Microcassette
This was an attempt by Olympus to cash in on the burgeoning Walkman market; one model, the Olympus SR-11, had a built-in radio and offered a stereo tie-clip microphone as an accessory, which made the unit somewhat popular with concert-goers who wanted to record the concerts they attended without drawing attention to themselves with larger, bulkier full-sized cassette recorders.
[citation needed] Both of these "high-fidelity" microcassette recorders and the special Type IV blanks they required were relatively expensive and of limited availability, so the system was not widely adopted and Olympus phased them out after two years on the market.
"Standard" microcassettes are still used in the underground-music circuits for recording[1] and distributing[2] experimental music and field recordings/sound collage, mostly because of their lo-fi qualities.
[citation needed] The microcassette was beaten to market by the Mini-Cassette, introduced by Philips in 1967.
The mini-cassette is almost identical in appearance and dimensions to the microcassette, however it has thicker cogs for its reels and a slightly wider cassette.
Top left, stereo headphones with a cassette player built into one side.
Top right, a portable cassette player and audio recorder with radio for use with headphones.
Below, a miniature dictation machine mainly for business dictations, use by journalists, etc. The latter is far more widely used than the other two types, which were rather rare.
