Pre-Recorded Ferric Tape vs Blank Ferrics

I thought this would make for an interesting experiment. I’ve griped a little recently about expensive, pre-recorded cassettes, manufactured between the mid ‘eighties and mid ‘nineties, being produced with ferric tape formulations, as opposed to chrome. So I thought I’d assess exactly what customers were getting, in terms of sound quality, from these pre-recorded, CD-era ferric tapes.

Rare 1983 TDK Records Audio Cassette Hybrid

There isn’t much here in 2015 that’s managed to evade the attention of the Internet. Once in a while, however, you unearth an item which, as far as Google is concerned, doesn’t exist. This rare and highly unusual audio cassette fits that bill perfectly.

Early 1970s Scotch Dynarange C-120 Audio Tape

I was quite flippant about the performance when I posted a photo of a Scotch Dynarange C-90 in 2012, but it’s often very hard with old tapes to evaluate them properly, since so little is known about the recording conditions, and there’s little or no space to record new sequences for test purposes.

Gladly, however, I’ve now unearthed an early ‘70s Scotch Dynarange C-120 with plenty of blank space on Side B, so I set about establishing what these 40+ year-old stalwarts are like when it comes to preserving a known quality of signal.