8mm Forum: Analog resurgence includes things you might not expect

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Posted by Tom Spielman (Member # 5352) on June 03, 2016, 10:16 AM:

Including audio cassettes:

The last cassette tape factory (in the US)

Not many people are going to argue that cassette tapes provide a better listening experience but the interview provides some insights as to why people value them.

My long term concern with the analog revival is that it might be a passing fad. As a band, handing out CDs is considered old school. Giving out a cassette is a little more novel, but novelty is temporary.

Posted by Dominique De Bast (Member # 3798) on June 03, 2016, 10:50 AM:

Here is what I got today in my mails :

"Discover the musical actuality of the week"

Posted by Mark Todd (Member # 96) on June 03, 2016, 11:03 AM:

Just running " Paranoid " vinyl LP now on my chinese ( Branded ) direct drive manual deck and Logitech speakers, cheapies but lovely warm sound.

Best Mark.

Posted by Paul Suchy (Member # 80) on June 03, 2016, 11:23 AM:

Cassettes and 8 track cartridges were for portability and convenience; threading up my open reel tape deck takes a minute but 2 tracks spread over 1/4 inch of tape at a speed of 15 inches per second is well worth the trouble. Cassettes have 4 tracks on that tiny tape width and putter along at 1 7/8 inches per second; yet they were a special part of my youth (as well as 8 tracks!).

Posted by Tom Spielman (Member # 5352) on June 03, 2016, 11:37 AM:

My first car cost $100 and didn't have a radio, but did have an aftermarket 8 track tape player. It also had holes in the floor and lights that would randomly turn off, - so my nostalgia for 8-track only goes so far. Probably the first music I ever bought for myself was on 8 track though.

I still have lots of cassettes that I can't quite bring myself to get rid of even though my favorites are almost unlistenable. The performers sound like ghosts trying to play their music through the haze of almost 3 decades gone by.

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on June 03, 2016, 11:55 AM:

Oh wow, the nearly indestructable 8 tracks ... how i rwemember them, especially how they would fade out to switch to the next track and then fade in again, on a song! (Though the producers of the 8 track would do thier best to make sure that a favored song was not cut in two).

Cassettes, near thier zenith, actually had pretty good sound, especially if you recorded from a CD source on an either metal tape or Chrome tape! I still have that expensive (at the time) tape deck with Dolby B and C recording technology, and when you played them back on a nice little dolby casette deck with headphones, it sounded great ... a good deal better than most of the cassettes that were put out by the record labels, ironically.

Posted by Dave Groves (Member # 4685) on June 03, 2016, 12:11 PM:

For me, audio cassettes never went away. I use my portable for music at all my shows and recordings are so simple.

Posted by Tom Spielman (Member # 5352) on June 03, 2016, 12:17 PM:

There was a built in incentive for the record labels not to produce audio cassettes that sounded too good. They wouldn't have been able to charge as much of a premium for CDs as they did.

Posted by Brian Fretwell (Member # 4302) on June 03, 2016, 02:38 PM:

I believe that direct recording to a good cassette made a very good recording. I heard that the dynamic range could be greater than vinyl as the latter would need some peak compression to prevent the cutter (on stereo) skipping over the surface of the blank leaving no groove. It would have to be something like a tank firing on an SFX disc to do this though.

Posted by Claus Harding (Member # 702) on June 03, 2016, 03:06 PM:

DBXII noise reduction units helped the cassette sound respectable, as long as you encoded and decoded appropriately. The issue with DBXII was that if the unit mistook, say, hiss from a radio broadcast for tape noise, any quiet moments (in classical music and such) would be sucked right down to silence as if you had turned the radio off in-between. For "steady-state" volume material, such as rock music, it worked very well.

Dolby-S and metal tape was the other way to sonic bliss, but few decks were made with "S" and metal tapes were expensive.

It is admirable what could be squeezed out of those small tracks, but if I want a reality check, all I have to do is lace up my 2-track reel-to-reel and roll something at 15 or 30 IPS, and one is quickly reminded about how you can't fool physics: more is more, in this regard :-)
Still, I have my now 30-40-yr old cassettes and a Tascam deck to play them on; I won't get rid of them.

Claus.

Posted by Bruno Heughebaert (Member # 2756) on June 03, 2016, 03:19 PM:

One way static records in belgium sells ost of b to z series horror films mainly on bloody coloured LPs and sometimes also on cassettes tapes. I recently purchased candyman I and II (philip ass) both on LP and cassette (K7 as we say in french).

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on June 03, 2016, 07:06 PM:

If my memory serves me well I seem to recall an 8mm sound projector that utilized a built-in cassette player. Seems like a great idea.

Posted by Claus Harding (Member # 702) on June 03, 2016, 07:18 PM:

Paul,

I remember vaguely seeing that model in an ad; was it Noris who made that combo unit?

Claus.

Posted by Brian Fretwell (Member # 4302) on June 04, 2016, 03:07 AM:

I remember it being a Noris, the cassette drive was on the rear, facing the opposite way to the lens.

Posted by Maurice Leakey (Member # 916) on June 04, 2016, 03:15 AM:

The Noris Norimat.
http://shop.van-eck.net/MA-1372.html

Posted by Raleigh M. Christopher (Member # 5209) on June 07, 2016, 04:46 PM:

Dominique:

I believe the proper English translation is "Discover the musical news of the week" (literal) or "Discover the week's music news" (conversational)

Tom:

You're too much of a pessimist. Film and Vinyl aren't going anywhere.

Posted by Dominique De Bast (Member # 3798) on June 07, 2016, 05:07 PM:

Correct, Raleigh ! "actuality" is a "false friend" (a word that looks the same in another language but has another meaning). Thanks for correcting me.

Posted by Tom Spielman (Member # 5352) on June 07, 2016, 10:12 PM:

Raleigh: I prefer the term skeptical over pessimistic. [Smile]

The question is will film will be around like black smiths are still around or like bicycles are still around? I believe there's a combination of nostalgia and trendiness currently associated with analog that I'm not sure will last.

Given current obesity rates, concerns over climate change, costs of motor vehicle ownership and traffic congestion, bicycles offer real practical value for a subset of people. Film offers artistic value and archival value.

Film does offer something else though, and maybe be this will be a reason for its continued relevance. It offers tactile value. Even CDs offered that. Digital streaming and downloads don't. I just wonder if it's human nature to prefer something we can touch. I also wonder if there's a growing distaste for having so much of our lives dominated by bits and bytes.

Posted by Brian Fretwell (Member # 4302) on June 08, 2016, 04:43 AM:

Not to mention that with streaming digital products the control of future access is entirely in the hands of the provider. With a film you can have something to keep.
Also with digital cinema the film company can control exactly where and when a movie is shown and (I believe) date and screen limit the movie file's showing.

Posted by Dave Groves (Member # 4685) on June 08, 2016, 05:18 AM:

Film will almost certainly survive even if for archive uses but I doubt that it will stretch to printed films that any of us can afford even if the studios were willing to make it possible, which I doubt. I just read that H.M.V. (U.K's biggest music/dvd chain) is predicting vinyl sales of 1.5 million this year and is increasing it's range of turntables for sale. Vinyl had a much bigger base in it's day and loads of folk still have turntables. It's manufacture can be done on one machine in a garage. Film users remaining after Cinema walked away is somewhat small and production complicated. I don't see a particularly bright future for small users but that won't stop me running my machine and fishing in the declining waters of film. (sorry about the mixed metaphors)

Posted by Raleigh M. Christopher (Member # 5209) on June 08, 2016, 09:35 AM:

Film isn't going anywhere

Clicky - from a year and a half ago.

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