Do cassette Tapes sound better than CDs?I

[Hari Iyer]

I am now listening and comparing both tapes and CD sound quality now for over 5 months now and I am increasingly finding the SQ of tapes way better tha CD recordings. Again I have compared audiophile recordings from Dali, Focal and B&W to arrive at this conclusion at least for me. The tapes are just standard or premium recorded tapes but from analogue sources.

CD player- Marantz- cd5400 modified with audiophile grade opamp.
Tape deck- Nakamichi BX-100E, tape head azimuth readjusted with Lissajous pattern using dual channel oscilloscope.

I am not sure if my "beliefs" are playing ant trick but every time the tapes sound good or even better.

I hv read about digital jitter and tape wow and flutter and in my opinion jitter ruins the sq more than wow and flutter.
Will like other FMs opinions who have and not have similar experiences'

 

[sarith]

An old video..Pls read the description..Song from a beat up cassette tape.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh2K-mESPio

 

[Nikhil]

Hello Hari,

I had the same experience as you but this was about 15 years ago. My tape player was an Onkyo TA RW244 and it was better to my ears specially with good imported cassettes. The player is lying somewhere and my cassettes are all long gone.

Regards.

 

[Hari Iyer]

@Nikhil.
I am so impressed and satisfied with the tape audio quality, was wondering if i can record some good selected tracks from a turntable to my tapes. Most tapes are around 20 years to 30 years old but still sound like original. I have also noted that the tapes that were analogue mastered are sounding better than the digital mastered ones. This again keep me wondering what is missing in my current digital setup. Do i need to invest in a good DAC? Not sure if this is going to match the tape sound quality. Only listening apples to apples can clarify what i mean. rSome tracks copied from a TT are just awesome and can beat the best of CD recordings.

 

[alpha1]

You will need to tell which tapes are you comparing with which CDs.

 

[greenhorn]

The CD's are ravaged by the loudness war. the tapes have not. Easy Explaination

 

[frend2001]

The CD's are ravaged by the loudness war. the tapes have not. Easy Explaination

That's bang on head....

Loudness killed the warmth of music in god knows how many good compositions.

And the recording engineers are still not waking up...:sad:

 

[bose]

I have faint memories of playing tape. I like their sound but trebles were harsher. I didn't have same stuff on tape and CD so no direct comparison. But CDs sounded more balanced and dryer. But that was when I had tapes. Now CDs sound pretty good too. And it is free of problems cassettes suffered.

 

[humblebee]

I think that cassette sounds more organic. Its like more 'real'.
CD sound is like 'processed food' but cassette was like home-cooked food.

 

[NakTech]

I think they do sound better than CDs. Especially when recorded on well set decks. I have the 192KHz/24 bit version of the Eagles - One of these nights Album. This digital copy is from the analog master tape and it was the closest to the master I could find. I recorded that on to a Maxell MX-S cassette on my Nakamichi CR7. There was absolutely no difference between the tape and the Hi Def master. I also have the Audio CD of the same album which sound much less detailed and a little sharper in the high frequencies. This is not to say that the CD sounds bad. It is in fact a very well mastered CD which sounds amazing.

The differences between the Hi Def and the CD are not in the forefront elements. It is the amount of details in the very subtle parts like room reverb, The decay of delay effects on guitars, how nicely the cymbals and chimes blend into the mix and so on. If one focus on these things, the differences become more and more evident each time it is played.

Both the Hi-def and the audio CD was played on the same player. The tape deck also was routed via the same path and auditioned on same speakers and headphones, all output levels measured and matched. The cassette matched the Hi Def master in all aspects. It was recorded with Dolby C NR.

I also played the tape on the Dragon and the ZX9. They added their characteristic sound on the tape that further enhanced the sound. But this is more of a personal taste and I do not claim that it is surely better. The dragon added its soft and warm bass tone and an amazing sound stage, while the ZX9 added punchier bass with a bite in the mid tones. Both sound very nice to me and I am still high on it. The CR7 was very very neutral. Nothing more and nothing less.

So my finding is that the sound quality of the cassette is limited only by the quality of the recording source itself and the quality of the deck on which it is recorded on ( and played back)..

:cheers:

 

[vinyl]

The CD's are ravaged by the loudness war. the tapes have not. Easy Explaination

It is not only the loudness war, there is another factor also. There are many older recordings, originally mastered for vinyl records and cassettes, and have been put on cds, without any undue compression as in the loudness war, but they do not sound as good as vinyl records and cassettes.
It's because of the stepped sine wave output of cds/ digital formats vs the pure sine wave output of vinyl records and cassettes. A pure sine wave output is soothing to the ears, whereas a cd/ digital format's audio output in spite of being crisp and clear, is not soothing to the ears, because of the stepped sine wave output.

