Of retaping and a replacement

Following a little on from last week's post spring cleaning an area I have been dealing with is redoing a few older tapes as some of those older tapes had wear and other issues including being missing.

Simultaneous to that I had been sorting out the cd shelves moving some discs down here as I'm spending more time downstairs and in the instance of my REO Speedwagon cds there always was one whose sound I'd been never really impressed by.

Something went wrong with the mixing with this album as has flabby ill defined bass and muted top in places and the UK version of lp wasn't much good so was replaced by Dutch copy that used the American parts to make  the pressings that was much better.

By 1989 compact discs were very much a thing and I was buying cd copies of albums starting with those I originally bought on cassette and so when came to getting a couple of titles I had on record I had to wait to the summer before U.S. versions came out.

When it came to the puntastic You Can Tune a Piano But You Can't Tuna Fish, the only copy I saw was the european copy that came out in the mid 80's.

That sounded nearly as bad as the first lp I had. Maybe it used the same source?

What until recently I didn't realize was there was a U.S. version  in that series I did get and I managed to track one down and it does sound much better.

Going for a moment back to cassettes the first cassettes I made of the lp only material were done of genuine BASF Chrome Super and later redone in late 1987 to Maxell XLII but those left the house in the late 1990's as they were superseded as I thought by MiniDiscs.

The tapes have been redone on Maxell XLII-S and UDII type two tapes minus noise reduction, the way back in the early 1980's I did them sounding really good.

The past never goes away, it just returns.

The return of the pre-recorded tape

 What did we talk about last week?

The stereo and music, sure but you know when I mentioned the cassette deck did you realize that actually that is so so on trend right now as while people find streaming convenient on say your smartphone, tablet or maybe Chromebook actually there is a resurgence going on in physically owning things like music.

We've heard for a good while about the vinyl comeback  from people thinking after 1992 it would be gone and many majors dropping vinyl editions unless artists pushed for it in the late 90's at least in Europe - it had been pretty dead from about 1990 in the States - to getting to the point that not only chart albums being issued again as a matter of course on vinyl to even older albums being re-issued on vinyl and many of the Universal groups "Completed" and Now That's What I Call Music themed releases coming out on vinyl too.

Something like this also has started to comeback in a big way too, the pre-recorded compact cassette which I must admit I am biased about as I was a major cassette user owning cassette walkmans, home decks, a radio cassette recorder and buying a  good number of pre-recorded tapes which by the 80's when that tape came out did sound pretty good.

Many people had car players and it must be said cassettes were easy to use in the car with a single hand movement to slot it in the mechanism and it started playing and each side clearly labelled apart from being fairly durable compared to compact discs if you're the solo driver.

Although people pushed Mp3's stored on memory sticks in cars, often there were issues with folder structures, finding the album you wanted and even when you did with it playing it in its proper order without a gap so mobile internet permitting streaming was a better option.

That said like most in car things today it's all big screens to look at and menu structures to navigate .

You can get new cassette equipment although much isn't on a par with the best from the 80's and 90's, something people are working on as new manufacture of better mechanisms is beginning and I would feel comfortable in recommending the Tascam home decks as good reliable new decks for those who just want to start all over again without at least a bit of tlc and a belt change on older units.

New tapes have been issued and sales are up.

Taylor Swift's current album, Midnights is one of several chart albums available on cassette as well as numerous vinyl and cd versions and like most modern releases doesn't use Dolby noise reduction as you can no longer license it from Dolby Labs.

That said on good tape, you have little hiss and less chance of the sound being a bit off if there were any difference between what it was duplicated on and your own machine.

Certainly I no longer use it on my own recordings for those reasons.

Some people have been collecting pre-recorded tapes for like ages and it's still happening with for example with this collection of all Taylor's cassettes apart from Folklore which is another reason why people buy releases.

Like have you ever tried "collecting" downloaded albums, having to back them up lest the SD card they're on gets corrupted and refuses to play and the lack of even a box with unique art is a turn off?

If you're a fan of an artist you want to own and handle things buy them, magazines, posters, concert programs and the albums and tape is small convenient carrier for their music you too can collect without taking up much space. 

It may seem crazy in 2023 but the humble cassette is back with us with youngsters embracing it as much as their parents generation thought they'd seen the end of tapes in their lives.

Just fast forward on to the future!

