In this video I try to find out what's the truth about this. We all know that they can sound very good, but you know, average people don't. Tambien disponible en español:
Thanks a ton for making this video! I'll definitely link it to some people who wondered about cassettes either because they never made proper experiences with them or grew up with them but forgot about their sound. This is a great proof that the cassette, playback device and settings make a huge difference and how the tape version sounds warmer and also richer than the streamed one if properly adjusted (honestly, the streamed one sounded dry for a lack of better words). A clear difference, at least to me.
You're welcome. It has been quite an effort to make this video, but also a lot of fun. Yes, prerecorded can sound pretty well. And even better than streamed music. I have to compare it to the CD, but I'm sure it is -at least- on pair.
Yes, they can sound very good when they're still relatively new......But they go bad 20+ years later if they're left inside hot cars or humid garages. Of all the used 80's pre-recorded tapes I've acquired from shops or Ebay, approximately two-thirds of them sounded like junk. So I'm not gonna bother with used tapes anymore. New or self-recorded from now on.
I found that most of the tapes I have made in Spain, where I am from, sound pretty bad. But tapes I bought from France, UK, Germany and USA sound much better. Also I have a few from Japan and sound really well. Specially chromes or high quality editions (XDR, Digalog, Dolby S...)
@Reli i have many pre-recorded cassettes and some date back to the 80's, they all still sound good as i looked after them.
So sounds like you looked after them, and stored them properly. But would you buy some from a stranger? I won't do that anymore.
I do buy used pre-recorded cassettes, I just got a copy of I Mother Earth, Dig and it sounds great even though it was released in 1993. It was hard to walk by a stack of tapes, for a few dollars, a few years ago but now they've started going up in price to the point that they're charging the same as used CD's. It's nice to know you can tweek your equipment to get better sound of the what I consider the lowest, cut all corners, recordings. I drive around work trucks that still have cassette decks so sound quality isn't crucial but it is a bummer when my tapes go bad, for me it's more of a high pitch squeal. walkman archive, the videos are great, I love messing with equipment when I have the time, which isn't very often. I know those took a lot of production, if you ever have time, I'd love to see a waveform comparison with the music playing. Too bad we don't get paid, it would be fun to compare the samples, maybe we can get techmoan or VWestlife to do it.
The last prerecorded used cassettes I "bought" (technically got them gifted) were ELO's Out of the Blue and Time. Both are really well kept and sound simply splendid and especially Time sounds so much nicer than on CD, as warm as its vinyl release. It really depends who you ask and where you get them from and if it was a collector, music enthusiast who only listened on special occasions or the like.
The best pre-recorded cassette i've ever heard hands down is They Might be Giants's Apollo 18. This song from the album, I think really shows the potential of prerecorded cassettes. I recorded it from my Nak using a cheap 10 dollar analog to digital converter. If anyone wants to have a listen, I recommend listening with headphones.
@TooCooL4 Wow!!! Yours is bigger than mine... even before mine got incinerated!!!!! Most/practically ALL of my cassettes were my own recordings off LPs and CDs onto Chrome and Metal cassettes: even before I "turned Hi-end" I was seriously suspicious of pre-recorded/hi-speed-dubbed cassettes. True, they have nice artwork, but if you already have LP of an album then why bother? ((how many artworks of the Dark Side of The Moon a boy needs???) I feel like I am spitting in the face of the folks I love... but pre-recorded cassettes had been a "No-Go" for me: for the same price (plus maybe an extra buck) I would buy LP and would make my own cassette-recording!!!? I had Sony ES-something Sony 3-head deck and also Yamaha KX-360 and I could Not hear the difference between my cassettes and the original LPs/CDs... It took me a mishap of walking into a Linn (and then into Chicago Pro-Musica a few block further) stores, the year of of Our Lord 1996 or 1997, when I questioned my "classically-trained" ears of a piano player. Why would anyone pay $3k for a CD player? Why Linn Sondek LP12 cost WAY over my sanity levels, and Way above my pay-grade???? A life-span later I am glad that "mishap" did happen to me: training your ears to the "canned" tunes is a Must... but I still prefer my Bee Gees played thru my boombox, this is how I fell in love with the guys
I've always known the limitations of mass-marketed pre-recorded tapes Jorge, but in the old days, passing around a tape was like passing around 32 oz of Falstaff, you had to do it. Pre-recorded tapes went through hell and back and still sounded the same but the special home recorded tapes, the ones from a very nice stereo system, of a great album, you very rarely let that one go. I had a few very nice recordings that I kept to myself and still have them, most still sound great, I'm not afraid to admit to having Beastie Boys and Def Leppard drop day recordings. I must have been lucky, both those albums sold millions and millions. I think we all know the audio hierarchy and walkman archive is just saying that even the bottom of the barrel pre-recorded tapes (in most cases) still can sound extremely good if it's done correctly. I have so much ambient noise, a nice recording wouldn't sound any better for my blue-collar decks but it is nice having the bootleg copies for home invasion.
@Jorge most of my pre-recorded cassettes are from my youth, as a youth it’s easier to use cassettes. I would have been hard pushed to carry LP’s around so hence it was cassettes for me. Now is a different story, I buy LP’s and if I can’t find the LP and I really want the music I buy a CD. I have very few CD’s in fact in the picture the very bottom left corner on the floor are all my CD’s. I record the CD’s to cassette and only record some LP’s to cassette, so i can listen to them on the move. The biggest bulk single group of the cassettes on my shelf are metal cassettes and among that TDK MA-XG is the biggest single brand. Some of the pre-recorded cassettes are not as bad as people make them out to be.
Nowadays though most pre-recorded cassettes I buy are from artists on bandcamp, they usually put in the time and effort to make their work sound good. Also a lot of people in the tascam 424 recording community that have kept the medium alive by introducing tape to many young artists.
All true, but I will stick to my younger self: Nak pre-recorded cassettes is one thing, mass-produced ones dubbed at hi-speed for those who embraced MP3 a few years later is something different. Convenience of a cassette (from my own limited Market Research among my friends then) was winning over LPs and CDs when all formats coexisted. Nowadays I do not see how pre-recorded cassettes can compete with lossless files, available as a free torrent-downloads: they do sound better than YouYube but in my opinion they opened the door to 1-bit CD Discmans and then to MP3 crowd: tune is there but the nuances are gone...
