
Cassette Revolution: 1980s Tape Tech Is Still Making Noise in Our Digital World - balbaugh
http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/cassette-Revolution/
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andretti1977
Maybe OT, but i remember the "power of tape" when i was 10 in 1987, when an
italian public radio broadcasted a full videogame (compressed by "turbo
loader") every day and it was possible to record and play it on that beautiful
commodore 64!

~~~
tommyd
I seem to recall reading that the BBC did the same for the BBC Micro, although
I can't find a reference now. Waiting half an hour for a game to load just to
find the tape had got corrupted right near the end ("R Tape Loading Error" on
the ZX Spectrum I grew up with) was one of the aspects I less fondly remember!

~~~
DanBC
The BBC Micro had a port for a light pen.

There was a small rubber sucker attachment that you could stick to a TV
screen, with the light pen attached. The BBC (tv station) had a programme
(probably MicroLive) that would overlay a flashing block on a small section of
the screen. The light pen would read that flashing and you'd have a small
program.

Here's someone talking about it:

[http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2014/02/18/ian_mcnau...](http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2014/02/18/ian_mcnaught_davis_obituary/#c_2111046)

The BBC (and Sinclair, and possibly Amstrad) did a lot to make computing
accessible.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15969065](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15969065)

~~~
jamesbrownuhh
The flashing block was "4 Computer Buffs" on Channel 4 - you can see them
describe the process here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKmu68URUeI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKmu68URUeI)

I recall seeing a torrent of the full series a while back - I'd like to think
that it's probably still possible to decode the programs even today. :)

4 Computer Buffs also transmitted some software as audio, usually over
teletext pages or the test card, while the channel was off air - again, see
here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4gRgcnj8lg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4gRgcnj8lg)

One of the BBC programmes - either 'The Computer Programme' or 'Making The
Most Of The Micro' transmitted a BBC Micro program as audio, too, but they
intentionally kept it very short so as not to offend viewers who didn't like
the noise.

That said, they lengthened the broadcast as a result of transmitting the
program at 300 baud - they did tell everyone at home to make sure they typed
*TAPE 3 (i.e. to crank the loading speed down to 300 baud rather than the
Beeb's normal 1200 baud), presumably to strengthen the chances of some usable
data actually making it through. :)

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WalterBright
I am glad to be done with cassette tapes. I never liked the hissiness, and the
rewinding. I'm tired of car stereos eating the tapes. I'm sick of the 5 tapes
in my car that got listened to over and over. My boxes of tapes went in the
garbage 10 years ago.

My current car stereo I bought for $75 has only a USB port, and I stuck a 32G
thumb drive in it with gawd knows how many tunes are on it. Mucho better. I
enjoy inflicting disco music on anyone who dares to ride with me.

~~~
to3m
Totally. Maybe the hiss is what they mean about the technology still making
noise? :)

I still have a tape player in my car. (My car is 15 years old, with a
proprietary stereo moulded into the fascia, so as long as I have this car I'm
probably stuck with it.) I have one of those tape adapter things so I can
listen to music played through my phone. Quality is OK, but every now and
again the wheels get stuck, the stereo switches sides, and the music goes off.
It's 2015, and cassette tape technology is _still_ causing me problems. I can
hardly believe it.

Cassette tapes were bullshit, and I can't believe people can't see it.

We've already had people wanting CRTs back. I dread to think what's next. A
floppy disk revival? Long play VHS? Black and white TV?

~~~
byuu
> Cassette tapes were bullshit, and I can't believe people can't see it.

Just your typical hipster trendiness nonsense. Anyone who grew up using
cassette tapes knows exactly how awful they are, and are glad to be rid of
them. At least they didn't try and bring back the 8-track :P

> I dread to think what's next. A floppy disk revival? Long play VHS? Black
> and white TV?

CEDs, definitely. "The analog nature makes movies so much warmer!"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitance_Electronic_Disc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitance_Electronic_Disc)

~~~
qzxvwt
Are the highest-possible technical specs necessarily the best choice for every
aesthetic purpose? I think this is less a trend of "hipster nonsense" and more
of a sign of maturity from electronic music evolution as a whole - showing
awareness of the symbiotic relationship between hardware and software, the
medium and the message, a "back to its roots" part of the cycle that's
definitely necessary given the current state of the art of recording sound
IMO.

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lholden
Having grown up with tapes... I just don't understand the appeal. After
obtaining one of the early cdrom based boomboxes for the first time, I was
perfectly happy to replace my tapes with cd. Sure, there was zero buffering
and even the slightest bump caused a skip... But the sound was great!

But hey, why not. :)

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Htsthbjig
I make arrowheads for my DIY bow from bottle glass and stone because I want to
know how it was like hunting thousands of years ago.

I see little children having curiosity about those "cassetes" thing, but it is
a five minutes thing. I actually lived casettes and HATE them. I sold all my
collection, burned the piece of furniture that held it in a night of San Juan
fire.

Great memories (the fire and the party on the beach, it became useful after
all).

