"Serge Auckland" wrote in message
...


Interestingly, the musiccassette production line showed more care being
taken than the LP lines. Perhaps being newer they were more automated,
consequently there was less scope for human screw-ups. They did seem to
take line-up of the duplicators quite seriously, and there was a time when
I thought that cassettes would end up better than LP. I bought a couple of
real-time in-cassette duplicated tapes and remember being very impressed,
but these never caught on. Sadly Dolby C duplication never got going,
perhaps because line-up was much more critical than Dolby B, perhaps
because the Public never understood Dolby processing and because CD was
due soon.


In the 1970s I briefly flirted with buying pre-recorded cassettes having
become totally disillusioned with the generally poor pressing quality of
LPs. Some were amazingly good, but the general standard left a lot to be
desired so I gave up.

Recently whilst clearing out my late father's effects I came across a couple
of 7.5 ips half-track mono Saga pre-recorded open reel tapes which he had
bought in the '50s. I had remembered these tapes as being of really
excellent quality, so it came as something of a disappointment when I played
them - a generally dull sound with plenty of superimposed clicks etc. A
combination of the relatively poor tape quality of the time, having been
played rather too often on tape recorders who's state of maintenance left
quite a lot to be desired, plus plain old age I guess (and maybe my memory
was fooling me a bit too).

Curiously on one of these tapes, of the Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor, the
first side ran for several minutes less than the second. So rather than make
the listener fast wind off to the end before turning the tape over, the
piece started several minutes into the tape. You could start the tape
playing from the beginning and almost have forgotten it was running when you
were startled by the flourish at the start of the piece, odd.

David.