What Were the Criteria For “Professional” Audio Cassettes?

It’s a good question. What, exactly, entitled a manufacturer to brand the word “Professional” onto an audio tape? Or to describe it as “professional quality” in blurb? Was there a bench test that defined a standard of performance, above which the cassette attained suitability for professional use?

The two cassettes in the photo above, from the PMD Professional range, provide a good starting point for the answer. Whilst some “professional” tapes used a high bias or metal formulation with extremely wide frequency response, these particular products had a ferric formulation and normal bias. That meant they were inferior even to average chrome or metal tapes in terms of fidelity. A “professional” tape evidently did not require a particular definition of sound.

So was it all about the sturdiness of build and mechanical prowess? Minimising the likelihood of bad alignment or pressure-pad failures? Or the resilience of the tape itself – its resistance to drop-outs or sonic glitches?

Whilst there was no watchdog tasked with policing the above factors, it certainly wouldn’t have been very wise for a manufacturer to describe a cassette as “professional” and then ship something that glitched, wowed, fluttered and chewed at the first opportunity. So pressure would fall on the brands offering “professional” tapes to produce stable and reliable performance, and in my experience, that’s exactly what they delivered.

The “professional” tapes in my collection are highly resistant to the kind of flaws you might find in a “bargain bucket” cassette. They’re sure-footed, and it takes a lot of punishment to get them to glitch.

But ultimately, whether or not a tape was marketed as “professional” would be a decision for the brand, made in the knowledge that they would be ridiculed if the performance of the product was poor. So the only real criterium for “professional” audio tape was: