From: The Cassette Mythos, Autonomedia 1990
I was using open-reel when I got my first cassette recorder. I could see the advantages of this new format: the tapes were inexpensive, compact, easily stored, easily mailed; recorders were inexpensive, portable; tapes did not require rewinding in order to be changed; they didn't require threading. But I also discovered--as did many other cassette users--some of their disadvantages:
Jamming is probably the most annoying problem with cassettes. The tape begins these strange speed fluctuations and finally stops. You start to take the cassette out, find the tape tangled around the capstan and pinch roller, and end up breaking the tape to untangle it. You then have to splice it back together.
At some time or other, you are forced to repair a cassette--for example, when you rewind the tape and it breaks upon reaching the beginning. It is difficult to pry open the injection-molded cases. I have tried screwdrivers and razor blades; I always end up damaging the case. (Some cassettes are held together by screws, however, which facilitates repair.) You have to be careful not to lose the plastic rollers, or the little metal posts. Then to reclose the case you have to align everything properly, close the case, and then glue it or tape it together. The cassette will never be the same; you are best off dubbing the tape and throwing out the damaged original. Splicing is not a feasible way of editing cassette material: it is difficult to figure out where to perform the splice, and the result will probably sound garbled anyway. The only feasible way of editing using cassettes is to transfer material from one machine to another.
So although cassettes are convenient and inexpensive, open-reel has always been my preferred medium: its thicker tape and faster speeds provide better sound quality, it is much easier to cue up, it can be edited by splicing, and there is no risk of jamming.
But cassettes are prevailing over the open-reel format. I guess manufacturers do not think the masses can learn to thread a tape. We now have microcassettes, 3/4-inch video, VHS, and Beta. 8mm video cassettes about the size of an audio cassette have come out, and the tiny digital audio tapes (DATs) are now available.
Anyhow, most of my reasons for preferring open-reel will become less relevant in the context of video and digital recording: using helicon scan, you can get excellent quality on small tapes; video and digital require some startup time, so instant cueing is not possible even in the open-reel format; and editing is not possible through splicing--you have to transfer even when working with open-reel. Still, I wonder whether the jamming problem will ever be solved. Even my state-of-the-art VHS jammed just last week, and I had to take the machine apart to get the tape out.
Once DATs become inexpensive, they will replace traditional audio cassettes. But DATs are merely the next phase in the evolution toward the ultimate audio/video/data system: read/writable, high-capacity, high-bandwidth, instant-access storage, connected into a high-bandwidth network, controlled by an artificial intelligence computer program. Such a system will allow instantaneous access to any stored audio or visual segment: indexing and retrieval by person, place, topic, emotion, or any other content area, and presentation of segments in any specified order (for example, you could request to hear all happy recordings of a certain person in reverse chronological order); editing, mixing, effects, and other sonic/graphic manipulations; and interactive works in which you design a computer program to accept input from the viewer which would then direct or modify the content of the playback. For transferring segments to others, and for creating real-time collaborative works, home systems will be connected by a network to other home systems as well as commercial systems. (For further ideas and details, see my article entitled "Entangling Computers and Music" in the March/April 1985 issue of Option.)
Much of this is possible today (although it is expensive), or will be in the near future. Digital music synthesis/editing systems exist (such as the Synclavier or the Lucasfilm digital audio facility). Tandy, Sony, and other manufacturers have announced that they will soon come out with writable CDs--the random-access equivalent of a DAT. An equivalent video system is years away, however. The phone company's integrated services digital network (ISDN) will soon be introduced for residential use, but the bandwidth of the initial system (called "2B+D") will be too low to transmit real-time video.
Regarding Qubais Ghazala's idea of having condensed versions of people's lifetimes, I've always imagined having my whole life on laserdisk, randomly accessible by date or subject matter. I have tapes that my father made of me before I was born (!), and in my first few days and first few years of life. When I was five my father gave me a tape recorder (open reel--this was before cassettes) and I've been taping ever since. I also have fairly large film and video tape collections from my childhood. Perhaps the most extensive live recording activity was between February 1970 and December 1971, in which I kept a thing called "Erik's Log," inspired by the Captain's Log of Star Trek. These log tapes were made when I was eleven and twelve, and were done on cassette for ease of recording. In fact, I vaguely remember leaving the cassette recorder on and just using the mic remote switch to start and stop recordings. I would do a log entry every day, or sometimes I would even have a "supplemental" entry. I would basically describe what I did that day or what my feelings were. I haven't really listened to them since I made them. I figure when I am seventy all of these tapes I've made will be fun to listen to; I'm a little scared to stir up too many nostalgia feelings by listening to the tapes at this point. I would say that given any month that I have been alive, I could produce a recording I made during that month.
I've got tapes of environmental recordings, not to mention years of recordings (from the ages of six to twelve) of a fake radio and TV station I had called WBIB, Roosevelt, NJ, 1500 AM and Channel 8. I also have some tapes off TV--it's hysterical to hear some of the stuff; it sounds like archaic recordings from the fifties or something. The one thing that amazes me is how my parents sound exactly the same in the tape from when I was two as they do now. I sure sound a lot different! It's also great to listen to an old tape of yourself interacting with someone and realize it is something that could have just as easily happened yesterday. I would say that my collection involves about two hundred open reel tapes, one hundred cassettes, twenty films, and twenty video tapes, all containing self-originated material such as WBIB shows, film soundtracks, various rock groups, log tapes, family trips, science fiction productions, musical compositions and experimentations, TV and radio snatches, interviews with people, environmental recordings, etc.
Being the methodical kid that I was, I had all my tapes indexed by content material using 5x7 cards in a card box. So I could look up one of my friends and instantly access all the tapes that contained recordings of them. I haven't kept this up; I figure it will all be much easier in a few decades when I can just put it all in laser disc and have a speech-understanding program do all the content cataloging.
Erik has a home page at this URL.
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