Music cassettes are back. The vinyl resurgence has been keeping independent record stores alive for years, and it hit a milestone in 2020: Music fans spent more money on LPs than CDs last year for the first time since 1986. It's now also about cassette tapes, which are making a comeback.
What is Type II cassette?
It's a cassette that uses chromium oxide tape instead of ferric oxide tape to record the signals. Type II tapes have less noise than standard ferric tapes, but have a different frequency response. Type IV “metal” tapes have less noise than Type II/chrome tapes still, and a sort of compromise frequency response.
What is a Type 2 cassette?
Du Pont's chromium dioxide formulation gave an undeniable increase in high frequency response over the often rather muffled tone of the existing Type I ferric cassette.
Are type II cassettes still made?
Type III (Fe-Cr) had already been extinct for more than a decade. When sales started to decline, manufacturers of the coated tape (the tape stock) started ramping down production of Type II and Type IV. The last surviving Type II was not actually chrome but instead cobalt-doped ferric (TDK SD).
How do I know what kind of cassette I have?
If you have external gears, stand behind your bike and take a look at the right side of the rear wheel. There should be a cluster of gears on the right-hand side. This is your cassette. Count the number of gears (or steps) in the cassette.
What is a Type 1 cassette?
Type I. The first type of cassette tape that existed were the ferric Type I tapes. These tapes, while they originally had low audio quality, eventually evolved enough to match the high quality of Type IV metal tapes at lower prices. They were the most common types of tape once the sound quality became better.
What does Type 1 cassette mean?
Type I, or IEC I, ferric or 'normal' cassettes were historically the first, the most common and the least expensive; they dominated the prerecorded cassette market.
What are the different types of cassettes?
- Ferric Type I high hiss, good bass response.
- Chrome Type II Low hiss, good treble response.
- Ferrichrome Type III Low hiss, even bass and treble.
- Metal Type IV Low hiss, balanced frequencies.
What are Type 2 cassettes?
Type II (2) tape is a chromium dioxide-based cassette tape that provided better dynamic range and frequency response than normal (Type I) ferric tape. It required a higher bias current for recording and used a different EQ curve to get the best results.
Are there different types of cassette tapes?
For many years, there were just two basic types of cassettes: those using iron oxide as magnetic particles, usually called ferric tapes, and those using chromium oxide, called chrome tapes.
What is a chrome cassette tape?
A real chromium dioxide formulation, and for many, the epitome of the high bias tape. Chrome tapes were, technically, a big advancement from the start. Du Pont's chromium dioxide formulation gave an undeniable increase in high frequency response over the often rather muffled tone of the existing Type I ferric cassette.