Audio cassettes 1986-2021: My personal chronicle
10/12/2021
Translation: machine translated
From necessary evil to fascinating retro technology: what audio cassettes meant to me as a child, as a teenager and as an adult.
How it all began, I do not remember. I start the story where I have a first clear memory.
1986
I am ten years old and a naturalist by profession. As such, I use the best technology available to me: I record bird calls on audio cassettes. From my Mutter supplier I got a cassette player that also runs on batteries and has a built-in microphone. I put the device in the garden, where it records two 45-minute chirps. Afterwards I listen to the result and identify the birds by their voices. It's mostly sparrows. And military aircraft.
There is no other way of recording than via this microphone. If I want to record music from the radio, from the reel-to-reel tape or from the record player, I have to put the device in front of one of the two loudspeaker boxes. This is then only mono. Doesn't matter, the device itself is also only mono. What's stupid is that military planes can be heard very often on it, too.
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The Maxell pictured above is my first blank cassette. Before I owned it, I had to dub already recorded cassettes. The only way I can do that is to stuff the holes in the top with scraps of tissue. I've already recorded over a couple of Bible audio dramas.
There are also gold Maxell cassettes. I have seen such at the ABM in Uster. Gold is better than silver, it's the same with ski races. Pirmin Zurbriggen usually wins gold. Peter Müller usually wins silver. In Zurich, we just don't have as high mountains and as much snow as in the Valais.
1992
I'm a semi-professional music fan now, I do the Gymi on the side. I have a proper stereo system with CD changer and double cassette deck. I constantly borrow CDs from friends or the school library and record the tracks onto cassette. I could also record from the radio, but the host usually blabs. Twice I've also bought an album on cassette, one by the Beatles and one by Gotthard. It's cheaper than a CD, but not as good. I can't skip straight to another track, I have to fast forward.
My cassette deck does have a feature where it finds the beginning of the next track itself, so I don't have to rewind back and forth ten times. But that only works when there's a pause in between, and it takes even longer to rewind than it does in normal mode.
I recorded a radio play of my own. It parodies a radio play from German class that I didn't understand, which my 16-year-old self finds insanely funny. And for the classmate going on exchange year, we made a sort of poetry album in the form of a cassette tape. Each and everyone had to speak something into the microphone.
I can also record my electric guitar with my cassette deck. But it doesn't sound good.
1997
For a few years now, I've had a Walkman that can't call itself a Walkman because it's not made by Sony. It rewinds extremely slowly, especially when the batteries are half dead, which they always are. It also sounds bad. But a portable CD player is too expensive, because by profession I'm a student now. And I can't live without music.
In the band room it has a tape recorder where you can adjust the speed. That also changes the pitch. On a lot of tracks the guitars are tuned half a tone lower, but on a lot of tracks they're not. That way we don't have to retune every time we learn a piece.
2007
I'm a young tech editor and on the cutting edge. I have nothing to do with outdated nonsense like cassette tapes. I've had a Discman for a while now, and can use it to play CDs I've burned myself. Now I've also bought an iPod nano. That's even more practical. For the last cassettes I haven't thrown away yet, I connect the cassette player to my computer and save the audio files. After that, I throw all the crap away.
2021
I'm a not-so-young tech editor with old memories. So now I'm starting to take an interest in the technology of cassettes and understand it in detail - 30 years late. The different types of tape: the silvery Maxell cassettes are Type I iron tapes, the golden ones are Type II chrome tapes. I now understand why my cassette deck had Dolby B and C, how Dolby noise reduction works, and why it needs it in the first place. I realize that cassettes sounded bad mainly because we were dealing with cheap, dirty, and lovelessly treated equipment and tapes. And that it could be quite different.
The insights come a little late. But not too late. There are still new cassettes and cassette devices to buy. Yes, I'm testing a brand new cassette deck right now in 2021. And an old one, too. I'll tell you this much: the old one is better in many ways. More on that shortly.
David Lee
Senior Editor
David.Lee@digitecgalaxus.chMy interest in IT and writing landed me in tech journalism early on (2000). I want to know how we can use technology without being used. Outside of the office, I’m a keen musician who makes up for lacking talent with excessive enthusiasm.
