Cassettes still rock!

Yes, the Advent was (and is) a true high fidelity deck, as reflected in both its price and its weight. I wouldn't call it ugly, however.

Okay, I currently use a Nakamichi ZX7 for playback only. My 150 classical London, Angel, DGG, Philips cassettes sit in a box along with many soundtracks and pop cassettes. They sound bad, either compressed, hissy, tonally wrong, etc. However, I made superb recordings on my former Tandberg 310 (it died) without dolby and they were quiet recordings. Better yet, I substituted my Tandberg 9000 RR deck and made superior recordings to the cassettes. I have about half a dozen great sounding private cassettes, some of organ music recorded outdoors in San Diego. I transfer cassettes of ethnic music to CDs. My high end system prefers RR, LPs and CDs to pre-recorded cassettes despite some of the latter being okay. I have 78s with really wonderful sound that mimic mastertape in that alive quality with real dynamics.  I had excellent results recording to SuperBeta tape as well.  Now I use a Tascam digital recorder.  Different from my Pioneer 1500 RR but I've made some professional quality recordings of chamber music by prominent musicians on the Tascam.

I would NOT go back to listening to pre-recorded cassettes in my life.  

The Harmon Kardon late cassette decks shared a warm and dynamic sound like Tandberg.  I found the Nakamichi more reliable (serviced twice in 20 years) versus the constant problems with the Tandberg (and RR as well).  I used only top quality Maxell and TDK tapes, at the end metal in ceramic housing.  This is the way I created great sounding cassettes.  As to pre-recorded, I now remember that I have about 400 more pop cassettes in boxes that had either way too much hiss, or with Dolby B, lacking in highs/compressed highs.  Unacceptable. 

As to CDs having a litany of faults by geofkaitt, I don't know what the heck he is hearing except that my mastering engineer friends and audiophile friends (pardoning my analog LP only friends) get magnificent sound out of correctly mastered CDs.  Jazz and classical are particularly well remastered whereas rock has had a worse record.  A 1985 Kyocera 310 or 410 CD player is superior cassette players based on my experience in a high end system.  My 2 track 7.5 ips RR pre-recorded tapes from the 50's slaughter the cassette.  If a jazz or classical music CD fails to breathe/recreate natural ambiance either the mastering, player or both are inadequate.

fleschler
As to CDs having a litany of faults by geofkait, I don’t know what the heck he is hearing except that my mastering engineer friends and audiophile friends (pardoning my analog LP only friends) get magnificent sound out of correctly mastered CDs.

>>>>Everything is relative. If only you could hear what I’ve heard with your ears. And that goes double for your mastering engineer friends and audiophile friends!! 👯

One assumes by “correctly mastered CDs” you’re referring to the ones that aren’t in reverse polarity and aren’t overly compressed, which leaves what, about 15% of them? 😬

Next up, how to color cassettes. Please, no angry emails. 😡

I like the sound of cassettes as well. I have 30 of them, recorded on a Nak 500 deck (which was stolen by our movers! they knew what to steal :-). Right now, I am using a two-head Marantz deck with electronic control (touch buttons), headphone output, Dolby B/C, and a very quiet, smooth transport. My "affair" with cassettes began in my youth; at the age of 17, our family flew to Switzerland, and my father bought me (an expensive!) Sony Walkman. Mind you, this was 30 years ago, yet Sony used SMD's (Surface Mounted Devices - read Chips) and the build quality was exemplary. I remember listening to it (with equally superb headphones) for nights on end. BTW, I do not agree with some of the posters here about the quality of Denon's cassettes; mine had deteriorated badly over time. In my experience, TDK SA and That's cassettes are the best. BTW, anybody here can tell me what a new, unused TDK SA90 BLACK Limited Edition cassettes can fetch? I've got a few, maybe someone will be interested in buying them, but I don't know how much to ask for them.