And I'll betcha that you've had more CD failures than cassettes!
I still use my JVC TD W-805 double deck for my collection of tapes.
And today I will play a selection of really rotten and raunchy Xmas 
material
that has been hanging around the stoop since last year.
That'll show ME.
Tomorrow I'll watch "Raging" George C. Scott as Ebeneezer Scrooge 
(Ebenoozer Screege??) in the Dickens thingy.
Bah, humbug indeed.
A magnificently fine Holiday season to all!
Malcolm

*******

On 12/24/2015 7:13 AM, Peter Hirsch wrote:
> This link to an op-ed
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/24/opinion/our-misplaced-nostalgia-for-cassette-tapes.html?ref=opinion&_r=0>
> in today's NY Times should warm the hearts of those cassette and CD
> diss-ers and Grinches on this list (you know who you are <g>). I personally
> still have a functioning TASCAM MK-II deck that was intended to be a
> transfer-to-digital device when I purchased it around the turn of the
> millennium, but is more often used simply for playback of items in my
> collection of tapes, carefully assembled in the 70's, 80's and early 90's.
> I know that I am tempting fate, but even the ones that are 30+ years old
> still sound OK to me and mechanical failure has only been an issue once or
> twice and even then, I think the playback mechanism was to blame rather
> than the tape itself. Of course, my satisfaction with what I hear may be
> the happy result of my auditory capacity's decline as I slipped slowly from
> my 20's to mid-60's as the tapes experienced their parallel decline in
> frequency output.
>
> Bah, humbug,
>
> Peter Hirsch
>