Exploring the good ol' Cassette Tape 

When I was growing up I thought that the metal setting on my cassette player was for playing Black Sabbath tapes.

Can we just appreciate the several minutes worth of audio comparison instead of a short 15 second listen?

I love how perfectly the VU Meter shows the difference between the tape types. You can clearly see the Metal tape has a way signal on it.

Pretty blown away by the amount of time and effort that went into recording/editing that comparison sequence. Top tier content.

It's amazing how much more pronounced the treble is with Type IV tape.

12:05 It becomes easier to tell once the percussion and rhythm kick in. Full-spectrum sound really brings out the difference.

I was born in 1958. And I knew every fact. The benefits you did not mention was that you had a recording studio on your desk. If you were a musician, any kid could be a stereo recording artist. Also you could make perfect recordings from lp records. I bought brand new records, played them once to record onto tape. Then my record collection stayed new forever. Also you could improve the recordings by running the music through a graphic equalizer in between the stereo and the recorder. I love your videos because I actually live through the times when these products were new and actually used all of them. Nice work..

Me starting the tape: "Geez, it's a cassette tape, how hard can it be?" Me two minutes later: *taking notes*

Also, that was a master class in editing sir.

The metal tape sounded dope AF.

That long comparison part is easily one of your best moments. Regularly getting back here to just listen to that.

Me, buying a cassette deck on 2019: “I just think they’re neat”

The quality of the type 2 and 4 tapes blew my mind, and so far I've only listened on my phone... I'm gonna rewatch this on my PC using reference monitors and an I/O. I also appreciate how much effort went in to seamlessly making the A/B/C/D comparison between the four tapes, especially considering there was no (direct) digital timecode to go by!

Man that Maxell Type II really hit me in "the feels". So many 10 packs over the years. Thanks so much for this video! It was amazing!

not going to lie that song from youtube audio library actually dope af. so soothing but punchy.

Cassettes were the music/audio format of my youth even though I was born in 2002, long after they became obsolete in the US. In China these things were insanely abundant, so I didn't have any reverence or care towards them, unlike vinyl. The main reason was that I only had crappy off-brand portable players and cheap Type 1 tapes, not quality Technics decks and Type II tapes. I even recorded over pre-recorded tapes with my own music - which now feels like a crime akin to sanding off the grooves of a record.

I’m in my 40s and just bought a 80s JVC deck and a cheap Sanyo all in one stereo with dual tape decks. My young son loves making recordings on cassette tapes and I kinda of miss the sound as well. Long live tape 😄👍🏻 passed on to him the knowledge of how to manually rewind the tape with a pencil ✏️ as well.

"Do you use your dictaphone?" "No, I use my finger like everybody else"

Thank you for switching the tape types back and forth multiple times to show the difference. So many examples I can think of in videos where they compare things once and you really don't get the feel of the difference...and extra kudos for switching them to the beat at one point lol

Even the "crappy" one sounded good enough for me, started collecting tapes earlier last year and it's such a cool experience

the sound you can achieve with metal cassettes is pretty astounding. add to that the fact that these blank tapes may have been manufactured 10+ years ago...and wow.

If you want to be a super hipster, make mixtapes with Hi-Fi VHS.

God, I remember being a teen in the early 90's and listening to the local rock station on my boom box with a tape cued up and ready to record. As soon as a song I liked came on, I hit record...free music! I also remember setting my VCR to record "headbanger's ball" on MTV, which was on from like midnight to 2AM on a weeknight. Got some good 80s and 90s heavy metal gold off that. And I still have some of the tapes, and a working VCR from 1984 to boot!

I remember when I discovered metal tapes, I was sold, blew me away how good they sounded, also remember when a tape was "high speed dubbed" it usually came out sounding better / more faithful to the origional.

I loved my old Technics M218. I remember buying it in 1982 at Pacific Stereo in Monterey Calif. The salesman stuck a metal cassette tape of John Klemmer to have me listen to the sound before buying. He boxed it up for me and sure enough when I got home, the cassette was still in the player.

the difference in quality between each type of tape was surprising to me. Definitely perceptible at each step. and thanks for making such a thorough demonstration!

The several minutes of audio and watching Bob Ross paint are the two most relaxing things I can think of. And I'm taking a relaxing hot soak rn

I saw this video in the past and I still come back to watch it again. There's something really captivating in looking at tape deck doing its stuff. Slowly spinning tape is soothing.

I watch countless videos about technology but this is the first time I've rocked out to one. Your videos are fantastic and utterly enjoyable.

It's so funny to witness people misjudging cassettes' sound clarity without any actual experience with them whilst listening to MP3 with cheap earbuds and not perceiving the quality loss of it.

