# What's behind the resurgence of albums on cassette tapes? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 22, 2016, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595 "2016-09-22T19:40:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595/21 "2016-09-23T16:31:40Z")
Are the cassette tapes sold today analog or digital music? Cassette drives were used with computers in the early 80s. Tandy computers came with cassette drives that would boot load. Digital music on cassette might work really well. It’s just another storage medium. Tape storage has been used on big mainframes for seventy years. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595/22 "2016-09-23T16:46:05Z")
Digital cassettes never really caught on; I’ve never seen a digital cassette player. These are analogue, and like vinyl enthusiasts this is the reason for the resurgence. Some people claim that analogue sounds better and is a better representation than digital (Neil Young). Personally, I can’t tell the difference. Hell I can’t even tell the difference in MP3 format. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595/23 "2016-09-23T16:48:57Z")
I’m in the process of reading BLM’s memoir. No, not “Black Lives Matter” or “Bureau of Land Management”, but “Bernard Law Montgomery”. He’s pretty insufferable. I understand why so many Americans hated him during the war. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595/24 "2016-09-23T16:59:58Z")
^Huh? ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595/25 "2016-09-23T17:01:46Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > ^Huh? Oops, wrong thread. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595/26 "2016-09-23T17:14:34Z")
> [@wguy123](#): > > Just my luck! I finally have a new enough car that it DOESN’T have a tape player. And, double just my luck: It’s my first car with a CD player but I don’t ever listen to CD’s anymore. 😃 > > Someone above mentioned spending hours mending tapes. I grew up in the tape era and owned hundreds. I wore out a ton (mainly by leaving in a hot car) but I rarely had them break. What brand of tape player did you own that came with teeth? My car came with a cassette player factory installed. I used it to listen to a Discman using an adapter. Then I got an mp3 player and listened to it the same way. The playback head eventually went out of alignment and I replaced it with a CD stereo with an input jack. I plug my mp3 player (a smartphone now) into the jack. I don’t think I’ve listened to an actual cassette in 20 years. I’ve also had plenty of cassette tapes on which the takeup reel would stop rotating, but the player would keep advancing the tape. The tape would tangle up inside the cassette player. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595/27 "2016-09-23T18:19:35Z")
I thought that the takeup reel was the only one that was motorized, and that the source reel only rotated because it was being pulled by the tape. How would you motorize both, given that the relative speeds will change as the tape is unwound and wound? ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595/28 "2016-09-23T18:42:57Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I thought that the takeup reel was the only one that was motorized, and that the source reel only rotated because it was being pulled by the tape. How would you motorize both, given that the relative speeds will change as the tape is unwound and wound? You’re forgetting that the most important drive is the capstan… that’s what controlled the actual linear velocity of the tape, along with providing reliable contact with the head (because of the pinch roller). In all the cassette drives I’ve seen, the supply reel is basically free-spinning. (Granted, in an auto-reverse player, it becomes the driven take-up reel in the opposite direction, but that’s not the same as saying that it’s power-driven as a supply reel.) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595/29 "2016-09-23T18:53:11Z")
Actually, I’m not forgetting that, because I never knew that in the first place. I assumed that the system just allowed the linear velocity of the tape to vary, and that the resultant inefficiency was just an accepted cost for the simplicity of the system. So how is the takeup reel driven? Is it just on a clutch of some sort that slips at fairly low torque, to allow for the changes in speed? ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim_r.mortiss/32/142_2.png) [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_R.Mortiss)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595/30 "2016-09-23T19:04:30Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > Are the cassette tapes sold today analog or digital music? > > Cassette drives were used with computers in the early 80s. Tandy computers came with cassette drives that would boot load. > > Digital music on cassette might work really well. It’s just another storage medium. Tape storage has been used on big mainframes for seventy years. I remember DATs (digital audio tapes) having a brief popularity in the late eighties (I think), among serious audiophiles. But they were kind of expensive, and never really caught on with the average listener. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595/31 "2016-09-23T19:07:45Z")
Bleh, every cassette player I ever had sounded much better playing one side of the tape than the other. I don’t miss them at all. LPs I can sort of understand the nostalgia for, but MP3s are the pinnacle of quality and flexibility for me. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595/32 "2016-09-23T19:24:40Z")
> [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](#): > > I remember DATs (digital audio tapes) having a brief popularity in the late eighties (I think), among serious audiophiles. But they were kind of expensive, and never really caught on with the average listener. Yeah, that’s about the right time. I remember playing Zak McKracken, which came out in 1988, and there was a DAT object in it. I knew what it was at the time, but didn’t hear of anybody using it. I also remember the old Commodore tape drives as well. Those used regular analog tape. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595/33 "2016-09-23T19:27:28Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Actually, I’m not forgetting that, because I never knew that in the first place. I assumed that the system just allowed the linear velocity of the tape to vary, and that the resultant inefficiency was just an accepted cost for the simplicity of the system. So how is the takeup reel driven? Is it just on a clutch of some sort that slips at fairly low torque, to allow for the changes in speed? Yeah, but the “clutch” is just the friction between a smooth rotating shaft and the plastic take up cog. You could grab the take up cog and stop its rotation without much effort at all. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595/34 "2016-09-23T19:56:17Z")
