Will Magnetic Tape Eventually Go Full Circle ? Re.


(This is a repost of my response to a forum question of the same title posted on 2-17-04)

Does anyone remember the EL cassette? It was a large cassette that resembled a video tape. I think the tape was 1/4" or maybe larger. The "concept" was basically a cassette that had reel to reel tape loaded into it. I remember seeing one around 1975. Obviously, it was a marketing failure but I think that the concept was sound, in fact I have seriously considered the marketability of a similar machine using vhs cassettes. The player would be a two track two channel machine that used analogue style convential tape heads and not vhs rotary heads. So, now we are talking about 1/2" tape ran at 30 i.p.s. or higher on a mass marketed media that is available everywhere!!! I think that there would be a large demand for high quality pre-recorded tapes. When you consider what the best digital transports, upsamplers and D.A.C.s cost, plus all the required cables $$$, and most people still say that a budget turntable sounds better than all of that if you can even afford it, I think my idea starts to seem reasonable. If that is not exciting enough, realise that it is a RE-recordable format, analogue to analogue or digital to analogue and is backwards compatible with all blank vhs tape. It might in fact sound so good that people would want to make digital copies from the analogue source for their cd,mp etc.players;) P.S. Does anyone besides me realise that the real reason for 5.1 SACD is for automobiles and not home theatre? It is just my opinion, I may be wrong...
mrpresident

Showing 1 response by rex

No, we'll never go back en masse to magnetic tape. Analog tape is all but dead, and digital tape (even in the IT industry) is right behind it.

Re: MC SACD in automobiles - the problem with this is that automobiles are too noisy for SACD in its current form. In order to do well in the automobile environment, dynamic compression would have to be applied to overcome the masking effects of all the environmental noise. Dynamic compression defeats the whole purpose of SACD.