Who else loved making mix tapes from the radio, but HATED when the DJs talked over the start and/or end of the songs? I love how some bands made song intros that discouraged overtalking, like Kansas' Carry On Wayward Son or Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Both were genius!

I remember getting old VHS and audio tapes from Goodwill and cramming some paper in the write protection slot to tape over them because they were cheaper than blanks. Good times.

Its nuts to think you can actually hear the differences between the tape types even through RU-vid.... But I know from experience the differences because I had some Audiophile family friends when I was growing up. And, I have in fact, seen one (and I do mean ONE) tape machine that had a type III setting. I believe it was my godfather that owned a machine with type I, type III and type IV settings. This was many years ago, but I am 90% sure he had a tape deck with a type III setting. He literally had a home theater/listening room set up in the basement of his house, and this was the late 1980s, early 1990s. I remember a giant rear projection TV, lots of speakers and tons of high end equipment. He likely had $50,000.00 to $70,000.00 worth of equipment he had collected over the years. I wish I had been old enough to understand more of what I was seeing then, I could be a lot more positive on what all he had.

A tape from TDK(Metal II) + a tape deck from Technics were the absolute dream couple.

Small correction: FeCr Type 3 tapes weren’t a combination of metal and chrome, but a combination of ferric and chrome.

I still have a TON of CD's..AND who remembers"Is it live or is it Memorex"...(glass shatters)

5:46 "AC/DC BUILT IN" written on the cassette door, someone would think it has the Young brothers inside :)

I could only hear a very small improvement from type I to type II, but from type II to type IV was a wow moment. I grew up in the tape to CD transition, did not know about metal tapes sounding so good. If you in for another shocker check out dbx on old school records, that was another wtf moment for me.

As a child of the 80s I grew up in the cassette era but after this video I have newfound respect for the format.

I used to be fascinated watching the tape reels spin and watching the interaction between the heads and tape. I remember marveling at how simple yet elegant the design and concept was.

Head alignment in auto reverse machines was always a problem with me, it got so bad once I refused to use the reverse mechanism one on of my cassette decks because of the drop off in high frequency. I think Nakamichi was bang on the money for refusing to use rotating heads.

That was a very thorough comparison of the different cassettes available. Thanks for your hard work! I had no idea there was such a difference, and no idea a cassette could sound so good.

The nostalgia of seeing a tape run and hearing the music is enough in itself It's like when I opened up a case of floppy discs to upgrade my synth a few years ago. My entire body had a reaction to holding them. With that said... Type 4 tapes sound pretty good still ;)

Now there's something I used extensively. Hours upon hours spent recording stuff from the radio, even when CDs became a thing.

I am almost 16 and I grew up on em and I will never stop using them as my favorite audio medium.

its also amazing how society has changed... kids making mix tapes at the house of whoever had the dual deck ghettoblaster was fine. Today however even without wide network file sharing if you give a friend a thumb drive with music the RIAA thinks you just robbed Fort Knox.

I had no idea there was such a difference between tape types and quality. One of the best demos I have seen. Have been watching for a few evenings now and I have to say I love the take taken in each subject and how clearly it's explained. Thanks!

Tapes were fun, I had an odd fascination with the concept of recording things as a kid. Like recording TV shoes on VHS, or recording music off the radio, or even recording my own voice and making edits etc. I sorta still did it when we got our first computer and I would mess with the sound in sound recorder then record it back etc. Also had a Talk Boy which could do it. (like in Home Alone). I still have a tape recorder and some tapes somewhere in the basement, I should pull that stuff out one day to mess with it again for nostalgia. I remember having fun with VHS and video capture/edit/recording too. The idea of being able to edit something on computer and putting it on a tape to play on TV just seemed so cool at the time. Now days it's easier with digital media which we take for granted.

this video makes me want to get all my tapes out of storage....

I never really had a problem with the sound quality of cassettes, it was the ever looming possibility of complete destruction any time I popped my favorite tape in the machine. That, and the stretching and warping and everything else that caused them to degrade the more you played them.

What a fantastic video !! I grew up reading and hearing these terms and never really understand their value until now. Thanks for taking the time to make this video , absolutely fascinating.

Dammit Technology Connections, you're going to get me spending money on retro tech again. ;u;

type 3 were not a mixture of chrome and metal, they were a mixture of type 1 and type 2

Just found this channel recently. Keep up the good work!

Out of all the cassette tapes I’ve seen since I started collecting them, I’d say at least 60% of them were ferric-oxide and 30% were chrome. I have seen a handful of metal tapes (maybe 5 or 6), but only one ferric-chromium tape. The latter two command high prices, at least $20 a pop, with the metal ones being sought after for there sound quality whereas the ferric-chrome tapes are more so collectors’ items.

This brings me back, to me a Chrome cassette was always more than good enough if you had a good deck

This is my favorite video so far :) Enjoyed the tape comparison, I don't think many people would spend the time editing the video so seamlessly as this!

