BG Rock is the first solo album by the Bulgarian rock musician Georgi Minchev , released in 1987 by the state-owned record company Balkanton . The producers were the well known Bulgarian musicians Petar Slavov and Ivaylo Kraychovski .
68-549: The album was originally released on Cassette and Vinyl LP . In 1997, it was re-released on CD format together with the Minchev's second LP Rock'n'Roll Veterans (1989). Most of the songs obtained wide popularity and became classic hits of the Bulgarian rock music genre, most notably " The Bulgarian Rock ", " We, The Musicians ", " Almost Midnight " and " The Singer's Song ". Despite the fact that Georgi Minchev started his career in
136-525: A phone connector converts the electrical signals to be read by the tape head, while mechanical gears simulate reel to reel movement without actual tapes when driven by the player mechanism. In order to wind up the tape more reliably, the former BASF (from 1998 EMTEC ) patented the Special Mechanism or Security Mechanism advertised with the abbreviation SM in the early 1970s, which was temporarily used under license by Agfa . This feature each includes
204-636: A US affiliate of Philips, introduced M.C. to the US in July 1966. The initial offering consisted of 49 titles. However, the system had been designed initially for dictation and portable use, with the audio quality of early players not well suited for music. Some early models also had an unreliable mechanical design. In 1971, the Advent Corporation introduced their Model 201 tape deck that combined Dolby type B noise reduction and chromium(IV) oxide (CrO 2 ) tape, with
272-599: A boom in bootleg cassettes made at live shows in the 1980s. The Walkman dominated the decade, selling up to 350 million units. So synonymous did the name "Walkman" become with all portable music players—with a German dictionary at one point defining the term as such without reference to Sony—that the Austrian Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that Sony, which had not sought to have the publisher of that dictionary retract that definition, could not prevent other companies from using that name, as it had now become genericized. As
340-409: A cassette. Very simple cassette recorders for dictation purposes did not tightly control tape speed and relied on playback on a similar device to maintain intelligible recordings. For accurate reproduction of music, a tape transport incorporating a capstan and pinch roller system was used, to ensure tape passed over the record/playback heads at a constant speed. If the cassette is held with one of
408-709: A commercial-grade tape transport mechanism supplied by the Wollensak camera division of 3M Corporation. This resulted in the format being taken more seriously for musical use, and started the era of high fidelity cassettes and players. British record labels began releasing compact cassettes in October 1967, and they exploded as a mass-market medium after the first Walkman , the TPS-L2, went on sale on 1 July 1979, as cassettes provided portability, which vinyl records could not. While portable radios and boom boxes had been around for some time,
476-399: A continuation of the increasingly slower speed series in open-reel machines operating at 30, 15, 7 + 1 ⁄ 2 , or 3 + 3 ⁄ 4 inches per second. For comparison, the typical open-reel 1 ⁄ 4 -inch 4-track consumer format used tape that is 0.248 inches (6.3 mm) wide, each track .043 in (1.1 mm) wide, and running at either twice or four times the speed of
544-531: A continuous demand for English language cassettes, as of 2011, due to the affordable cost. National Audio Company in Missouri, the largest of the few remaining manufacturers of audio cassettes in the US, oversaw the mass production of the "Awesome Mix #1" cassette from the film Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014. They reported that they had produced more than 10 million tapes in 2014 and that sales were up 20 percent
612-437: A double-coating technique to enhance overall tape output levels. This product was marketed as "High Energy" under its Scotch brand of recording tapes. Inexpensive cassettes commonly are labeled "low-noise", but typically are not optimized for high frequency response . For this reason, some low-grade IEC Type I tapes have been marketed specifically as better suited for data storage than for sound recording. In 1968, DuPont ,
680-497: A foothold for Western culture among the younger generations. Likewise, in Egypt cassettes empowered an unprecedented number of people to create culture, circulate information, and challenge ruling regimes before the internet became publicly accessible. One of the political uses of cassette tapes was the dissemination of sermons by the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini throughout Iran before the 1979 Iranian Revolution , in which Khomeini urged
748-410: A large margin. Philips was competing with Telefunken and Grundig (with their DC International format ) in a race to establish its cassette tape as the worldwide standard, and it wanted support from Japanese electronics manufacturers. Philips' Compact Cassette became dominant as a result of Sony pressuring Philips to license the format to them free of charge. In the early years sound quality
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#1732869187670816-419: A lesser extent in hardcore punk , death metal , and black metal circles, out of a fondness for the format. Even among major-label stars, the form has at least one devotee: Thurston Moore stated in 2009, "I only listen to cassettes." By 2019, few companies still made cassettes. Among those are National Audio Company, from the US, and Mulann, also known as Recording The Masters, from France. Sony announced
884-606: A newly opened Philips factory in Hasselt , Belgium. At the time, this factory mainly produced audio equipment, including turntables , tape recorders , and loudspeakers . In 1960, Ottens became the head of the new product development department in Hasselt. While in this position, he led the development of Philips' first portable tape recorder, the EL 3585. This project proved to be quite successful, with over 1 million units being sold. Building on
