I have been
listening to music since 1978, when vinyl was the dominant format. Over the
past 50 years, I have explored various formats, including vinyl, CDs, and
cassettes. I also have experience with reel-to-reel tapes, which I believe
offer the best sound quality. However, original reel-to-reel recordings can be
quite expensive, so I primarily use vinyl as my main source of music.
Recently,
I have taken up collecting vintage cassette decks because I believe they can
sound better than vinyl in some cases. There are many vinyl enthusiasts who
often claim that cassette decks "eat" tapes and produce a lot of
hissing noise. Some even argue that even the cheapest turntable can outperform
my cassette deck.
I
recently posted a message on Facebook about vintage cassette decks, asking why
I still enjoy using them. I was pleased to find numerous supportive comments,
which reassured me that I am not alone in my appreciation for cassette decks.
Here
are some of the comments I received:
These
are some of the comment.
1.
Two wheels are better than one !
2.
Cassette are awesome 。
3.
No, he never has listened to a
good cassette deck. Maybe his experience is one of the early pre-recorded
tapes. I had a friend ask "who the hell listens to cassettes anymore"
I guess other than her ignorance, she had never listened to Mitsubishi Dragons,
oh well John Meyer in terms of what type of source we prefer to listen to, yes.
But to make an empirical statement that vinyl is superior to tape, particularly
a cheap vinyl setup, just reveals a deep ignorance of the technological facts.
4.
Correct! A friend -
self-confessed cassette hater, owner of some really high-end Hi Fi, listened to
one of my decks (average quality 1990s two head Yamaha) with a pre-recorded
cassette and was astonished!
5.
A well-recorded cassette on
quality tape from a digital source with proper use of Dolby NR (or dbx if you
like) can absolutely beat the sound quality from even the best LP on the best
TT with the best cartridge.
6.
Yes, simply like that: The
cassette sounds better (even at lower quality). Insiders know that.
7.
Cris Schulze just the
commercial World kill the good
Cassette music Media as no
one invest on manufacturing hin end cassette deck. I make mix tapes on my Teac
to play in my Toyota on my Blaupunkt. I earnestly don't care what anyone else
thinks about it.
8.
Some of my Cassettes sound
better than my Records, depends how it's recorded and on what system it's being
played on
9.
A good cassette deck, properly
aligned to the tape used, using high quality tapes and recorded properly from
any source, including vinyl, will produce great results. There could be
some minor trade offs, but excellent nevertheless. That's ok. We don't want
everybody to know what we know... 😉 I have some cassettes that
I recorded with my BEOCORD back in the eighties that still sound amazing. Bob
Hadden l was just listening to a recording of Love Over Gold made in 1984 on
fairly modest equipment and it still sounds great.
10. My first cassette deck was an Advent, which I enjoyed a lot. Then, I
got a Nakamichi, and enjoyed that, even more! I also added a dbx noise
reduction unit which really lowered the noise floor.
11. I’ve been slowly assembling my “retirement” system and decided
that the spot that the cassette occupied should be a digital server/streamer in
this generation.
12. I do still want something as great as the Nakamichi was and am
probably going with Aurender.ACS10. It comes with up to 24TB of storage and the
ability to rip all my CDs to that huge SSD drive so everything but my LPs will
be accessible from my listening chair. After all, this is the retirement
system!-)
13. Then we hope he spends a fortune buying audiophile grade stylus and
re-issues of popular LPs over and over.
14.
Whenever somebody says
something like that to me I just say "you are not doing it right".
15. Tell the guy that he's absolutely right and that he should stick to
the turntables. In that case we have one competitor less for the wonderful tape
decks 😁 And if he won't listen then ask him how he would imagine a
turntable in a car - that being before the CD-player was invented 🤣
In
my opinion, I dislike the crackling sound of vinyl, while I barely notice the
hissing of cassettes. Thus, I prefer cassette tapes. Records require RIAA
equalization to suppress low frequencies during recording, which can distort
the original musical form. Setting up a turntable for optimal performance is
almost like rocket science, and the cost can be ten times higher than that of a
cassette deck. The Nakamichi, with its magnetic head azimuth alignment, can
reproduce recordings faithfully.
When
I listen to cassette tapes, I find it more relaxing. Vinyl is less
user-friendly; maintaining a good cassette deck requires regular tasks like
cleaning the heads and washing the tapes. The drawback is that it's not easy to
manufacture a high-quality cassette deck, and if a new production lot were to
be made for the Dragon model, I believe the price would start at around
HKD$100,000.
I
own the HK Wing Sing Tsai Chin "Old Song" cassette tape (Taiwan
edition) and the Sanyo B series CD of the same title. It sounds best on my
Nakamichi 1000ZXL or Dragon. My vinyl system consists of a Wilson Benesch ART
turntable and a Koetsu Onyx cartridge, which is more of an average setup than a
high-end one.
You
might wonder how a cassette deck sounds. It’s warm, comfortable, has a wide
range, is vivid, natural, pleasant, and offers a more stereophonic experience.
You have to listen to believe it.
My
Current Collection:
Akai
GX95
Braun
C4
Harmon
Kardon CD291
Marantz
SD551
Nakamichi
1000ZXL x2
Nakamichi
Dragon x1
Nakamichi
CR7
Nakamichi
CR40
Nakamichi
LX5
Pioneer
T-1000
Revox
H1
Revox
B710 MK II
Teac
112 Mk II x3
Teac
V9000
Teac
Z6000
Yamaha
KX-1200
Conclusion:
In
terms of faithful reproduction, I rank the formats as follows: reel-to-reel,
cassette tape, vinyl, and then CD.
— HK Snob
