Compact Cassette

This a Useful Notes page.

Home Taping. Still killing music decades after being replaced by streaming music

For a long time, recording either voice or music at home was impossible. You either went to the shop and bought the latest single on a shellac record, or listened to the radio. Although proposed towards the end of the 19th century, with magnetic wire recording being introduced as early as 1898, magnetic recording didn't really become a thing until some scientists working for a German chemical company discovered a method involving magnetised metal oxides bonded to a polymer tape. The Allies suspected Germany had a way of making high-quality recordings for propaganda broadcasts, but it wasn't until the end of WW2 that magnetic tape as a media became widely known.

The principal is relatively straightforward. A recording is made when a magnetic head is driven by an electrical signal, and imprints a change in magnetic field in metal oxides coated on the tape surface. A recording is played back when a subsequent head 'reads' the fluctuations in magnetic field and converts it back into an electrical sound signal.

Early tape recorders however, were bulky reel-to-reel devices that offered exceptional sound quality, but took time to set up, and took up a large amount of shelf space - both for the reels and for the recorders. Not to mention being expensive.

Some odd attempts were made to miniaturise the technology. Wire-recording predated tape, and recorded information to a length of fine-gauge wire in the same manner as a tape recorded, while Germany introduced Tefifon - which had more in common with a vinyl record, consisting of grooves engraved in a continuous tape read by a stylus.

The Compact Cassette was introduced by Philips in the mid 60's - originally as little more than a dictation machine for recording and playback of voice. Voice-recording required far less sound quality than music.

Very quickly however, a change in chemistry and construction of the tape improved the sound quality that could be recorded to the point where it was almost good enough for music playback. Nowhere near as good as vinyl record, or a full-size reel-to-reel recorder, but acceptable, and far more portable. A compact cassette could easily be fitted to a car. Or reduced down to pocket-size, as the Sony Walkman proved

They were cheap, and they were incredibly easy to record and copy - something which caused no end of consternation to those who made their money by being the exclusive source of recorded music.

Hence the page image.

You could record the latest hits straight off the radio - provided the DJ didn't ruin it by talking over the intro. You could copy your latest 45 RPM record single for your mate. Eventually, your tape would fill up with your own private compilation - your personal playlist mix- tape. Which could be copied, or shared with your friends.

The quality wasn't always the best - and being an analogue recording, it would degrade with each generation. Bad home recordings made on budget equipment gave cassettes a reputation for a poor quality that they never really shook. Either the recording would be done at too-high a volume and saturate and distort, too low a volume to the point where the base tape noise was noticeable, or the tape wouldn't run at a constant speed and introduce wow and flutter, or the head would be mechanically misaligned slightly on the tape itself.

But, a good quality source, a good quality tape - such and a Type-II Chrome, or a Type-IV Metal, Tape when paired with a good quality cassette deck could make a recording almost indistinguishable from a CD. Tape could be better than most people remembered.

Even twenty-five years after the introduction of the Compact Disc, It was still common in the early 2000's for HiFi systems to have a specific output for a tape recorder, letting the owner feed a signal from their Turntable, CD Player or what have you to the tape recorder for sharing, or for use in the car. The Compact Cassette didn't really start to die off until in-car CD players became more reliable and was only really finally killed by the iPod, and the Bluetooth auxiliary input.

Some new releases have been made on compact cassette - notable the Soundtrack to the Guardians of the Galaxy movies series, where a cassette mix-tape is an important plot point - but it's debatable if these were ever intended to be played.

Compared to modern formats, the Compact Cassette retains a number of advantages. Tapes can be reasonably robust - many lasting 30 years or more provided the binder doesn't degrade and allow the magnetic medium to flake off the tape. Unlike digital media, corruption on a tape can be limited to local areas, causing momentary dropouts, or a reduction in volume or quality. Some information will survive, unlike the all or nothing of digital media. Tape mechanisms can tolerate shocks that would cause a CD player to skip or crash a Hard Disk Head and destroy it entirely, while generally being easier to clean, service and maintain. There is also, of course, no DRM present on an all-analogue format.

Even so, it still lingers on, both performing its original function for stolid businessmen in the ossified upper echelons of management, and as a novelty for a new generation that's learning the joys of physical media. Good, functioning cassette decks and quality blank tapes are going up in price as the supply dwindles. New cassette decks can be bought - though all now use variations on the same basic muntzed mechanism which is robust and cheap, but is not the best for audio quality.