It's hilarious to imagine a bunch of hot-shot, old timey business men being afraid that people will think they're unmanly for being able to type!

So much high quality content into each of your videos , thank you

It seems that the two components of improved tape quality were noise and higher frequency response ability. The metal tapes didn’t seem to have any less noise the chromium dioxide, but they could definitely carry much higher frequency ranges with ease.

7:56 Look there's a moth at the very right for a few seconds.

I had a car-battery charger hooked up to a car stereo (bare) "tape deck" on the floor of my empty grandpa's house when I was in middle school (with fairly decent speakers, I guess). I had a key to go there after school and enjoy my mix tape of Thomas Dolby's "Golden Age of Wireless", where I had replaced any songs I could with extended versions from vinyl. I'd listen to that almost every day, after walking home from school. My house was next door so after I had gotten my fix, I'd finally go home. (My Dad would sometimes need the battery charger, but he would always put it back there, because he knew I loved that tape and knew my habit.)

i'm also a product of the 60's. i first used cassettes as a kid, around 1970, so i actually saw all of the developments you talked about. i even remember seeing the phrase "compact cassette" early on. in the late 80's, i went back to college (again) and got a degree in video and music business. in our first quarter audio tech class, the teacher explained how reel-to-reel tape recorders worked and how to properly use and maintain them for best results. i raised my hand and said "it's a wonder cassettes work at all." (he agreed with me.) the tape is both very narrow and very thin, and it travels at a very slow speed. you can't adjust the alignment of the tape heads (or anything), and although you can clean the transport and de-magnetize the heads, most people never do.

The comparison section is beautifully edited. Its a work of art.

The biggest problem with the cassette format was the slow speed causing severe dulling of the treble when going from one deck to another if the head azimuth was the slightest bit off. It was important to adjust the azimuth on all your playback decks to match the one you were making your recordings on. Dolby noise reduction (especially Dolby C) magnified the dulling of treble due to azimuth problems. Recording on a high-end deck and playing back on that same deck totally hid this problem.

Cool explanation on the bad rap for cassettes. I had way too many cassette decks. Nakamichi, Tandberg, Teac, Tascam, Marantz, JVC, Sony to name a few. I loved them. Hated them too sometimes. Hassle to bias them precisely so the Noise Reduction would track correctly. dbx type 2 was my Noise reduction of choice. Way more powerful than Dolby ever could be. It also meant any non linearity in the process was doubled up. My favorite cassette deck of all time would be the Tandberg TCD-3014. $4500.00 before it went bye bye. My Tandberg would slay a Nak Dragon anyday. The Teac V-3080s was crazy good. Revox B-710 was a contender, as was the Harman Kardon Cassette decks too of the day. Please note that type 2 tape could also include the Maxell UD XL2 and TDK SA which were Chrome equivalents. TDK used Super Avilyn, and the Maxell was Cobalt Gamma Ferric Hematite. In other words basically hot rodded or Doped Ferric Oxide using the 70 microsecond equalization, same bias spec as Chrome did. Chrome was very abrasive. As a matter of fact. DAT Head Cleaner tapes were nothing more than Chrominium Dioxide tape to clean the rotary head drum head gaps. So the Chrome Equivalents, and the Type 4 were my favorites. I loved the Maxell for type 2, and the TDK MAR, and the Scotch Metafine Metal particle tape too, though the drop out rate could be problematic. I am a big fan of reel to reels too. Had allot of those too. My favorite to date was my Otari MX-5050 mk.2. Amazing machine. Thanks for your video.

I love the way each video has practical examples incorporated. I appreciate the extra editing time that takes, the ones used for humor are great too.

I love the fact that you changed your audio for a few seconds! It really helped demonstrate the quality!

Someone who says that cassette tapes sound terrible must've had a cassette deck with Dolby NR and listened non Dolby cassettes with Dolby NR on.

Hi TC! I was just amazed by watching your videos!!! You brought back my childhood memories alive. As a 90s' kid in Sri Lanka, I was lucky to mess up with all sorts of cassette players, even though the technology is a luxury in my part of the world. Specially in 1995, my brother had a full logic control deck by Kenwood. I was staring at that machine for hours and hours just to see how it automatically change the side of the cassette and the very first LCD analyzer of my life. Thanks for bringing those good old memories back ☺️

Nothing like hot synth lines on tape, thank you

That Type 4 tape sounds amazing. There was so much more in the music. Indistinguishable from modern formats.

I still use these on a regular basis. Love the sound and versatility. Still have dozens of blanks that are sealed.

When I was a kid I couldn't even tell the difference in sound quality from my tapes from my cd's. I just figured it was a convenience thing not sound. Mind you most of the tapes I used weren't very old but still.

