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Didnt realise how good cassettes could sound

A

audiojoy

pfm Member
A friend encouraged me to try one of the lower end cheaper Nakamichis, bx100 and I bought 99p cassettes off ebay. I thought I would use it for listening when i am doing my cycling turbo traning. My O MY. Not sure I can listen to cd again?? This is in a nice set up in the man cave.... Telefunken L70, marantz 1060, dnm cablings marantz cd85/ cambridge audio cd palyers. The Marantz is one of the more analogue sounding cd players with its 1541 s dac. The tape deck easily sounded better when it came to naturalness and realism.... notes start and stop naturally, totally unforced and musically you just instinctively know it sounds correct. I never appreciated before that Level 42's Mark King had a voice that had a lovely tonal quality. Since then bought the dearer Nakamichi models and the better the sound got. BUT be aware many duds out there... these things (cassette players) are bloody old and need a lot of maintence and constant cleaning, I recommend if you get the bite to only buy higher end models that have had a full service from a RECOGNISED reputable engineer. Same with the cassettes on ebay a lot of them are faulty!!

I haven't even tried recoding myself yet with high quality metal etc. tapes which is the nirvana of cassettes. I have also read on 'tapeheads' that the Nakamichis can be close to open reel tape to tape in sound quality, not sure how true that is, considering some believe that is the ultimate in source!

Has any one else noticed that cassetes can sound really very good indeed??

I feel like i am now on a new journey in my pursuit of enjoyable listening to music. That may of course chnage as i experiment further and compare further.
 
Cassettes will never equal open reel, but they can get really close and good ones are durable.
I have Sony UCX-S and TDK-SAX that I recorded 40 years ago and they still sound good, with almost no dropouts.
That said, CD is better by a large margin.
 
cd has its benefits dynamics focus imaging can be quite dramatic, but i prefer cassettes for sheer unforced natural correctness which makes me feel I am listening to real musicians..... your milage will vary it is after all very subjective
 
It is. I use a Nakamichi CR4E, a Philips N2554 (my favourite) and a Beocord 9000. I’d love to find a mint Revox cassette deck!
 
Interesting. My experience with cassette decks 30 years ago was not great. I bought a NAD machine, can’t remember which one. I could hear obvious pitch instability, ended up returning it. Probably a faulty machine, but my confidence in the format was lost.

Edit - checking cassettedeck.org I see it was a NAD 6340.

Are you listening to commercial recordings? Presumably if you record something from CD it can’t possibly be any better than playing the CD.
 
The issue with finding quality new blanks makes the format pretty dead as far as I can determine. Fair enough if you have some treasured old cassettes for which there are no current recordings. Even then, digitising them seems more sensible for longevity.
 
I've had a few Naks back then, 670zx and LX3 were pretty nice, still have tapes recorded in the 80s.
Lusted for a Nak 1000, they seem to have good value nowadays.
Can't see myself ever going back to that medie though.
 
will say again, that heating tapes in a 'leaning tower' cheap dehydrator thingy (amazon / ebay etc) helps a lot with making old pre-recordeds playable IME, at least in the short term.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08LQNF8SB/?tag=pinkfishmedia-21
although mine was half that price.

when I tried to get back in to tape replay a couple of years ago it took me a while to realise that old tapes are constantly shedding (very much more so than when they were new obvs), and that alone can cause many of the replay problems encountered even with old unserviced decks (i.e. slow-down / muffling) etc.

Tapes that I completely rehoused in replacement 'new' bodies etc were still only 'saved' by heating as above.
Whacking them, rew/ffing a number of times etc didn't work consistently, or at all.

Definitely YMMV tho' - I'm not claiming any kind of expertise.
And even given the above, you'll spend a LOT of time cleaning the tape-path etc .
 
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Participated in a blind listening test about a year ago which included cassette, R2R, CD, streaming and vinyl. My favourite turned out to be the streamer, which I had thought was the R2R. R2R was second (I had it pegged as the streamer!), CD and vinyl about equal (and vinyl very easy to identify) and - way behind - cassette.