952-456: A period in the 1990s. Another barrier to cassettes overtaking vinyl in sales was shoplifting ; compact cassettes were small enough that a thief could easily place one inside a pocket and walk out of a shop without being noticed. To prevent this, retailers in the US would place cassettes inside oversized "spaghetti box" containers or locked display cases , either of which would significantly inhibit browsing, thus reducing cassette sales. During
1020-423: A protective plastic shell which is 4 by 2.5 by 0.5 inches (10.2 cm × 6.35 cm × 1.27 cm) at its largest dimensions. The tape itself is commonly referred to as "eighth-inch" tape, supposedly 1 ⁄ 8 inch (0.125 in; 3.17 mm) wide, but actually slightly larger, at 0.15 inches (3.81 mm). Two stereo pairs of tracks (four total) or two monaural audio tracks are available on
1088-430: A rail to guide the tape to the spool and prevent an unclean roll from forming. Magnetic tape is not an ideal medium for long-term archival storage, as it begins to degrade after 10 – 20 years, with some experts estimating its lifespan to be no more than 30 years. Lou Ottens Lodewijk Frederik Ottens (21 June 1926 – 6 March 2021), known as Lou Ottens , was a Dutch engineer and inventor , best known as
1156-639: A replacement for the VCR, called the Video 2000 . This was a new video cassette system that they had developed in collaboration with Grundig . Each company released separate versions of this recorder, with Ottens responsible for the Philips version. Ottens was confronted with many technical problems very early after the release of the product. Within a few months of the products release, a majority of devices were returned to Philips for repair. In addition to this, production costs of
1224-455: A result of this, a number of Sony's competitors produced their own version of the Walkman. Others made their own branded tape players, like JVC, Panasonic, Sharp, and Aiwa, the second-largest producer of the devices. Between 1985, when cassettes overtook vinyl, and 1992, when they were overtaken by CDs (introduced in 1983 as a format that offered greater storage capacity and more accurate sound),
1292-559: A seven-person team of technicians with experience in digital technology, two of whom came from the Natlab. In 1977, this team developed the first test model of the digital disc. This prompted enthusiasm from Ottens and led to his formation of a dedicated development lab for the project, which he called the Compact Disc Development lab. A small production facility for test discs was created for the development lab. The first full model
1360-501: A trend that continued in 2017 and 2018. In the UK, sales of cassette tapes in 2021 reached its highest number since 2003. Cassettes are favored by some artists and listeners, including those of older genres of music such as dansband , as well as independent and underground artists , some of whom were releasing new music on tape by the 2020s, including Britney Spears and Busta Rhymes . Reasons cited for this include tradition, low cost,
1428-516: A way to reduce the size of their device. The companies agreed on joint development and set a universal standard. Upon returning from his trip to Japan, Ottens became technical director of Philips Video Main Industry Group. This division was much larger than the audio division, and was a major player in the TV set business at the time. In his first year in this role, the video division started to develop
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#17328691876701496-414: Is 0.15 in (3.81 mm) wide, with each mono track 1.5 millimetres (0.059 in) wide, plus an unrecorded guard band between each track. In stereo, each track is further divided into a left and a right channel of 0.6 mm (0.024 in) each, with a gap of 0.3 mm (0.012 in). The tape moves past the playback head at 1 + 7 ⁄ 8 inches per second (4.76 cm/s), the speed being
1564-591: Is 3.8 mm. For mono recording the track width is 1.5 mm. In stereo mode each channel has width of 0.6 mm with a 0.3 mm separation to avoid crosstalk . The head-gap width is 2 μm which gives a theoretical maximum frequency of about 12 kHz (at the standard speed of 1 7/8 ips or 4.76 cm/s). A narrower gap would give a higher frequency limit but also weaker magnetization. Cassette tape adapters allow external audio sources to be played back from any tape player, but were typically used for car audio systems. An attached audio cable with
1632-478: Is normally used to refer to the Compact Cassette because of its ubiquity. Compact Cassettes contain two miniature spools, between which the magnetically coated, polyester -type plastic film (magnetic tape) is passed and wound —essentially miniaturizing reel-to-reel audio tape and enclosing it, with its reels, in a small case (cartridge)—hence "cassette". These spools and their attendant parts are held inside
1700-736: The Berlin Radio Show , and in the United States (under the Norelco brand) in November 1964. The trademark name Compact Cassette came a year later. The team of Dutch and Belgian origin at Philips was led by the Dutch Lou Ottens in Hasselt , Belgium. Philips also offered a machine to play and record the cassettes, the Philips Typ EL 3300 . An updated model, Typ EL 3301 was offered in
1768-491: The DIY ease of use, and a nostalgic fondness for how the format's imperfections lend greater vibrancy to low-fi, experimental music, despite the lack of the "full-bodied richness" of vinyl. Cassette tapes are made of a polyester-type plastic film with a magnetic coating. The original magnetic material was based on gamma ferric oxide (Fe 2 O 3 ). Circa 1970, 3M Company developed a cobalt volume-doping process combined with
1836-568: The Dutch company Philips , the Compact Cassette was released in August 1963. Compact Cassettes come in two forms, either containing content as a prerecorded cassette ( Musicassette ), or as a fully recordable "blank" cassette. Both forms have two sides and are reversible by the user. Although other tape cassette formats have also existed—for example the Microcassette —the generic term cassette tape
