This is what pains me the most. Back when nearly everyone bought vinyl, well cassettes came out. They really started catching on in the early to mid 70s, but not so much as a 'replacement' for vinyl. Most everyone I knew STILL bought records and made there own tapes, few I knew bought those shitty pre-recorded cassettes. Then in the later 70s, some 'audiophile' pre-recorded cassettes started coming out, but the sound was STILL inferior to vinyl or even your own copied cassettes, so long as you used a high quality tape like Maxell UDXL or TDK-SA or the like.

So cassettes, amongst my peers, were used purely for convienience-portability. NOT as replacement for vinyl. Most people STILL played records at home on their GIANT systems. The late 70s was the ERA for BIG stereo systems !!!

What irks me about todays 'convienience' is that it IS taking over. The majority of music that's available and downloaded is crappy mp3 128 bit quality. Some will do the 192kbps, but this rate stilll compares horribly with the 1411 kbps quality of manufactured cd's.

So yeah, cd's came out in the early 80s, they didn't have scratches and surface noise, but generally weren't as good of sounding as vinyl initially. Then in the 90s and nowadays, remastering makes cd's sound damn near as good as vinyl, maybe not QUITE, but very, very close.

The mp3 format, that IS becoming the STANDARD, not just portability, is the FIRST TIME in history where sound quality is going down as a mass means of playing music. By the time cd's took over vinyl, their sound was pretty darn good....but 128, even 192 bit sound is SHIT !!!

So eventually, as vinyl has become an audiophile hobby...so will full file cd's. I don't mind NEW things, so long as they don't take over older formats, especially higher quality formats.

Pity to those who embrace mp3 sound. And many don't HEAR the difference nor care.

THAT's the sad thing about how things are going.

Personally, I won't miss cassettes, even though they were the THING to record shows with in the 70s, 80s etc....but now we have DAT or even micro cd recorders for that.

Still though, nothing yet beats the sound of pristine virgin vinyl on a great system with a great stylus and needle. EXPENSIVE !!!!!

You make some good points and I agree about the quality of mp3s being sound-wise inferior to most other formats, but I'd worry more about the amount of crap music that comes out on any format, be it tapes or vinyl.

Yeah....but art is subjective. Sound quality is objective. Is that what I mean to say ?

Personally, I buy more reissues than anything. I DO like and buy some new music too, for sure. And few old timey artists haven't upgraded their old tapes yet. There's lots of new, good music out there, I just don't find as much as I like as I did when I was getting 3-5 new albums a week. My tastes aren't quite fulfilled as much nowadays.

But it's still sad that a lousier sound is being embraced for what it is. And seemingly few care. It's just a pity to me.

most of the cassette tape　manufacturers have sent to major art centres and other industry types that the 1/4 inch cassette is being phased out in the very very very near future

1/4 inch cassette ?

That's the size of reel to reel tape. Are you talking about the really BIG reel to reel 'cassettes' ?

the regular cassette tapes are like 1/8 inch.

1/4 inch is not big and it is what is in side of a csassette tape, the old domestic reel to reels as you stated were 1/4 inch which is absolutley correct. 1/4 inch is 6.35 mm the same tape was used for both. 1 and 2 inch widths is what pro studios use on their reel to reels if they still use analog........

I really beg to differ. My old cassettes are 1/8 inch. I've got one in my hand as I write.

I know about the larger tapes, I've had cassette, 8-track and reel to reel. Early on, 1/4 inch tape was sometime housed in a 'cassette'...but it was not the cassette so widely available that was the standard for home usage, cars etc.....

You are right, i stand completely corrected on the measurement thing, sorry to all and sundry about that, all the rest i have typed though i stand by with my life

I don't mean to be argumentative, I just like clarification. :D

Have you seen the 1/4 reel to reel that are housed in a 'cassette' type of dealy ? Kinda looks like a video tape thing.

And to think, since the 1/8 cassettes have 2 tracks each direction....that's only 1/32 " of space for each channel's music info. Not much !

So...a 24 track on 2 inch would have 1/12 " for each track, that's not really that much more. Hmmmm....

yeah 3.57 mm doesnt have much room for stereo audio, just think of the audio strip on 8mm film with sound and 16 mm film with sound

Yeah really.

and I'm glad you're doing the metric conversion, not me. :D

yeah don't reallywork in imperial in aus much