Currys to cease stocking cassettes

 

 

 

 

Having first been entranced by cassette tapes around 1972 or 73, they  were my main recording format until fairly recently. Good on little players fitted into the car (used to pick them up for about £10 new), their shortcomings became really apparent only after seriously upgrading my entire system. At 1-7/8 inches per second tape hiss was always a problem,  though at one stage i owned a Nakamichi ZX with some metal tapes, the sound quality was astounding, the best i've heard from a cassette, but although i have a computer program (Audio Cleaning Lab 2005) that can record from any source, limited only by the amount of space on the hard drive,  i recently ditched all my cassette equipment and took up reel to reel tape machines, an Akai  GX4000D (7 1/2 inches per second) and a Teac A-3440 4 channel for live recording, at 15 inches per second the quality is fabulous, far superior to cassette as expected, and using quality Ampex 456 tapes (now discontinued) no tape hiss!  It eats tape though is good for short runs of an hour of less using 10-1/2 inch reels.

 

so no tears shed for cassettes, though i expect the tapes and machines will still be available for a long time to come, and maybe reel to reel!