The Thriller in the Rain

It's an odd week, getting close to Advent but not really feeling that much like it probably with both the generally downbeat feelings post covid and with everything else going on such as War in Ukraine, the controversy around the World Cup and the continuous trickling reports on the Cost of Living crisis.

It also has rained rather a lot this week that impacted on my abilities to spend time outside often coupled with strong winds so I've been busy reading books and comics when not on forums as a number of things have come out tied in with the Christmas book and record sales campaigns before years end.

This was an important one which in its record form was what caused the great cutting from digital controversy at Mobile Fidelity in July cos the copied the master tape at a super high resolution from the label that owns it and then made adjustments using analogue equipment to cut the record.

It's forty years old and I feel remains one of the best records of that era with an exceptional recording.

Way back in that era I had copies of that and Michael Jacksons other albums on cassette tied in with playing on my radio cassette recorder and "Walkman" except mine was a Aiwa but they went by the late 90's as I embraced the MiniDisc.

With my only surviving MiniDisc recorders being portables and having a home cassette deck back again since 2016 I've remade a couple including Thriller using that Super Audio cd version which sounds fantastic even on ordinary players backed with Off The Wall, his 1979 Epic solo debut from the European first issue with original mixes.

The last copies from the mid to late 80's were done on these cassettes which were very classy looking and technically more reliable than late TDK SA's.

I redid my own custom edit of his Bad album of 1987 again from the original European cd (Japanese pressed) as several tracks later on got remixes inserted by taking out one weaker track the 48 minutes got reduced to just over 45.

I then added a few tracks from his 1975 Forever Michael album including the UK number one single One Day In Your Life and the 1973 missing at the time recordings but completed in 1984 Farewell My Summer Love album as I liked his work at Motown from the Hello World box set of 2010. 

They came out well so that bit of revisiting the past paid off.

Making a tape or two returned II

 Hasn't been the best week being off for part of it so Matron's been insistant that I rest and take the pills.

Following on a bit from last week, often there was a promotion often tied into things like Christmas or Summer when it came to buying your tapes as after all, compared to much else we had back then, they were more portable so we could take them to a picnic or a beach and just insert and press play.

Often such promotions would tie in with key albums the companies were prepared to allow them to use to push the sales here such as this top sellers from mid 1986 with discounted stock prices.

You can also see how the art work on the cassette editions moved from a simple squared image on the front to more complex wrap around forms that might carry all the way the way to reverse of the insert know to some as the 'j card' adding to the appeal of the cassette version.

Making a tape or too returned

We kind of mentioned this machine way back in October 2019 after writing a bit about the week before in connection with making some new tapes on the Technics cassette deck, it had died.

The Panasonic RQ-JA63 is a personal cassette player from around 1985/6 that has an all metal single direction tape transport mechanism with switching for playing type I and type II+IV tapes and a switchable dolby B circuit for playing tapes made with it.

The problem with it was the main drive belt had gone soft and broke and it took a while to find the correct length, width and finish belt to replace it with. 

After lubricating the mechanism and fitting a new belt, it sounded as good as it did new. 

I haven't mentioned pre-recorded tapes much either but this edition of The Principal of Moments by Robert Plant better know as the lead singer of Led Zeppelin is one I've had from release in 1983.

Technically it is a very high quality tape using lower noise and much better sounding genuine chromedioxide tape made by BASF and played on the tape player it sounded superb

I first bought a cassette of Foreigner 4, their 1981 hit album home to Juke Box Hero, Urgent and Waiting For a Girl Like You in early March of 1982 while at school and until cassette editions were discontinued it had been reissued in different forms.

The first significantly different one was in late 1982 when like the Robert Plant tape it was duplicated on Chromedioxide tape rather than regular brown ferric oxide tape.

I came by recent a edition from the late 80's which while using ferric tape but a very good sort used the Dolby Hx Pro system to maximize the high frequency performance on more demanding parts of the music.

The Best of Rainbow originated from a Japan only release which was later issued in the UK and Europe in late 1981 adding single versions and the otherwise unavailable on album Jealous Lover.

This was a discounted Double play tape of around 86 minutes which was useful as I bought the lp version at the time making my own tape but recently bought a used but in nice condition copy of the official UK duplicated version with the red paper labels 

These tapes do sound pretty good showing before cds and Mp3 players entered the scene just how good a compact music source the cassette could be.

