Taped

If the terms normal bias, low noise, high precision shell, compact cassette, ferric, high position, chromdioxid, noise reduction, head cleaner, metal bias and C90 mean anything to you, these might appeal:



At the time, this seemed the most stylish, zeitgeisty advert around. Could the 21st century be much better than this? With my usual visionary flare, I imagined that slightly smaller, dictaphone-style cassettes might be the norm by 2001. If we were very lucky.



For this band I'd buy the dodgiest tape I could find - probably something with a name like 'Supertronic' that could only be obtained at a local market stall - in the hope that the music would become inaudible within four plays.

Chrome cassettes were the aristocrats of the tape world, but there was a rumour that they were more abrasive and damaged the tape heads. This worried me greatly at the time.

The same rules applied to video recording too:



Sadly the Scotch video tapes I bought were rubbish, reducing everything to mid-80s pastels, with the grainy quality of a Betamax Portuguese soft porn film.

Thank God for digital. It's so nice to be free of chewed-up cassettes, tape hiss and the seemingly interminable wait for a C-120 to rewind back to the beginning. However, I miss that little wave of pleasure that came when I could afford a TDK AD90, rather than a mere D90.