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Amazon has several devices for under $50 that you can plug into a computer and allow you to digitize cassette tapes to electonic formats (.wav, .flac, mp3). You can then burn these to a CD, or listen to them off of your computer, DAP, etc. for years to come without worrying about the tape ever wearing out or breaking.
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Originally Posted by Pitt Chick
Why spend money on obsolete formats?
Stream Pandora or Spotify, get i Heart Radio, do any number of other things... than spend good money on things that may or may not work and have limited options.
Speaking for myself, a lot of music I like isn't readily available on streaming services. And the sound quality isn't as good as from a physical format (I buy new music all the time, but I have probably bought no more than a dozen digital downloads ever). But I'm a bit of an audio nerd; I have thousands of CDs, records and even cassettes. I have a full, component stereo system in my living room (CD player and recorder, turntable, dual cassette deck).
While I can't remember the last time I actually bought a new cassette tape, I still have several hundred left, many of which contain music that I cannot find on a streaming service or go out and buy anymore (at least not new). I have been digitizing those tapes over the past few years in order to consoidate my library, preserve the music in a more durable format, and to allow me to listen to that music on my DAP. But that's a time consuming process, and I probably won't be done with that for quite some time.
I am looking to spend no more than $20 on a working and in good cosmetic condition brand name cassette deck that I an connect to my receiver.
I would think you would be hard-pressed to find a proper component deck at that price that is in good condition.
One alternative might be to just pick up a portable cassette player (basically like an old-school Sony Walkman from back in the day) - I just took a quick look and there are at least several on Amazon for under $20. You can then spend another $3-$5 on an adapter that would let you connect the headphone jack on the player to your receiver. No its not the same as a proper deck, but at that price point, I do not think you would lose much in terms of sound, and you would at least have a brand new device, rather than one that could be a number of years old with worn-out belts and other parts. Just a thought.
Why in God's name would anybody waste money on cassettes and cassette decks???? If you're attached to physical format music, get a CD player and buy CDs!!!!
The only format worse than cassette tapes was the 8-track. There's a reason that both those formats had such relatively short shelf-lives for music compared to vinyl and CDs. They both sucked.
Cassettes were the bomb! Yeah, when they replaced 8-tracks, but old ones sound like crap. Also the little square felt pads under the tape lose their adhesion and fall off, no good.
I have a case full of them, one day I thought I'd listen to some Queen "News of the World" but, alas, even Freddy couldn't overcome the effects of time on a cassette. It broke my heart...
Thrift store. You can usually try them out before you buy (just bring your own cassette). $10 will get you a 2 tape boom box that you can hook to anything. Clean the heads w/ a Q-tip and alcohol and the sound will perk up a lot.
Obsolete or not, they still sound great. Some tweezers and a spot of glue will get your little pads back on the cassettes. Shoot, buy yourself an all-in-one component system in the thrift store w/ a turntable and you can buy cheap albums and 45s too. Vinyl has better dynamic range than digital. Tube amps sound best. Nothing sounds better for the same cost as some basic Acoustical Research speakers. Mono is better than stereo. With only 2 tracks, one for voice and one for music, the musicians had to nail the recording all the way through the song from end to end. The takes are always crisper and more alive. A record store owner showed me this once when he played a Stones song from a mono album, then the same song on the same album, but that one was in stereo. The mono version sounded like you were in the same room w/ the band. It sounded live, because it WAS a live recording. If someone is hearing cracks and pops they have lousy vinyl and don't know how to take care of it. CDs were invented for them :} An equalizer will help take out unwanted noises on music, as will Dolby.
You folks aren't up much on sounds, are you? Oh yeah....film is WAY better than digital. More tonality, better exposure latitude, you can print in a darkroom on real photographic paper, not on lousy inkjet paper that will fall apart in 20 years or sooner. I shoot w/ a 1937 Voigtlander camera w/ a Heliar lens that takes a 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 negative. You can blow it up to 6' x 6' and it will still be tack sharp. It gives images that will blow away any digital camera, even the $10,000 and up Leica cameras. But, you have to know what you're doing. The photographer makes all the decisions, not the plastic digi crap camera. Digital sucks! It's for soccer mom "pro" photographers and consumers.
My 1995 cassette deck/CD/radio boombox was still working great until a few months ago, an old tape got stuck. I was impatient in getting it out and I massacred the tape player. So sad. "Luckily," my mom's something of a hoarder, so she had a replacement at hand. My tapes are slowly wearing out, but I still have probably 50 of them. Mix tapes are the best.
What if you ever want to listen to something that came out since music labels abandoned the cassette circa 2002?
Why would anybody want to listen to that trash? If you do, get a cheap music player for $20 and transfer it to a blank cassette. Or dub it off YouTube. You'll get all the audio fidelity that a cassette is capable of storing.
My wife's old car has a cassette player. We dubbed a bunch of YouTube playlists onto cassettes, just setting the mic next to speakers.
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