Guest Blog: In Defence of Cassettes
[Emily takes an opposing view to my opinion on cassettes. Here’s her take. – AC]
It’s no secret to most that frequent your blog that you has never been a fan of cassettes; and you have good reason. The format is flimsy, you often hear more tape hiss than notes and as I grow older, cassettes have become irrelevant with the advent of MP3 players and the like.
However, I do have to join this discussion to make a defense case for the cassette’s place as a valuable audio format. After all, not every generation was lucky enough to grow up with records or iPods.
When I was born, the number one song in Canada was Tears Are Not Enough by Northern Lights. I was born just early enough in the decade to have a good understand of what vinyl was all about before it faded for a number of years and I do, in fact, remember the first CD player my family ever bought. But you know, around the time these memories came to be, I was too young to operate the audio equipment (case and point: I think a few broken records I recovered later on might have been my fault…) and I certainly couldn’t take it into my room.
But I did have my little Fisher Price cassette player I could hawk around with me from time to time. (To make all of us late 20-somethings old, they kind of looked like this. It was indestructible; you could annoy the piss out of your parents with the microphone and the sounds that came from the thing – tape hiss in all – were priceless.
When I was a tot, it was Anne Murray’s There’s a Hippo in My Tub to a read-along book and cassette combo of Disney’s Oliver & Company, if I could find a tape, I’d play it in my tape player. Fun fact, that Oliver & Company tape included Billy Joel’s Why Should I Worry? at the end of the story – making it my first taste of the uber awesome Billy Joel. I seem to remember I had the song Walking on Sunshine on at least one tape.
As time went on, several more legit artists would start to filter in. I over played a collection of classic British Invasion songs my Manchester-born dad grew up with. And, very importantly, I had two extremely unique Beatles tapes. I know them as now as the 1976 Rock’N’Roll Music compilation. My tapes were my first music education.
A number of those tapes would also follow me to school with my Walkman. There was something special about curling up in the back field of my school in grade 6 or 7 on a warm spring day listening to my growing collection of Beatles cassettes and that various other tapes that were starting to appear. And the best part: my Walkman was equipped with an AM/FM radio. It was one of those Sony WM-FS sport jobs, so if the battery started to die, I could just switch to the radio and keep going for at least another few hours…thus solidifying my future love for radio.
Eventually, I traded in my Walkman for a CD player, but it really wasn’t the same. All of a sudden I was faced with an often malfunctioning device that couldn’t keep up with me running back and forth between classes. Walking without making my CDs skip was truly an art I couldn’t master. Dropping the thing could be completely fatal and I had to MacGyver the piece of hardware on the inside that held the laser/spindle with a piece of paper because one drop made it drop and the discs would scrape across the bottom of the device. And at least my devices never came with radio receivers, which was just cruel.
I think I ceremoniously trashed my first portable CD player when I finally made the transition to MP3. I finally had something I could rely on again and considering my first iPod lasted a good five or six years, it was a relief. But to this day, I can’t forget or discredit the impact of those first tape players had on my education as a music enthusiast.
Cassettes: Sure they sound like crap, but they never skipped, the players could withstand the beating only a child can inflict and the format was cheap enough to replace as needed. They were the perfect nursing format.
The trademark hiss of a cassette? I consider it just as warm to me as a June day during afternoon recess. It’s my snap, crackle, pop.
I have continued using cassettes even through the CD and MP3 age. Using cassettes doesn't necessarily mean crap sound. With some tips, you really can optimize your sound, along with having an old-school feel—something tangible to touch, buttons to push, etc. Why did I never make the transition to MP3s? Because the steps I usually follow gets the sound close to, or even to CD quality.
Nowadays it's all about portability, so I'm going to focus on the walkman instead of those big stereo systems. The key is getting a high quality, top-end walkman–no cheap no name brands. You can easily find them on eBay. I prefer ones with an equalizer so you can adjust the bass/treble levels. Once purchased, clean the heads. A Q-Tip and alcohol will do. Use the same pressure you would use to erase stuff with a pencil. It won't ruin the head, trust me.
Next is the quality of blank tapes, assuming you're using a device to transfer MP3s, vinyl or CD's to cassettes. Always use High Bias tapes. Always, always, always. Normal Bias tapes sound cheap and muffled. If you're in the Toronto area, they still sell good quality cassettes in the downtown area, eg, Looney Stores. To be honest (and with blank cassettes slowly dwindling) brand name isn't a concern. Just look on the label and make sure it's something higher than Normal Bias.
Last is the earphones. Again shoot for the highest quality earphones. Steer away from the ear-bud type, and go high-end (my earphones are $30) The bulkier the better, plus hey, it looks cooler. Remember the medium that the music exits into your ears plays a determining role. None of those cheap $7.99 earphones will capture the sound levels/tones better than a $40 or $50 pair will, and that's a fact.
So now you're good to go. Crank it up. And long live cassettes
Another cassette tape fan! Music was my escape and education growing up. My parents who fled from Communism and survived extreme poverty did not believe in frivolous things. I was forbidden to purchase music so I hid records between newspapers making it look like I was studious when sneaking them into my room. I did read the papers though to check out the music reviews.
When the Walkman came out, the cassettes were cheaper than records so my illicit spending could go further and then often had bonus songs not available on the record.
I have a great collection of cassettes though I was not kind and did not rewind so some of them are barely playable but maybe one day the technology to fix that will come. Some of them I played so much the sound is muffled and wonky.
So Alan, it really does not matter what format we consume music as long as it's enjoyed.
I remember taping rare songs off CFNY (Endgames First last and everything anyone?) and splicing the tape to take out dj at beginning and ends of songs. Good times till the cassette player ate the tape.