Tom Sheridan, you wrote,
>I still use cassettes and a Marantz stereo recorder, which continues to
>be servicable. I record music concerts, family, and
>street/environmental soundscapes. Any thoughts, anyone, on audio
>quality; should I consider the switch to digital?
It's possible to get quality audio out of cassettes, but it can only
be done by using top quality tapes in a machine that's meticulously
calibrated for the particular type of tape and using Dolby B or C. I
repair cassette machines and I can tell you it's expensive.
Even at best distortion is high, there is no high-frequency headroom
due to the extreme treble pre-emphasis necessary for the slow tape
speed, and playing back on any other machine than the one you
recorded on is chancy.
All that said, the experience you have gained recording to cassette
is all applicable to recording with any media.
Digital solutions (MD, flash, hard drive) have none of the problems
of cassette. The flaws digital recorders have are orders of magnitude
smaller than those of analog recording. Switch!
-Dan Dugan
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