[Mag]

Hi, borrowed my friend's Nakamichi, I had one but it disappeared. Anyway I plan on copying a bunch of songs from cassette tapes I have to computer files, right after I finish with vinyl (which could take awhile). Don't have the rack space for it but I'll think of something.

Now as I recall cassette tape can sound pretty darn good. I would think that it was or would be as good as Real to Real tape. Of coarse it sucked used in a car on a warm day as tape would then stick and unravel. In a home environment, with a good deck, audio quality should still be High Fidelity, don't you think?

[Phil A]

Have one (and some tapes - mainly from old audiophile records I taped when I first got them - one of these years I'll see about listening and maybe doing a conversion) but have not used it in years.  At one point I had a Nak 680 and gave it to someone who worked at a local hifi shop who helped me lots when I was moving (that was probably around 24 years ago).  I figured at that point I wasn't using the deck anyway and still had a budget cassette deck in a secondary system (I have it sitting unconnected now in a secondary system, along with a dbX 224 but haven't turned it on in about 8 years - used it once back then to take a song I wrote on cassette and transfer it to CD via a CD recorder I had before I gave that away).  I still have one of these sitting in a bin in the garage:

[FireGuy]

Been decades since I owned a decent cassette deck.  And for good reason.  CD's.  It was an nice upgrade from 8 track at the time.

Which is better disc breaks or drum?

[twitch54]

Now as I recall cassette tape can sound pretty darn good. I would think that it was or would be as good as Real to Real tape.

Not even remotely close to reel-to-reel, nothing in the 'tape world' is

Of coarse it sucked used in a car on a warm day as tape would then stick and unravel. In a home environment, with a good deck, audio quality should still be High Fidelity, don't you think?

it's the year 2020, not even close to High Fidelity ........... 

[Digi-G]

I remember my tapes sounding pretty good.  Mostly TDK or Fuji tapes and I made them at home.  A few years ago I hooked up my Denon deck, which was relatively new when I stopped using it in the 1990s.

It did NOT sound as good as I remembered.  I don't know if it was because my tapes were old, the deck was old, or what.  But the highs were definitely lacking (yes, my ears were older too but that wasn't the issue, Lol).  That's what jumped out at me.  The rest sounded alright but not great, really.

Granted I used to keep my tapes in the car, including when we had really hot and cold weather.  The sound was disappointing to me, though.  YMMV, of course.

[toocool4]

Yes everyday for my commute to and from work.

[ArthurDent]

Nice deck toocool4     Yes, occasionally, and it sounds pretty good really. Harmon Kardon TD392, sandwich 3 head unit. A friend who's most critical of my system in his analysis was pretty surprised it sounded so good. Tapes are all self recorded, mostly Maxell Chrome. Also have a Nak 581 that I'm working on, original owner. Don't use the HK daily, but from time to time. And still have a well functioning Walkman DC2 as pictured by toocool. Used to use it when skiing.

Won't argue the drum vs disc debate posed by FireGuy, was running foreign cars with disc brakes (generally front only) before they were acknowledged as far superior for safety, and became the norm. But a well recorded tape still sounds good on good gear, imo.

[toocool4]

Thanks ArthurDent.

Some years ago round my friends house, i was using my friends Nagra CDC CD player to play back a CD i was recording on my CR 7 on a TDK MA-XG. When i finished recording, my friend said now can i listen to the recording? I said to him you have been listening to the recording all along, he could not believe it. Being a 3 head deck, i can monitor the the recording in real time.

[benguin]

I'm still surprised at how some tapes I recorded many many years ago sound.  This Nak was one of my earliest audio purchases when I landed my first real job.

[dalton]

I'm exclusively using a modified Nakamichi BX-300 for serious listening.
Tapes are coming from my DIY DAC. Recordings are not made in realtime but 8x slower.

That way, there's no digital processing noise at all in my entire system when playing.

[JLM]

My last cassette deck was a Nak 700 back in the late 70's/early 80's ($850).  At that time TDK was the best tape.  Each tape had to be manually biased for best sound before recording.  The problem I had was that tapes wouldn't translate from one machine to another, even to a $1350 Nak 1000 (the hand built version of the 700) due to individual biasing.  The main attraction was the multitude of vinyl I could record at the time.  Digital blows them away.  The right open reel deck running at higher speeds could too (without the biasing issue) and is still the best analog available, but of course is still has limited dynamic range compared to digital. 

[BobM]

I dumped a whole lot of cassette tapes into the garbage when we moved 3 years ago, but I did keep my Nakamichi deck. It's still wrapped in bubble wrap and sitting on a shelf gathering dust. No reason to keep it other than nostalgia, kind of like our old VCR player that is sitting next to it.

[Bill Baker]

I have 3 vintage decks and one "newer" Sony deck that still sits in my system. I have a bunch of cassettes from my younger years that I made on my higher end Denon and still enjoy listening to from time to time. I always used top quality tapes and they sound as good today as the day I made them.
My only regret is loosing my reel-to-reel decks (and turntables) in the big 2011 flood.