Cassette deck

At that time, reel-to-reel recorders and players were commonly used by enthusiasts but required large individual reels and tapes which had to be threaded by hand, making them less accessible to the casual consumer.

Both RCA and Bell Sound attempted to commercialize the cartridge format, but a few factors stalled adoption, including lower-than-advertised availability of selections in the prerecorded media catalog, delays in production setup, and a stand-alone design that was not considered by audiophiles to be truly hi-fi.

Tape recorder audio-quality had improved by the mid-1970s, and a cassette deck with manual level controls and VU meters became a standard component of home high-fidelity systems.

[7] Dolby B uses volume companding of high frequencies to boost low-level treble information by up to 9 dB, reducing them (and the hiss) on playback.

Like an 8-track cartridge, it was relatively insensitive to vehicle motion, but it had reduced tape flutter, as well as the obvious advantages of smaller physical size and fast forward/rewind capability.

[citation needed] Cassette decks from companies such as Nakamichi, Revox, and Tandberg incorporated advanced features such as multiple tape heads and dual capstan drive with separate reel motors.

Three-head systems were common on reel-to-reel decks, but were more difficult to implement for cassettes, which do not provide separate openings for record and play heads.

Some models squeezed a monitor head into the capstan area, and others combined separate record and playback gaps into a single headshell.

Most auto-reverse machines use a four-channel head (similar to those on multitrack recorders), with only two channels connected to the electronics at one time, one pair for each direction.

[citation needed] In one machine, the Dragon, Nakamichi addressed the issue with a motor-driven automatic head alignment mechanism.

Later Nakamichi auto-reverse models, the RX series, was essentially a single-directional deck, but with an added mechanism that physically removed the cassette from the transport, flipped it over, and re-inserted it.

One goal of using logic circuitry in cassette decks or recorders was to minimize equipment damage upon incorrect user input by including fail-safes into the transport and control mechanism.

[13][14] In the car stereo industry, full logic control was developed with the aim of miniaturization, so that the cassette deck would take up less dashboard space.

Chromium dioxide (referred to as CrO2 or Type II) was the first tape designed for extended high-frequency response, but it required higher bias.

Later, as the IEC Type II standard was defined, a different equalization settings was also mandated to reduce hiss, thus giving up some extension at the high end of the audio spectrum.

Chromium dioxide tape was thought to cause increased wear on the heads, so TDK and Maxell adapted cobalt-doped ferric formulations to mimic CrO2.

Most recent decks produce the best response and dynamic headroom with metal tapes (IEC Type IV) which require still higher bias for recording, though they will play back correctly at the II setting since the equalization is the same.

He used this technique to demonstrate what he called "the tunnel effect" in the audio range of pre-recorded cassettes and commented to the reporter Sam Sutherland, who wrote a news article printed in Billboard magazine: "The buyer who is aware of sound quality is making his own."

[17] A variety of noise reduction and other schemes are used to increase fidelity, with Dolby B being almost universal for both prerecorded tapes and home recording.

It was only licensed for use on higher end tape decks that included dual motors, triple heads, and other refinements.

Whereas Dolby B was already in widespread use in the 1970s, prerecorded cassettes were duplicated onto rather poor quality tape stock at (often) high speed and did not compare in fidelity to high-grade LPs.

Some companies, such as Mobile Fidelity, produced audiophile cassettes in the 1980s, which were recorded on high-grade tape and duplicated on premium equipment in real time from a digital master.

Almost all cassette decks have an MPX filter to improve the sound quality and the tracking of the noise reduction system when recording from an FM stereo broadcast.

A contributing factor may have been the inability of early CD players to reliably read discs with surface damage and offer anti-skipping features for applications where external vibration would be present, such as automotive and recreation environments.

Many home and portable entertainment systems supported both formats and commonly allowed the CD playback to be recorded on cassette tape.

The rise of inexpensive all-solid-state portable digital music systems based on MP3, AAC and similar formats finally saw the eventual decline of the domestic cassette deck.

As of 2020, Marantz, Teac, and Tascam are among the few companies still manufacturing cassette decks in relatively small quantities for professional and niche market use.

[citation needed] As radios became tightly integrated into dashboards, many cars lacked even standard openings that would accept aftermarket cassette player installations.

Many blind and elderly people find the newest digital technologies very difficult to use compared to the cassette format.

Today, cassette decks are not considered by most people to be either the most versatile or highest fidelity sound recording devices available, as even very inexpensive CD or digital audio players can reproduce a wide frequency range with no speed variations.