Ah, I remember seeing some tapes with the center notches. Never knew what they were. The Type II notches were actually fairly common back in the day.

The video is so we'll done. Editing is really well done. It was also very informative. That was a great choice of song for the demo its now my favorite song at the moment.

This is great thanks - I’ve loved cassettes since I got my first recorder for xmas in 1969. A lasting format and have playground interviews done in 1970. Still use them for recording voice including micro-cassettes, sound quality is better than any digital recorder I’ve tried.

Thanks for another great video. I use tape on a regular basis for multirack recording. Its incredible how Tascam was able to fit 8 tracks of mono audio on to a single piece of 1/4" tape while keeping the audio quality high

I remember in college many people would bring a tape recorder to class and either record the lecture from their desk or place the recorder on the professor's desk (and get it at the end of class). I occasionally would do this to help study by reading my notes and maybe in the car listen to the lecture again. I wished then how cool it would be if speech to text would have existed to play the recorded lecture to printed (and saved) notes.

Love the old school MCS brand tape deck. My first component system was an MCS from JC Penny. Amplifier, turntable, cassette deck, and speakers.

Thanks Alec! My school friends and I made awesome mixtapes. When auto-reverse became a big thing, we filled the entire cassette with music. On some tapes, there might have been two minutes worth of blank tape left unused. Morally we would have FF’d to the end, flipped the cassette and pressed play. Instead we filled those two minutes with a favourite track lasting three minutes, with a clever edit. We would record the LP track on to the tape, then stop the recording at a predetermined location using the Pause button. It usually meant rewinding a little as we always overshot the stopping point. Then we’d reset the track using the tone arm of the turntable and when the LP track reached the point where the track continued, we’d release the pause button and if all went well, there was a seamless transition cutting out several dozens of seconds from the track. The very best edits were ones where the percussion continued at the same pace. Now to get the same type of edit, you need software to load the track and get it queued up and then cut the portion you don’t want. But then why do it? Modern music ‘players’ don’t have ‘two minutes of blank tape’ at the end. They have megabytes of space.

6:40 Press F to pay respects to all the poor secretaries tortured by cutthroat businessmen by that audio quality.

This brings back good memories... Thank you!

I loved to record music from the radio on my cheap type I cassettes. We only had like six Type IV metal cassettes me and my sister recorded digital music from the old computer to those just for fun, back in the late 90's. Good times.

As technology has changed, a lot of our tools and devices no longer have a "soul." Touch screens and menu-driven controls are infinitely useful, but it gives them an intagible quality. There is no satisfaction one gets when physically pressing buttons, turning knobs or adjusting sliders. Maybe it's because there is a stronger causal connection between action/reaction when you have to exhert energy to manipulate physical controls... Either way, I think the 70s through the 90s were the golden age of device controls.

That tape comparison was AMAZING

That tape comparison was amazing. I didn't even know that metal tape was a thing. And THANK YOU for adding the link to where to find that song. It was quite catchy!

Great video! I remember the old times I actually enjoyed recording cassettes taking all the care to get high quality. Man what a throwback... :'(

Great video. I'd love to see one on the history, rise and decline of 8-track cassettes.

Tape technology improved greatly through the 70s and 80s. Most people don't realise that by the early to mid 80s, most cassette decks using metal tapes had higher fidelity than the most expensive turntables. The problem was that there were not many high quality pre recorded tapes and CDs had even better fidelity and were more convenient in use. It always seems odd to me that people who for whatever reason prefer "analog" media gravitated to the lower fidelity LP record rather than cassette tape or even HI FI VHS causing their ultimate demise. I suppose they don't have the large artwork which is the main attraction of vinyl records.

Thank you SO MUCH for the sound comparisons!! Amazing

Just watched this a second time(many years seperated) I've dived deep down this rabbit hole since then and would love for you to revisit this topic. Thanks, as always!

BTW, music was still distributed on cassettes in India in 2000s, because lots of people couldn't afford CD player.

Actually, the Type III mixed Ferric and Chromium, and was actually pretty good as it combined the good bass response of Ferric with the good frequency response of Chromium. And although they were failed experiments, some high end machine did support them.

That musical exemple was very enjoyable to sit through. Great care !

I can't believe how good the metal tape sounds in comparison to the others. Fantastic video!

In the the early 80's I got tired short life of cassettes - tape stretch. So, I would buy records for a master and copy to cassettes. I wish I had the knowledge of this video back then.

I just picked up a nice vintage Akai deck. I'm really enjoying getting back into cassettes!

As much as I loved the cassette tape growing up, putting music on it was a hassle. It was easier for my dad to burn a CD and use one of those cassette tape to AUX cable adapter to play music in the van while we were on the road. And the quality well it was good for the time.

Love how you snuck in an entire song in to the video, a pretty dope one!