Now with just Garageband and audacity I could do 100 times more that I could
do with cassetes and hold thousands of times more recordings and songs without
the nonsense analog noise in my pocket.

I couldn't help when I read PR like this to think that someone else needs to
find "a bigger sucker" in order to get rid of their cassete junk in their
parent's garage or something and make a profit out of it.

In 2015 CDs sell for as much as $15? Wow, it is not like people could connect
to youtube, download any song of the world with youtuve-dl with better quality
that cassete could ever dream about. And better talk about even more outdated
tech like vinyl without talking about itunes or dozens of music web sites and
social networks as alternatives for "music lovers" so the article does not
sound as the piece of PR it is.

~~~
fennecfoxen
> I see little children having curiosity about those "cassetes" thing, but it
> is a five minutes thing.

Oh, cassette tapes are great for people with kids! Unlike CDs or vinyl, you
can hand over the collection with only limited risk of damage, as they are
substantially scratchproof and unbreakable even when used as ballistic
projectiles or impromptu teething devices. Durable medium!

(Occasionally one will have its guts ripped out, though. Nothing's foolproof.)

~~~
mhd
But even then it's usually not strong enough to e.g. serve as a strangulation
device a younger brother might employ on a older, yet not much bigger one. Or
so I've heard.

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chiph
The attraction to mix-tapes for me was the artwork. They had this "college
band" vibe to them, where someone had cut out art from a magazine, or maybe
drew something in pen & ink, then used transfer letters to put a title on it,
and ran it through a photocopier until it had a street grunge to it, and
looked like something you didn't want your parents to know you had.

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stinos
I would like to see MiniDisc get the same attention. Guess that'll never
happen again as it was always a bit niche while tape was as mainstream as it
can get. Ok it's digital and somewhat more expensive but apart from that it
imo is very similar (easy to record, share, portable) yet has much advantages
over tape (noise, portables last way longer, medium does not lose signal under
normal circumstances, less mechanical parts, higher density in same form
factor)

~~~
TD-Linux
>easy to record, share

This was actually one thing leading to minidisc's demise. The DRM doesn't
allow you to extract your recordings digitally. They fixed this eventually,
but it was too late and flash memory had already taken over.

~~~
digi_owl
Crazy thing is that if you could get your hands on a pro market minidisc deck,
you could extract all you liked.

I think another thing sunk it, write speed.

To write to Magnet-Optical media, you first use a laser to heat the surface
until it becomes magnetic. Then you zero the bit using a readwrite head much
like on a HDD or floppy. Then you set it to the zero or one you want to
actually be.

All this back and forth means that MO can't really keep up with HDD or flash.

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jhallenworld
Reel to reel at 7 ips was quite good. I remember my dad's Akai player from the
50s even supported quadraphonic. Too bad this isn't catching on..

~~~
ams6110
There used to be some specialty cassette decks that would record 4 track audio
on a cassette (it used the full width of the tape rendering it one-sided).
Used often for demos, or low-budget studio work, etc.

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pjc50
People are clearly choosing tape for the same reason as vinyl: a desire for
_embodiment_ of the music. With digital music, no one piece is more present
than any other. Everything is equally close, and therefore equally emotionally
distant.

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userbinator
I thought it'd be about software tapes, but I'm not surprised - vinyl records
are even older and more fragile in many ways, and yet there's still plenty of
interest in them, so why not cassette tape.

~~~
cellularmitosis
That's a bit different, though. Of the popular mediums from the last 50 years,
cassette tapes are by far the worst in terms of sound quality. Particularly,
the noise floor of a tape is absolutely horrible for anything but constant-
volume loud recordings. Ever tried to listen to a delicate classical passage
on tape? "hissssssssss...". Vinyl would fare far better.

So I'm actually pretty surprised to see a revival of interest in tapes. But I
get it: its not about the sound quality. Its about the physicality of the
container, about the process of making mix tapes, etc...

(Note: there are a lot of things you can do to drastically improve the sound
quality of a tape: buy better quality tape, record at high speed, use DBX
noise reduction (dynamic range compression), etc. But this article is talking
about the bottom of the barrel: cheap tape which can be played in anyone's
walkman).

~~~
cgriswald
Cassette tapes are worst in terms of a lot of things. They lack the width and
height of vinyl and CD so album art is not as cool. It is difficult and time
consuming to skip a track or skip to a favorite track. And they can get
"eaten" by the playback device.

I think one of the main reasons cassettes caught on is that people could make
mix tapes. Even after I adopted CDs, I always had cassette players and
recorders around for mix tapes (until later, when recordable CDs and the
computers to record them with became much cheaper).

Any revival (I've literally heard of this from nowhere except the article) is
probably due to the nostalgic feel combined with the ability to make mix
tapes.

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kwhitefoot
1980s? Philips cassettes were widespread long before the 1980s. The first one
I had was in 1972 and it was a long way from the earliest. Philips launched
the system in 1963.

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amelius
DJ'ing was a lot harder then.

