Early 1990s That’s AS IV Audio Cassette

In contrast with the EX 90, this, the AS IV, was a proper metal tape from That’s. A Type 4 as opposed to a Type 2. Judging by the material it was used to master (from a four-track Portastudio), this one was probably bought in the latter half of 1994. I rated That’s cassettes very highly, and this super-high bias job has a very bold, big sound with phenomenally good signal to noise and typically good resistance to glitches. After listening back through the recordings on this metallic monster I almost want to turn my back on CDs and go back to using audio tape for future projects. I did say almost, so it’s not likely to actually happen, but if CDs were banned tomorrow, tapes like this would provide a very acceptable rescue mechanism.

1993 TDK CDing II C90 Audio Cassette

If ever there was a case of a manufacturer setting themselves up for failure, then this was surely it. An audio cassette with a picture of a compact disc on the outer packaging, and a boast that the tape could reproduce CD sound like for like. In a world where home CD burning was still some way in the future, being able to exactly copy a CD to an audio tape was a very attractive thought. There was, however, one ever-so-slight drawback… It didn’t work.

1990 That’s EX 90 Audio Cassette

The That’s brand made some truly excellent audio cassettes, and in the early 1990s I used little else for my most serious home recordings. Probably the most impressive thing about That’s was the durability of their tape, which kept ‘drop-outs’ and qualitative interruptions to an absolute minimum. That’s as a brand offered some of the smoothest recording available on audio cassette tape. The That’s EX was unusual in that it had a metal tape formulation, but a Type 2 classification (and thus bias), which would normally be the preserve of a chrome (CrO2) cassette. Metal tapes were typically classed as Type 4s and ran with a higher bias.