Cassette tapes were deemed to be a great step forward in the development of tape recording and recorded sound back in the 1960’s. Cassette machines were portable, tapes were easy to snap into the tape transport compartment and by the end of the 1960s Musicassettes were available which meant we could enjoy our favourite artists indoors, outdoors and in the car. As you’ve read below the Philips Cassette was a stage on from the Philips/Norelco dictation machine but the differences were the physical size – the new cassette was a third the size of the Philips/Norelco cartridge, the tape – the Cassette tape was 1/8 inch wide compared to 1/4 inch wide standard thickness tape on the early machine and the cassette was aimed at the mass market rather than be restricted to dictation and office use.
However its limitations were obvious, the slow speed (1 7/8ips) meant a restricted frequency range and a poor signal to noise ratio. The tape itself was thin leading to easy tape damage particularly with the longer tapes. BASF introduced extra mechanics in their 120 minute tape cases to prevent tape damage and improve wow and flutter figures. Commercially produced cassettes of albums were available alongside traditional vinyl records but early cassettes proved to be rather poor in quality compared to their vinyl equivalent. However regardless of these disadvantages the cassette became very popular and is still in use in a number of homes, churches and schools.
As the cassette gained popularity, so electronic manufacturers invested heavily in developing better decks and improved ways of recording and reproducing the signal at this slow speed. Enter the Dolby system which was beginning to make huge inroads in recording studios with Dolby A.
To cater for this new market Dr. Dolby’s labs introduced Dolby B for the domestic market with a specification of reducing tape hiss by 10dB. This was followed by Dolby C and S during the 1970s and 80s . Other manufacturers produced their own noise reduction systems all with a view to squeezing as much quality as possible out of this very humble format. Alongside these developments magnetic tape producers introduced high quality tape purely for the cassette market and so chromium oxide and metal tape cassettes became available allowing recordists excellent media for producing very high quality recordings.
Damaged Cassette Tape
Here is a good example of a damaged cassette recently sent to us.
Like all material sent to Lost Sounds this tape was very valuable to its owners and contained some cherished recordings from the 1960s, unfortunately a hungry tape deck decided to chew up the tape.
The owner could not open the tape compartment door resulting in them prising the cassette out with the resulting damage you can see here. Some of the damaged tape had to be edited out and the remaining spools installed into new casing.
The entire recording was then transferred to CD with the audio restored and greatly improved to be enjoyed and saved for the future .
Cassettes
Another aspect of our work with cassettes can be seen here. This is a customers entire cassette collection of 180 C90 tapes. These tapes contained recordings from the 1980s through to the early 1990s. The request was to convert the entire collection to MP3 format and store on an external hard drive.
This is a time consuming exercise, the work has to be carried out in real time and if you do the maths you will realise there are many weeks of work here! In order to accomplish lengthy work like this we use a second studio freeing up our main studio equipment so other work can continue.
During the 1980s the cassette gave way to the up and coming Compact Disc so many precious recordings were stored away on this old format, today we are privileged to restore and transfer a wide range of recordings from baby’s first words to church and school concerts enabling families and friends to continue enjoying these lost sounds.
