Anyone into cassettes?

I have a 90's vintage Yahama cassette deck on my rig that I use on occasion. Sounds better than ever these days in that my setup is the best I have ever had as well by far.

I have not recorded any new casettes since the 80's though when I dabbled with hifi VHS as well. I use my tape players mainly for old tapes I recorded back then and in college in the 70's. These are blasts from my past and a lot of fun to listen to still. SOund is not tech perfect, especially noise levels and high end, but still very enjoyable, more than ever. I have "ripped" a few of these to digital as well and play these now on my music server rather than via the tape decks. That enables me to do fast and easy a/b comparisons in sound quality between those tracks that I recorded originally to cassette on my college system years ago (using an Aiwa AD6550 cassette deck I bought while working at Tech HiFi back then) and tracks ripped from other sources. Lots of fun.

I had AIWA AD-F810 long time ago. It had HX-PRO in addition to Dolby C. HX-PRO was a servo on the bias. In short, bias is non-audible high frequency recorded with music that reduces distortions of the tape. Not enough bias and sound becomes less clean, too much and sound looses high frequency response. But high frequencies present in the music also work as a bias. HX-PRO allow to reduce bias by adjusting it dynamically to recorded material. As a result of that regular tapes sounded like chrome while chrome tapes sounded like metal. It was fantastic player.

Mid-late 70's AIWA cassette decks were very good performers with good build quality and looked great. The AD6550 I had specifically was gorgeous and stacked up quite well against Tandberg in a/b tests back then. I was a poo college student and could not afford Tandberg so settled on the Aiwa. More ergonomic for use in a dorm room as well.

Aiwa like much Japanese gear (save Nakamichi and a few others) went south fast after that targeting cheaper gear with more mass market appeal.

I gave my Aiwa deck to my wife to use in her apartment 25 years ago. SHe married me shortly after. Enough said. :^)

After two higher end H-Ks and one each lower end Tanburg and Nakamichi, I had an AIWA (770?, I don't remember) which offered better performance. Then I bought a Pioneer 3-head deck, about the same as their Elite cassette but without the wood end panels and for a much lower price. It sounded at least as good as the AIWA and was better built.

Not too many years ago a friend played some tapes from an unfamiliar small label with jazz club performances. I was quite surprised by the lifelike sonics. My own experience with prerecorded tapes was less than favorable.

In summer of 1974 I recorded MOUNTAIN Twin Peaks,
Live in Osaka Koseinenkin Hall Japan, August 1973 from FM
radio broadcast to my Philips radiorecorder.
Now 40 years later in memory of Felix Pappalardi, the little
big musician and great producer and I honour the awesome
MOUNTAIN.
In August 30 I will transfer my Japanese Twin Peaks edition
to a metal tape with the Nakamichi RX-505 UDAR deck and I will
play the music LOUD :_)