Tape Trail

Reel to reel, cassette and other analogue tape formats.

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RE: Vinyl is back with a vengance. Why not tape?

Posted by buffumjr on November 30, 2016 at 04:33:38:
Besides the deck, and the cost, there's the storage requirements.

Vinyl requires cool and dry. If you give it that, the only thing that really degrades is the jackets. If you left the shrink wrap on the jackets, that slowed, too.

Tape of all varieties is sensitive to so many things that degrade it. Stray EMP, humidity, changes in temperature, vibration, light, and perhaps things I don't know to mention. Master tapes are stored in a steel vault, with temperature and humidity control. Handling is strictly limited.

There's another factor. An LP and its jacket are about 12-1/2" x 12-1/2" x 3/16", so a two foot shelf can hold over a hundred LPs. How many big reel tapes can a two foot shelf hold? That was a BIG seller for CD. More music in less space.

Never was a reel to reel user. I have about 65 lbs of cassettes of blues and classical. Cassette was never terribly high quality, but it was so cool to be able to listen to blues on a long drive.