Is the Cassette Recorder Dead?

I make a lot of temporary cassette tapes for listening in my car and other places, to familiarize myself with music I need to learn for a group I sing with. The low cost and the fact cassetts are easy to use over and over again makes them still the way to go for me. Also considering what a lot of folks are still willing to pay for used high end cassette decks makes me believe there are still lots of fans out there.

Vinyl records and VHS have been around for years after their reported death. I suspect when you see cassettes stop being made it will be another 5-10 years till they are not relevent anymore. Cassettes are so widespread they will still be used by many 10 years from now. CD recorders can produce thin, lean sound unless you get into the higher end.

I use our little mini system with a dub deck to listen to my wife's collection of some 300+ tapes. I do not patch it through the main system as the sound quality of the deck "and the tapes" are not that good. They sound "better" on the little system through Polk RT15 speakers. They also sound fine when played on the stock stereos in our old, older and oldest Honda's. I cannot think of a good reason to buy a better main deck to make dubs for use in the cars (due to their lowfi sound quality). And in the main system I would just as soon play a CD. I need to make dubs of her tapes as many are from the 70's and early 80's and they are going down hill very quickly. So, we really just need a deck to enjoy this old music library (mostly R&B and Disco) and to dub the old tapes onto new stock. Their are some very high quality cassette decks that come "close" to the sound of vinyl, but what is the purpose if you are dubbing from CD? If I wanted better sound in the cars I would just install a modern CD player (all in one unit with amps) and new speakers at a very reasonable cost. Since we don't mind lowfi in the cars the little dub deck and the old tapes are fine. I recently ran across a Tandberg 3014 deck at the local pawn shop and went through this thought process. The deck was a steal at $950.00, but I found that I really did not need it. I would be better off spending the money on CD players for the cars. Also when buying used tapes you will find that many of them have been trashed from being played on cheap portable machines.

I'll bet that 75% of all audiophiles use some type of cassette system, car or portable. The sad thing is that the cassette recorder is totally invisable to all high end mags. Due to the demise of Audio and Stereo Review the only place to find reviews is in Consumers Report. I recently invested in a Mini CD recorder and portable player but frankly the analog cassette reproduces vinyl better. I just hope the manufacturers don't completely abandon these machines.

This is very much a Ralph Nader sort of thing. Those that have been in the high end 20 years or more lets band together to stop the never ending landfill fonder of formats and japanese machines that led no where. Except to corporate deception of new technology with lower tolerance parts presumed to be of higher musical value. Please check out the rear ends (glutes of mass consumers to get a sense of what I am expressing). Remember the song "In the year 2525 I will not need my eyes ....."