Hi Steve:

Most Japanese-made (or in later years, Japanese-designed and elsewhere-in-Asia-built) consumer
cassette decks were 2-head models, but more importantly, when did you ever see any electronic device
from Japan where they left off a potential feature at a given price point? Features sell. Meters
sell. The ability to record sells. There were plenty of playback-only machines -- in fact I'll
hazard a guess that the MAJORITY of cassette machines produced over the years were play-only. Think
Walkmans and car systems, probably many more of these cassette "decks" sold than stand-alone home
"stereo system" models. One flaw in my logic could be boomboxes, which often had record ability, but
I bet a lot more play-only Walkmans were sold than play-record boomboxes. Walkmans got to where they
were $20 in a blister pack at the local big-box store or supermarket. Even CD walkmans got nearly
that cheap eventually.

As for a professional-grade play-only deck, doesn't Tascam still make the dual-well model that has
play-only on one side? That's the only use of play-only cassette decks I've seen in professional
units.

Boy do I not miss cassettes for music content, but I think we'll end up missing them for spoken-word
content. There is little attention paid to quality with cheapo digi-recorders of spoken content and
the digital artifacts of low-grade lossy formats are far more annoying, at least to my ears, than a
little bit of hiss and/or wow from a cassette.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Abrams" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2008 8:18 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] The end of the cassette ? ? ?


>I just did a search for cassettes on Amazon.com and got 177,692 results.
>
> I do have a question about cassettes. Many of us still have hundreds of cassettes. Our sole
> interest is in listening to the cassettes or transferring them to CDs or computer files.
>
> I am surprised that no one seems to make good playback equipment which does not record. Surely
> there would be a number of advantages to such machines. Cheap playback machines were often found
> in the early days of the cassette.
>
> SA
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Tom Fine" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2008 10:56 PM
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] The end of the cassette ? ? ?
>
>
>> This is just about the last "mass" market for cassettes in the U.S., I think. I'm not sure where
>> you could buy a modern commercial music release in the U.S. or western Europe -- or if such a
>> thing is even manufactured anymore. I think commercial music is still released on cassettes in
>> parts of the Third World.
>>
>> -- Tom Fine
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Richard L. Hess" <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2008 3:05 PM
>> Subject: [ARSCLIST] The end of the cassette ? ? ?
>>
>>
>>> This article talks about the end of the cassette for "talking books".
>>> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/28/business/media/28cassette.html
>>>
>>> It has some interesting statistics in it.
>>>
>>> Richard
>>>
>>> Richard L. Hess email: [log in to unmask]
>>> Aurora, Ontario, Canada (905) 713 6733 1-877-TAPE-FIX
>>> Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
>>> Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.
>