“You have to keep fast-forwarding, rewinding, pausing and playing to find the right song you want”: Gen Z struggles to get to grips with old-school cassette technology

We’re all aware of the ongoing cassette revival, which has seen sales of pre-recorded tapes rise to their highest levels for two decades. But it seems that many Gen Z-ers are purchasing tapes without having anything to play them on. Or any idea of how they work.

The Wall Street Journal has revealed this in an interesting article that interviews a number of younger tape-heads. People like Amy Campbell, who admitted she struggled at first with the Kacey Musgraves cassette she bought from the country star’s website.

First she had to borrow her mother’s old tape player. Then she had to figure out how the thing worked: “You have to keep fast-forwarding, rewinding, pausing and playing to find the right song you want,” she explains.

Then there’s Molly Clark, whose 13-year-old daughter bought a cassette by the Norwegian singer Aurora. Dad had to dig out his old boombox from their Minneaopolis attic. Later they forked out $40 on a Walkman for her on eBay.

Luckily, the parents were on hand when the Walkman started chewing up the tape. “She had no idea if she had ruined the thing or not,” said Clark, who showed her daughter how to wind it back in using her finger. “I told her we used to use a pencil to do this.”

The feature also interviewed ex Radio One DJ Jen Long, who was instrumental in kick-starting the cassette revival a few years back. She ran the cassette-only label Kissability for a while and started the annual Cassette Day back in 2013. But Long’s ardour for the format has long since dimmed. She describes it now as “a cash cow... another format to get you up the charts and milk money from people.”

“I feel bad for the amount of plastic we had to put out into the world,” she says. And whilst she’s kept a few of her cassettes, she mainly streams music in 2024. “Tapes get played fairly rarely these days,” she admits.

So, are cassettes just another Gen Z phase like smashed avocado and waxed moustaches? Well, their revival shows no signs of abating - over 156,000 of the things were sold in the UK last year, the highest figure since 2003, and an increase of 95% from 2019. But their continued viability surely depends on the supply of vintage equipment to play the things on - or the availability of new devices - and the generosity of parents like Molly Clark to purchase them for their offspring.

It’s called Dolby Atmos for home...5.1 with height channels. Blue ray has a 5.1 surround modes for classical music. Berlin philharmonic hss a 5.1 surround concert streaming service. TThere are sacd’s still being made with Sony still supporting the format via hdmi...up to 5.1. Some companies are doing 5.1 with dolby atmos channels on hybrid cds(regulaar two channel cd layer and a sacd layer) or on blue ray discs. Prime Music at Amazon has many songs converted to 5.1 with Dolby atmos or Sony 360 surrounnd.

Quad isn’t dead...there are plenty of multichannel digital recordings out. You can get multichannel digital files download for sale on line. Sony 4k players will decode most of them. Newer Home theater receivers have USB ports to decode files directly...many now will do multichannel decoding.

Many old Quad discs were remastered into two channel compact discs with the matrix info still on them. Many folks have the old decoders that they put the stereo signal from the quad encoded cds through with excellent results. Because the sound source is digital, there is no wavering of the quad surround image...the adjustments stay where you want them...no constan fiddling like you did in the record era when the front back and left righ images tended to collapse due to uneven pick up by the record needle.

Some old quad sources have been remastered into 4.0 and 5.0 cd discs. Newer receivers allow you to channel all the bass thru the subwoofer for a real 4.1 and 5.1 experience.

Many early RCA tapes recorded in 3 channel tape tracks have been remastered into 3 channel sacd’s...with no back channels so one can here what the early performances sounded like...some of them are quite stunning ...like the earl wild piano.Arthur fiedler gershwin RCA recordings from 1954-58. Early Stereo from 3 track recorders...sound like they were made yesterday. I play them in a Dolby Prologic mode with height and back channel info synthesized with the front three channels sounding like they came right from the tape recorder ...de-equalized from record to what was recorded on the tape....some hiss but very negligible.

Lots of options out there. The beatles had one of their albums recently released in 5.1 surround with an Atmos sound track...Some of the singles are on Amazon prime in Dolby Atmos...quite stunning. Queen Bohemian Rhapsody can be heard in Dolby Atmos.

Wow, that is fantastic knowledge. I had a clue about most of it but didn’t know they had a dedicated protocol of Quad channels. I think it should be default and two channel as optional.

Check this out... Back in the day we used to “cross” our left and right channels from each other front to rear so it made an “X” output of the highs and lows. Especially in a car it added a “presence” that was a whole new ballgame and audio experience. All you had to do was swap left for right on either the front or rear channels.

Pretty cool sound and simple to do. Classical was off the charts with this arrangement of output. :)

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