2. analog
  3. 175973-2383

Cassette decks. How good can it get?

I know some guys are going to just want to say a bunch of negative stuff about tape decks and tell me how bad they sound.  There is a lot of music that comes out on tape only (you usually get download too) so I have been acquiring quite a stack of cassettes.  I have a couple of Nakamichi decks BX100 and BX300. The 300 is not working and was thinking of trying to repair.  I am wondering how good of sound you can get out of cassette?  Has anyone taken the leap up to something like the much more expensive Nakamichis or other brands even.  I enjoy the sound. Mainly it's the background noise more than anything but even that is somewhat tolerable.  

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Showing 1 response by tylermunns

tylermunns
600 posts
 

I’ve never had the really high-end cassette decks, but I’m very happy with a JVC KD-S201.  It’s very cool-looking.  I’ve made wonderful sounding tapes sourced from  vinyl, CD, YouTube, etc.  Pre-recoded tapes (the good ones - we know how bad tapes can get) sound great as well.

There is virtually no benefit to cassettes.  They do nothing better than other formats, and in all but a few areas (they’re not worse than 8-tracks, for instance, and are easier to store) they do it worse.  

Perhaps this is just generation-related, but I really love making mix-tapes.  One could share a playlist on a streaming platform, one could burn a CD for someone, one could digitize analog-sourced music and then share that music via CD, all of these methods would yield better sounding music than cassettes.

For me, there’s something very fun about the cassette-dubbing process, and something fun about listening to them, something fun about sharing mix-tapes.  
I wish I could speak to a Nakamichi, but I’m sure it’s more than qualified for the job.  I’m a pretty fussy dude, and I enjoy that JVC just fine.

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