I loved cassettes! I liked to edit, and editing with cassettes was simple. I had quite a lot of fun messing around with dubbing decks. It was a fairly straightforward process to make lo-fi remixes or to edit sections out of songs. I once created an entire 90-minute tape out of what I considered the best sections of **Mr. Bungle** songs. Now of course the digital age has made all of those techniques obsolete, but if I still owned a dubbing deck I’d probably still be doing that stuff, just for fun. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595/35 "2016-09-23T20:48:34Z")
When I was in my 20s and lived with a couple of roommates CD were just becoming popular. Between the 3 of us we were starting to build a serious collection. One of my favourite things was to get completely blotto and then make myself a mixed tape. The next day, usually while out driving, I’d listen to the tape with no recollection of what was on it. I was damned amazed how fantastic my tastes were! Sent from my adequate mobile device. ---
**Author:** ![Dahnlor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dahnlor/32/533_2.png) [@Dahnlor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dahnlor)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595/36 "2016-09-23T21:27:07Z")
> [@DCnDC](#): > > I loved cassettes! I liked to edit, and editing with cassettes was simple. I had quite a lot of fun messing around with dubbing decks. It was a fairly straightforward process to make lo-fi remixes or to edit sections out of songs. I used to do that, too. Once made a 20-minute extended version of Journey’s “Separate Ways”. That was also a useful skill when making mix tapes. I would never buy albums on cassette, only on vinyl LP, then record them to blank cassettes. Then I would fill the blank space at the end with songs from other albums. I’d never leave more than 10 seconds of silence before the tape ran out. Usually this would simply be a matter of choosing songs of the correct length, but if that failed, I would edit songs down to the correct length. I remember it being much easier to simply use the pause button and my ears to make edits that in some cases sounded as good as if they had been done by professionals. Nowadays, I still haven’t been able to figure out digital editing to come up with anything anywhere near as good as what I could do back in the day with a tape recorder. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595/37 "2016-09-23T21:34:33Z")
> [@Dahnlor](#): > > I remember it being much easier to simply use the pause button and my ears to make edits that in some cases sounded as good as if they had been done by professionals. If memory serves, the trick was to pause right where you wanted to make the cut, hit stop, pull the cassette out, roll the tape back a quarter turn, and it would be _exactly_ where you paused. This was surprisingly accurate; even accounting for a little slop the transitions were practically seamless. . ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2016, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595/38 "2016-09-23T21:50:53Z")
Looks like it time to get the Astraltune out and get it running again! ---
**Author:** ![River\_Hippie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/river_hippie/32/26_2.png) [@River\_Hippie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/River_Hippie)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2016, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595/39 "2016-09-24T01:00:51Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > Even if your numbers are correct, cassettes still suck in just about every way they can. The sound quality is inferior to everything but a Victrola, they wear out, the actual tape breaks and may even take your player out with it on a suicide mission and you have to rewind them. > > I am a child of the 80’s and the one thing that I will never miss is cassette tapes. Do you know how many hours I spent pulling out literally dozens or hundreds of feet of tape so that I could try to cut and splice the non-damaged parts back together with Scotch tape? I don’t either but it was way too many. I ended up with many handicapped cassettes that only had random snippets of hit songs on them. > > I still loved them anyway because that was all we had but cassette nostalgia is like longing to use an outhouse rather than a real bathroom or taking a bath in a tub of used water in the kitchen in front of your family every week or so. It is definitely retro but retro isn’t a synonym for “good”. > > I hate hipsters as much as anyone and I am thrilled they learned to make their own life harder by embracing one of the worst technologies ever invented but let’s not take that to mean it is anything but pointless posturing. This has not been my experience. I have cassettes I recorded in the late 70s that still play just fine. I took good care of them. I am thinking about buying a new cassette deck, I’m running out of machines to play the hundreds of tapes I still have. Lots of good stuff on those old tapes. ---
**Author:** ![actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e79b87/32.png) [@actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/actualliberalnotoneofthose)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2016, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595/40 "2016-09-24T01:03:15Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > Who out there has a cassette player and _doesn’t_ have a CD player? I don’t even have my cassette deck any more. They certainly can’t play cassettes in their smart phones! 🙂 One of my cars does. So, at least in that case cassettes are more practical than CDs or certainly vinyl. And of course, since I have a cassette player I can’t plug a phone into it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-behind-the-resurgence-of-albums-on-cassette-tapes/766595.md?page=3)