Quote:
Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler
I once had a colleague try to tell me that cassettes were now better than open reel tape. They had, he said, Dolby, 3 heads, dual capstans and exotic tape formulations.
I asked him if there was anything preventing those things being applied to open reel tape machines.
David
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Yes it was claimed in advertising that cassettes were now equal to open reels. There was some truth in it in that tapes had improved greatly over the years with much shorter recorded wavelengths now possible. This benefitted the slow speed cassettes much more than faster speed open reel recordings. A newer cassette could now capture 20 kHz at only 1.875ips tape speed. That wasnt of much benefit for an open reel machine unless you were recording at the same slow tape speeds. Open reels at faster tape speeds had been able to reach 20 kHz and higher long before the newer generations of tapes appeared in the 70's. Then extremely thin tape with whatever coating can be extremely challenging to clean or repair without damaging it further.
The low noise/high output tapes improvements arguably helped the cassette more than open reel where with wider tracks and faster speeds, noise and distortion wasnt so much of a problem.
The Achilles heel of hi fi cassette recording was poorer signal to noise and it was never really solved without Dolby or other NR. But Dolby could be fiddly to get right to avoid artifacts, so many people avoided it. I think the automatic alignment feature of the later more exotic cassette decks helped make good quality cassette recording accessible for the less technical user.
Speaking of cassette tape types I think the Metal tape really came into its own in the 80's with Sony's 8mm cassette tape camcorders and the later digital ones such as DV and Digital 8. What once could only be recorded on large reels of 2" or 1" wide tape could now be captured on tiny tapes in eventually tiny cameras. Then there was DAT. I dont recall if this used a Metal or a Chrome type tape. A downside of Metal type tapes is that they can be easily destroyed by water contamination, whereas conventional tapes such as ferric and chrome have more of a chance of surviving - if treated promptly with the necessary skills.
But there was still another price to pay for the miniaturisation and squeezing of data onto tiny real estate. Alignment was critical and the same dirt, mould and physical damage which might only cause minor dropout on a large tape could mean huge loss of picture and sound with a tiny carrier.