1998 TDK SA 90 Audio Cassette

It’s hard now to imagine how life would be without fast PCs and intuitive operating systems. Even though it was made in the Internet era, this tape predates the release of Windows 98 (imagine that). So we’re back in the territory of Windows 95, and a climate in which most consumers were only just learning what USB was. The computers on many people’s desktops still didn’t feature CD burners, and so there was still a big market for blank audio cassettes.

1990s Mitsubishi C60 Audio Cassette

One of the brands less synonymous with the manufacture of audio cassettes was Mitsubishi. This Mitsubishi C60 tape was given to me by someone I was teaching to play keyboards, near the end of 1999. So there’s a lot of stuff I can’t be sure of about. What I can say is that this is a Type I normal bias cassette, and hiss levels are not at all intrusive. Beyond that, there are some problems, but how much blame the cassette should take for that isn’t clear.

Early 1980s TDK D 60 Audio Cassette

If you were in any way interested in music, or had a need to record audio during the early 1980s, you must surely recognise this cassette. It’s the ubiquitous-beyond-comprehension TDK D 60 – perhaps the general purpose tape of the era. Not because it was the best – but because it struck the perfect balance between price, aptitude and reliability. There were strong rivals, but TDK was a highly respected brand, and that counted for a lot among typical consumers, who wouldn’t necessarily analyse performance in any great technical detail.