Metal Audio Cassettes

There's more bad news which also points to the downward spiral of the world economy. Metal particle audio cassettes are no longer being produced. The first audio cassettes are now known as normal bias, or type I. A couple of years later chromium dioxide cassettes were introduced. These had much better sound quality including lower noise and greater dynamic range. These are now known as CRO2 or Type II. Both of these types use metal oxides to record magnetic signals. Then several years later metal particle cassettes were introduced. These have even greater dynamic range and less noise and are known as metal or Type IV. Musicians and other audio professionals use these because they have superior audio quality. They have sold for about $3 each. Audio cassettes have several advantages over CD's. For one, they hold twice as much music as a CD. You can record analog audio directly and they can be stopped and restarted as desired. Unlike CD's, you don't have to first capture music into a computer, and then record them all at once. They can be erased and reused. They are smaller and easier to handle than a CD, especially in a car. In a car you cannot hear any difference between audio cassettes and CD's. If you use CD's it is best to record them to cassettes for automotive use because CD's can easily be scratched, pick up dust, dirt and fingerprints. CD's sometimes skip in a car, cassettes never did. If you are a serious music collector you don't want to risk your valuable CD's which cannot be replaced, by having them in your car. They can be stolen or heat damage can delaminate or deteriorate them.
TDK has always been the manufacturer of the finest audio cassettes. They also produce excellent video tapes and CD-R's. TDK and all other manufacturers have stopped production of metal audio cassettes. It is also now nearly impossible to find TDK audio and video tapes and CD-R's. I have TDK metal audio cassettes I recorded 30 years ago that still sound like new. It was always typical that commercially recorded audio cassettes were quite inferior and almost never approached the quality of home recorded audio cassettes. Perhaps this gave audio cassettes a bad name. Or perhaps it's because good audio cassette recorders start at around $500. It could also have something to do with some car manufacturers no longer offering cassette players as an option. Either way, I will miss metal audio cassettes. If I had known they were going to be discontinued I would have bought a few hundred like I did with Kodachrome 25.Meanwhile, I tried calling TDK at 6 different numbers from their website and no one answers any of tyhem. I left messages and only one returned my call, days later, leaving a message that only partly answered my questions. They gave me more numbers to call to locate TDK tapes, but none had them.

If metal tapes had been introduced in reel to reel tapes it would have taken this format to greater heights, but this never happened.