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From: emrath@uiuccsb.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.audio
Subject: Re: Some Thoughts on Cassettes - (nf)
Message-ID: <4948@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 17-Jan-84 22:28:56 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.4948
Posted: Tue Jan 17 22:28:56 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Jan-84 06:02:45 EST
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#R:whuxj:-7800:uiuccsb:5700023:000:2284
uiuccsb!emrath    Jan 17 15:30:00 1984

I have been using cassettes (not the same ones, mind you) since about 1967-8,
when I bought my very own GE am-fm-cassette portable (the precursor to the
ghetto blaster!). I got serious around 1973 with an Advent 201.
I keep my home "hi-fi" cassettes at home, where they won't get munged by
the car player, weather, etc.  Mostly, these are tapes that I recorded.
The few pre-recorded tapes I've tried are quite inconsistent, some sound
real good, but most just don't measure up.
My experience is that cassettes have a useful life of only 2-10 years,
depending on brand and quality.
The problems I seem to have with older tapes is extreme cases of scrape
flutter and the shedding of oxide. I believe the scrape flutter problem
was seriously aggravated by my current (fairly long lived) tape deck
having much too high a take-up torque.  This has been remedied and things
seem to be getting better, but it takes a very long time to know for sure.

I too don't think tape is a good medium for any kind of archival storage.
Whether cassette, open-reel, PCM encoded VCR tape, or whatever, the tape
will eventually start shedding oxide, and there goes your signal, as well
as messing up the machine (when it gets to the point where I have to clean
the deck half-way through a tape, then again at the end, it's time to
retire that tape!).  Maybe with digital signals, one would be willing
to dub tapes onto new stock every 10 years or so without loss of
signal quality, but not me - too many.
For archival storage, I have been using vinyl records. I hope to be using
CDs for the next 20 years or so (this in addition to the vinyl that can't
be or isn't worth replacing). And if I'm still around, I expect to see
somthing like a CD only solid state. It doesn't rotate but merely plugs
into a zero-insertion force socket or something like that.
Such a radical change in format is a time when things like more
bits/sample and more samples/sec can be added.
I guess there will ALWAYS be room for improvement.

All this rambling makes me think that I don't need an archival
medium that I can record.  Especially if the pre-recorded format is a
long lived medium and costs less than about 1.5 times a blank medium
that I can record.  But then, the recording industry already knows this,
don't they?