Tapes

While all the mad stuff was happening in Parliament,  I was making a few recordings one of which was to replace two pre-recorded cassettes that no long playback right using the small system's cd player and obviously the cassette deck.

 That was the cheapest tape you could buy from TDK, the then leading tape manufacturer usually in packs of three, five or ten a piece being typically used in stereo radio cassette recorders or all in one "Shoebox" shaped mono recorders that run on batteries.
A few might use them for making tapes up for the car as they were dirt cheap new but most people who had separate cassette decks used with their hifi systems wouldn't touch them thinking they'd moved on from all that.
One consequence of this is many people associate the tape with relatively poor sound.

 This is the back of the cellophane wrapper of the sixty minute version and the thing was actually if you used the adjuster (or an automatic tape calibration device) in the recorder these were a lot better than you'd think with crisp high notes and good clean bass with just a little more hiss than a more expensive type 1 "normal" tape.
Its been years since I last used one of these, I did use the D series in the early eighties before I had a brand new deck of my own but the 1991 D did an excellent job remaking that album on tape and even now they are cheap to find.
The reason people associate the tape with less than stellar sound is just what they were used with that's all.

People in the tape world argue a lot about type types-which is the best- but my experience suggested that it was about the individual tape than whither or not it was a type I "Normal tape" or a type 2 "Chrome position" or type 4 metal oxide tapes which were wasted on but the most expensive equipment.

 This is one I used a heck of a lot in the late eighties and up to the point I bought my first MiniDisc deck in 1997.
It is a type 1 which tended to be look down on by hifi types - Mr Hifi Bore  at the  pub would always talk about type 2's being where hifi cassettes started - but this was extremely good because it would take a lot of signal meaning it could capture more with less hiss than most type I's and had the ability to record the most bass of any tape without sounding distorted.
It also tended to be  very reliable which helped as I used a walkman tape player on the bus and train a lot. It helped they were sold in value packs of three or five in places like record stores or Boots the Chemists here in England.
I soon found this was at least the equal of type II tapes ditching most of TDK's type II's completely  but such was the prejudice on the part of hifi people many didn't buy them.

I won't talk too technical as that would come over as "mumbo jumbo" to you but on the wrapper it shows how good it was at capturing sound and why it was it had a better ability to keep the difference between the quietest and loudest sounds than some type II tapes.
It also meant it would play properly on any player without sounding too bright.
I managed to track down some new old stock ones to go with my three shoeboxes of TDK AD type I's living next to my recorder.

Making a tape or two

Here at That Boarding School Girl apart from being annoyed but not surprised at the Bear Pit that was Wednesday's activity in the House of Commons, I am unwell with a rotten  cold and cough so haven't been out on Thursday, not feeling up to much at all. 

Anyway continuing on a bit from last weeks post, the point behind having the cassette deck wired in was not just to play any old cassettes either pre-recorded on older ones of mine but to also to make new ones.

 As you will see in this picture, I have a portable cassette player aka a "Walkman" although that strictly speaking is a Sony term that while only playing in one direction before the tape stops and you turn it over, does feature Dolby B noise reduction for tapes made with it, a five band equalizer that acts like tone controls  to alter the sound to your tastes and a tape selector for tapes made to play in "Normal" or "Chrome/Metal" positions.

Around it are three tapes I made, one an original and the two Beatles ones I did this week on the Technics cassette deck.

One thing that those not brought up in the tape era won't realize is while a tape has a set playing time that time is not only halved across two sides equally but doesn't necessarily easily fit an album because either one side is longer than the tape's side or as with the Beatles 1962-1966 it is an album that runs for sixty-three minutes which would be too short for a seventy-four or ninety minute tape with lots of minutes of blank tape to get through before the second side and slightly too long for a sixty minute tape.

I decided with that one to remove a couple of songs that were not necessary and move one song to the second side to get it to neatly fit on a that sixty minute tape.

Likewise to get the forty nine minutes per side of the matching 1967-1970 album to a ninety minute tape I deleted a track from each side which left only a minute of blank tape from each of the tape which was very neat!

