Ongoing History of New Music

Ongoing History Daily: Collecting cassettes? Stay away from these.

Alan Cross 0 Comments 55 Views

Pre-recorded cassettes first appeared in the mid-60s and reached their commercial peak in the mid-80s before slowly fading away over the next couple of decades. This brings me to the problem of the disastrous EMI cobalt cassettes of the 90s.

They seemed to use high-tech ferric-cobalt technology, but in fact, highly compressed audio to mask the fact that EMI was using poor-quality tape. Marketed as xDR cassettes, they were duplicated so that they sounded good on boomboxes and portable cassette players but terrible everywhere else. The music sounded harsh and rough on something like a good car stereo. Listener fatigue was a problem. Not only that, but because the base tape was substandard, xDR tapes degraded fast, especially when it came to treble frequencies.

So, if you’re a collector of vintage cassettes, stay away from these things. They are not worth your time.

Alan Cross

is an internationally known broadcaster, interviewer, writer, consultant, blogger and speaker. In his 40+ years in the music business, Alan has interviewed the biggest names in rock, from David Bowie and U2 to Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters. He’s also known as a musicologist and documentarian through programs like The Ongoing History of New Music.

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