In its own right, cassettes are fun and hold a lot of memories of my teens and early twenties, but I don't really miss them.
 
audiojoy said:
A friend encouraged me to try one of the lower end cheaper Nakamichis, bx100 and I bought 99p cassettes off ebay. I thought I would use it for listening when i am doing my cycling turbo traning. My O MY. Not sure I can listen to cd again??

I feel like i am now on a new journey in my pursuit of enjoyable listening to music. That may of course chnage as i experiment further and compare further.
Click to expand...

I have recently digitised about twenty cassettes of my own music recorded between 1981-1984 and have to say the quality has for the most been quite impressive (the tapes, not necessarily the original recordings)

Most were Maxell XLII C60 but also some TDK and Fuji 'standard'. They have not been stored carefully and spent most of their life til now in the (unheated) garage so I was quite surprised they had survived so well.
I have uploaded some short clips to flickr (16/44 quality)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/186836509@N02/
 
Ah have a Pioneer CT91a RCD. It still plays beautifully. Guy I bought it from had just had it fully refurbished about 6 months before. It's silent, smooth and very quiet in cassette operations. A mate at work had a cousin in Malta (A hotbed of bootleg cassettes in the 80s/90)s. Still have around 30 , playing very well. No fading , no rumbling, no wobbling. In fact, better all round than some of the "real" cassettes purchased. Expect it to last another 10/20 years. :cool:
 
This isn't so much about how great cassette can sound but more about how shite CD can sound!

Wait until you hear a good turntable...
 
I took a cassette deck along as one of my sources when I had a dem room at one of the Wigwam forum's Scalford hifi shows quite a few years ago now.
I think it was a 3 head Denon deck.

I got some strange looks when it was realised what was playing. But the overall response was surprised enjoyment.
I agree that there is a naturalness , a relaxed musical flow to the sound.
 
jandl100 said:
I took a cassette deck along as one of my sources when I had a dem room at one of the Wigwam forum's Scalford hifi shows quite a few years ago now.
I think it was a 3 head Denon deck.

I got some strange looks when it was realised what was playing. But the overall response was surprised enjoyment.
I agree that there is a naturalness , a relaxed musical flow to the sound.
Click to expand...
This is the reality I think.
 
Locheeboy said:
Ah have a Pioneer CT91a RCD. It still plays beautifully. Guy I bought it from had just had it fully refurbished about 6 months before. It's silent, smooth and very quiet in cassette operations. A mate at work had a cousin in Malta (A hotbed of bootleg cassettes in the 80s/90)s. Still have around 30 , playing very well. No fading , no rumbling, no wobbling. In fact, better all round than some of the "real" cassettes purchased. Expect it to last another 10/20 years. :cool:
Click to expand...

I had the same deck and it was absolutely superb, easily gives a decent Nakamichi a run for its money. Difference between source and the recording was bloody close.

I used them regularly in my car running a top end Denon head unit with MB Quart speakers and a separately amped sub. Cassettes recorded from my system always sounded way better than the CD changer.

It’s always been a bit of a flawed medium though, so I wasn’t gutted when digital music libraries and streaming came along.
 
JTC said:
Participated in a blind listening test about a year ago which included cassette, R2R, CD, streaming and vinyl. My favourite turned out to be the streamer, which I had thought was the R2R. R2R was second (I had it pegged as the streamer!), CD and vinyl about equal (and vinyl very easy to identify) and - way behind - cassette.

In its own right, cassettes are fun and hold a lot of memories of my teens and early twenties, but I don't really miss them.
Click to expand...
Yes but….machines that don’t work properly without significant intervention and regular servicing, media with inconsistent sound quality - that’s exactly what people want out of this hobby. Heaven! and saves on having to fork out thousands for dumb accessories that don’t actually make a difference.
 
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