Project X, Part V, playing tapes

Project X is alive and well playing music in Lossy and Lossless forms from my Fiio music players line output from one of Eight micro sd cards as well as from a elderly Toshiba cd player.
I like quite a few people have a good number of cassettes not least pre-recorded ones I bought from the mid 1970's to mid 1990's I moved from cassette based portable listening to MiniDisc and had been thinking of how to play them back on this mini system.

Enter a unused Sony TX 313 mini sized fully functional cassette deck from a MiniDisc system I got from someone who never ever used it so it was still boxed and shrinkwrapped from the late 1990's.
Oddly enough it uses a car type side slot way of loading the tapes into it but unlike car units this does record and has auto tape type sensing to read the extra tabs for type II ('Chrome') and IV (Metal) tapes although the latter are no longer available new plus I seriously doubt it's tape heads really are up to making full advantage of such tapes electrically

The rear has RCA line in and outs, with the out going via a expensive Cambridge Pacific interconnect to the input selector with a maximum of 0.5 volts out depending on the program loudness and the AV bus for Sony mini systems it was sold with for synchronized cd to tape copying.
The unit is blessed with switchable Dolby B noise reduction for proper replay and recording of such tapes plus auto reverse so it can play one  side of the tape and switch by itself to the other. 
According to the specifications it reproduces up to 14khz for type I tapes and 15khz for types II and IV which is decent if not as wide as most full sized hifi cassette decks so the high frequencies will be clear but not quite as extended as the best units can achieve.
It is making an excellent job of replaying my 1980's EMI UK dolbyized Beatles pre-recorded cassettes which were amongst the best sounded tapes manufactured and part of reason I held out so long against the cd as portable listening was and remains a big part of my life and why my Fiio is my 'to go' digital playing device on headphones or connected to this system.
I like high quality portable formats more

C60, C90, C120 Go!

Ever remember what we did pre iTunes when it came to getting and playing our music? Well one thing I remember doing was making up tapes sometimes 'mix tapes' with various tracks sometimes whole albums for playing back elsewhere.

This was one machine I had in high school for it as it was both a home stereo cassette recorder you used with your stereo unit and also a self contained mono player you could take away with you without any mains to play back your tapes on.
There were a great many different lengths of tape that offered different playing times per side of the dual sided cassette but generally I stuck to 60 and 90 minute lengths as they covered most needs and tended to be more reliable as longer tapes would be thin being more prone to wear or even jamming up. Cleaning up after  a jammed tape in the unit wasn't funny!

That's what the tapes looked like , this one plays for forty-five minutes per side and is one of the higher quality type II sorts that  I used a lot of back then although I started out using the cheaper regular type I TDK D ones as the really cheap tapes the drugstores stocked didn't sound so good and were not reliable.
That machine also had a stereo headphone socket so you could use like a 'Walkman' although Walkmen were smaller if no less chubbier to start with, more of use on the bus or train where space is at a premium.
I kept this until I got a proper Hifi deck and separate walkman in the early 80's

A tale of Rio's on tape

This is an album I know well but in  three differing tape forms as originally issued way back in 1982.

Eight track was holding on in North America although by 1982 most new issues were only issued by mail order record clubs such as Columbia House and RCA.
This is the third version US Rio with five dance mixes substituted for the album versions used in the UK. 

That same version was issued in North America on higher quality XDR tape with improved duplication for the retail side .

This is the UK version with the blue background that wraps around the whole J Card.

The blue from the from gains stripe that go to the rear title display.

Although the British version didn't use the superior XDR process, the artwork was far superior and it used the same album mixes as the UK lp that had better sound quality.
The tape shell was white with blue screen printed titles.
In its differing forms it was an album I played to death that year.

Tapes away!

In that period before I bought into compact disc, one medium I did use a lot was the compact cassette not just for recording from either records or broadcasts but also pre-recorded cassettes whose technical quality  was improving during the early nineteen-eighties.

That deck was the one I had from 1985 through 1991 which had the very handy auto reverse option which meant you didn't need to turn the tape over although you did lose around  six seconds or so as t went past any leader tape and the mechanism changed direction.
It also had the in vogue Dolby C in addition to B noise reduction to reduce tape hiss considerable.

This sort of cube for storing tapes was a hanger on from the nineteen-seventies where I had one with my portable recorder at the time and first stereo machine to keep my tapes safe.
I tended to have case of 32 tape capacity labelled for my home recordings with paper based catalogue to aid finding them.