REWIRE YOURSELF
The compact audio cassette is the most popular and universal tape format in current use. Its acceptance by consumers has eliminated the eight-track cartridge and banished the reel-to-reel tape, creating a situation where consumer endorsement has forced cassette manufacturers to slave at making the cassette do things it wasn’t originally designed to do.
REWIRE YOURSELF
The Cassette Syndrome
by
Richard Robinson
The compact audio cassette is the most popular and universal tape format in current use. Its acceptance by consumers has eliminated the eight-track cartridge and banished the reel-to-reel tape, creating a situation where consumer endorsement has forced cassette manufacturers to slave at making the cassette do things it wasn’t originally designed to do.
Cassette? were never supposed to sound as good as records. They weren’t designed to achieve the fidelity of cartridges or open reel tapes. No one expected they’d ever be connected to expensive hi-fi systems to produce quality sound. But all these things have been demanded of the cassette, and, by and large, in the last 10 years the cassette has done admirably in its efforts to fulfill the demands made on it.