cracking albums I had forgotten about.

Well that escalated quickly. I realised some albums missing, and investigations on some folders showed a “Cyclic Redundancy Check” error. That didn’t sound good, and sure enough, the hard drive has now completely failed and won’t initialise…. Luckily I have two full back up copies, stored with mates at opposite ends of the country, so time to retrieve one of those st some point, at least I (hopefully) won’t have to rip them all again, it took months when I did it last time.

[Alex_UK]

Regarding cassettes, I am sure it is a bit of a fad. Daughter (17) is buying CDs and vinyl, but I don’t think tape is on the menu. I was never into the format apart from car/portable use, taping vinyl or of course the top 40 on a Sunday evening.

Anyway, kids will struggle with cassettes, none of them have pencils anymore, they just use touchscreens.

[Pigmy Pony]

Well that escalated quickly. I realised some albums missing, and investigations on some folders showed a “Cyclic Redundancy Check” error. That didn’t sound good, and sure enough, the hard drive has now completely failed and won’t initialise…. Luckily I have two full back up copies, stored with mates at opposite ends of the country, so time to retrieve one of those st some point, at least I (hopefully) won’t have to rip them all again, it took months when I did it last time.

"Computer says no", eh? I'll stick with the old fashioned CD and vinyl replay, they always say yes Sorry, don't mean to sound smug, but computer audio is great, until it isn't

[Jimbo]

I heard on the radio today (Radio 4 to be exact) that music cassettes are coming back into fashion. Not only are there some artists who are making their latest work available on cassette (Robbie Williams for exanple), but sales of blank cassettes are on the rise.

Why should this be? Well a couple of reasons suggested were:

• a sense of nostalgia, mostly by those who remembered using them in the '70s and into the '80s,
  
  
• a conscious move away from streaming, so one listens to a whole album rather than hopping to another piece of music part way through,
  
  
• making 'mix up' tapes, as we did in the '70 to either play in the car, or to give to friends.

I can understand the sense of nostalgia, but with the invention of the CD, the return to music cassette doesn't make a lot of sense; especially as one needs a high quality player.

Again the use of blank tapes to make mix up tapes, doesn't make sense as for the maximum fidelity the recorder should be calibrated for the tape used. When I made tapes I used to use TDK MA-XG 90, for which I had my Nakamichi machine calibrated. These were for use in the car, but these days cars are fitted with CD players. Of course one can go to the trouble of making mix up CDs by using a CD recorder and bank CDR discs, but I doubt if anyone has (I have a Pioneer CD recorder and a bunch of CDR which I picked up cheap, but I have never used it to record CDs)

The most hopeful outcome is that people are wanting to slow down their recreational time, by eschewing streaming and hopping from one bit of music to another mid stream, and spend time listening to a complete album. They can do this of course using a portable CD player, but I would imagine something like the Sony Walkman cassette player is smaller and more portable.

So what are your thoughts on this new phenomenon, and is it just a passing fad?

Just got my JVC cassette deck out of the loft yesterday. Didn't know I had it still. Looking forward to mangling a few cassette tapes!

[Alex_UK]

I've got a 90's What Hi-Fi? favourite budget Aiwa AD-F410 and at least another older 70's Sony deck I picked up as a job lot with a receiver and speakers - but I have no idea where my cassettes are, or if I even still have any! I did find a handful of blank cassettes a while back, so I suppose I could make some mix tapes. Or maybe not!

[Macca]

I have a Fisher which isn't working and a Realistic walkman type thing with auto-reverse that works fine. I got that in about 1986 I don't think it's had more than ten hours on it if that.

And a Sony DAT machine, if that counts.

[Barry]

I still have two Nakmichi tape decks, and somewhere I still have the tapes I recorded for the car. I can't make any new recordings though as I gave away all my blank tapes to someone here - sorry I can't remember who.