I can't say about speakers, but the amps are also sensitive to the stepped sine waves, fed to them from digital sources. Amps that are fed only from analog sources last much longer than amps fed from only digital sources.

 

[plasmoid]

@Nikhil.
I am so impressed and satisfied with the tape audio quality, was wondering if i can record some good selected tracks from a turntable to my tapes. Most tapes are around 20 years to 30 years old but still sound like original. I have also noted that the tapes that were analogue mastered are sounding better than the digital mastered ones. This again keep me wondering what is missing in my current digital setup. Do i need to invest in a good DAC? Not sure if this is going to match the tape sound quality. Only listening apples to apples can clarify what i mean. rSome tracks copied from a TT are just awesome and can beat the best of CD recordings.

I recently recorded one vinyl album onto an old TDK cassette (over 20 years old). I compared it to the same album on cd( pre-loudness wars version) The cassette still sounded so much smoother and warmer than the CD.

I think that cassette sounds more organic. Its like more 'real'.
CD sound is like 'processed food' but cassette was like home-cooked food.

Very apt analogy...couldn't have put it better!

 

[abhinaba]

It’s true for Indian audio industry where we don’t preserve the original masters and never remaster for specific media type. That’s the reason we see based on the music release timeline whatever is the mass media type of that era gets best treatment. Other medias are all copied from that particular media type. Even though we never got best types of tapes of India still they sound better than cds released later.
But for world music I feel it’s due to bad engineering than the media type.

 

[cha_indian]

Factory recorded cassettes were equal to CDs in SQ.... The thing about CDs was that even the pirated CDs sounded as good as original which was not the case with cassettes... this was one way labels and artists got money,, then CD killed even this and later MP3, Internet kill all the above!

 

[hifitoaster]

I am now listening and comparing both tapes and CD sound quality now for over 5 months now and I am increasingly finding the SQ of tapes way better tha CD recordings. Again I have compared audiophile recordings from Dali, Focal and B&W to arrive at this conclusion at least for me. The tapes are just standard or premium recorded tapes but from analogue sources.

CD player- Marantz- cd5400 modified with audiophile grade opamp.
Tape deck- Nakamichi BX-100E, tape head azimuth readjusted with Lissajous pattern using dual channel oscilloscope.

I am not sure if my "beliefs" are playing ant trick but every time the tapes sound good or even better.

I hv read about digital jitter and tape wow and flutter and in my opinion jitter ruins the sq more than wow and flutter.
Will like other FMs opinions who have and not have similar experiences'

Possibly your tape deck is better than your CD player.

 

[shafic]

Lol

 

[Hari Iyer]

Possibly your tape deck is better than your CD player.

CD player is used as a transport, it's connected to a Burrbrown DAC pcn1794 which is awesome.

 

[keith_correa]

To muddy the waters, I quote from a Paul Mc'Gowan (PS Audio) post:

"Jack Renner and the engineers from Telarc are said to have recorded the Cleveland Orchestra on both an analog tape recorder and a Soundstream Digital recorder. They then compared the output of the two and all selected the analog tape version as being more musical.

To most of us that doesn’t sound so far fetched. What they did next might stand a few hairs on end.

Curious why their new digital recorder didn’t sound as good as the older analog tape they ran a second set of experiments. In this round, they had the orchestra play again and as they did the engineers switched between the live sound and the output of both recorders. To their surprise, the digital recorder’s output was indistinguishable from the live feed while the analog’s output softened the highs, compressed the strong bass, and added a type of pleasant coloration.

This convinced them to abandon the analog recorder and stick with the Soundstream (and later others) and thus the label Telarc was born."

 

[erjmalhotra]

Cds have a better frequency respose in comparison to cassettes. Sometimes after Vinyl records, cassette seems more natural.

 

[iamthomasreynolds]

CDs have it better, but cassettes are not far behind. In fact, some individuals don’t even notice the difference of good cassette players that are demagnetized, cleaned, and calibrated.

So, if you prefer cassettes, you can definitely choose cassettes but make sure you buy a tape player that has the latest technology. After all, cassettes have an old-world charm that deserves more attention than they are currently getting. Thats all I know about CD vs Cassette