I have a box of old cassettes in the attic (like a million other blokes). Rummaging through them, I noticed some are are metal (unclear which element), some CrO2, some plain vanilla (whatever that means). And differing cutoff
players which could recognize these various types. How did they do that?
And, what's the need for the filter options? Intuitively, there should be one optimal design -
Anyway, I plan to convert them to MP3, rather than trash bin the lot, and need to decipher these issues.
Notches, but a lot of cassette players you could manually chose which equalisation to use. There was also Dolby and other proprietory noise reduction schemes kicking around back then. Dolby ultimately dominated.
Chances are if they haven't been played for a very long time you will have bad print through on any transients so they may well not be worth the effort of digitising even if you have a good machine to play them on.
Unless they are rare irreplaceable recording of specific performances or lectures it really isn't worth the bother. Download a much better copy off Spotify or Youtube but without the wow and flutter of tape cassette.
I did that for my unusual stuff but already had vinyl copies and CDs of most commercial cassettes by then anyway. I first started out with a fairly high end portable Sony cassette recorder - so well built it is still going! It could give an open reel a run for its money.
I am a bit retro in that I prefer a physical CD. The new trend of selling vinyl disks and record decks in supermarkets amuses me.
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