1904-474: The Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium (NatLab) for video records could also be used to make improvements in the field of audio. With contactless laser readout for audio, the issue of wear and tear that was common with vinyl records and tapes would no longer be a problem. The requirements and implementation of this technology to audio differed greatly from video, and research for this technology
1972-746: The Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) made use of cassettes to spread their messages. Cassette technology was a booming market for pop music in India , drawing criticism from conservatives while at the same time creating a huge market for legitimate recording companies, as well as pirated tapes. Some sales channels were associated with cassettes: in Spain filling stations often featured a display selling cassettes. While offering also mainstream music these cassettes became associated with genres such as Gipsy rhumba , light music and joke tapes that were common in
2040-477: The 1960s, he managed to release his first LP not until 1987 because of the artist's constant clash with the local communist authority. All lyrics are written by Georgi Minchev. Side A : Side B : Compact Cassette The Compact Cassette , also commonly called a cassette tape , audio cassette , or simply tape or cassette , is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback . Invented by Lou Ottens and his team at
2108-446: The 1970s and 1980s. Despite sales of CDs overtaking those of prerecorded cassettes in the early 1990s in the U.S., the format remained popular for specific applications, such as car audio , personal stereos , boomboxes , telephone answering machines , dictation , field recording , home recording , and mixtapes well into the decade. Cassette players were typically more resistant to shocks than CD players, and their lower fidelity
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2176-624: The Compact Cassette would have never become the world standard. In 1969, Ottens became Director of Philips Hasselt. Under his directions, the Hasselt factory would focus primarily on producing Philips cassette systems, with the popularity of general compact cassettes growing. With a growing demand for compact cassettes, Philips Hasselts grew larger, reaching an employee count of over 5000. In 1972, Ottens became technical director of Philips Main Industry Group Audio. While in this position, Ottens realized that laser technology being researched in
2244-432: The Philips system were moderately high when compared to similar systems. Under Ottens' direction, a second version of the system was developed with new running gear. This system was more compact and reliable, and had shorter start and stop times. It also featured a smaller footprint, lighter weight, and a SCART port, which had not been implemented in the previous version. Further development efforts were made, and by 1984,
2312-498: The US dropped from 442 million in 1990 to 274,000 by 2007. For audiobooks , the final year that cassettes represented more than 50% of total market sales was 2002 when they were replaced by CDs as the dominant media. The last new car with an available cassette player was a 2014 TagAZ AQUiLA. Four years prior, Sony had stopped the production of personal cassette players. In 2011, the Oxford English Dictionary removed
2380-422: The US in November 1964 as Norelco Carry-Corder 150 . By 1966 over 250,000 recorders had been sold in the US alone and Japan soon became the major source of recorders. By 1968, 85 manufacturers had sold over 2.4 million players. By the end of the 1960s, the cassette business was worth an estimated 150 million dollars. By the early 1970s the compact cassette machines were outselling other types of tape machines by
2448-558: The Video 2000 had reliable stereo sound. Also in 1984, Ottens had his factory produce VHS machines that were practically identical to the Video 2000. These machines would end up replacing the Video 2000, which ultimately failed to catch on and was officially cancelled in 1985. After retiring, Ottens remained active in the field of technology for many years. He became chairman of the Dutch Association for Logistics Management in 1988. Ottens
2516-483: The Walkman was the first truly personal portable music player, one that not only allowed users to listen to music away from home, but to do so in private. According to the technology news website The Verge, "the world changed" on the day the TPS-L2 was released. Stereo tape decks and boom boxes became some of the most highly sought-after consumer products of both decades, as the ability of users to take their music with them anywhere with ease led to its popularity around
2584-433: The cassette and its equipment. While developing the cassette, the group often utilized resources and knowledge from the nearby Eindhoven location. In 1963, Philips decided to publicly introduce the cassette system at IFA Berlin . This introduction was not immediately very widely received and did not spark much interest among those in the audio world. However, some photos were taken of the system, which would later be used in
2652-471: The cassette shell indicate the type of tape. Type I cassettes have only write-protect notches, Type II have an additional pair next to the write protection ones, and Type IV (metal) have a third set near the middle of the top of the cassette shell. These allow later cassette decks to detect the tape type automatically and select the proper bias and equalization. The cassette was the next step following reel-to-reel audio tape recording , although, because of
2720-444: The cassette tape was the most popular format in the United States and the UK. Record labels experimented with innovative packaging designs. A designer during the era explained: "There was so much money in the industry at the time, we could try anything with design." The introduction of the cassette single , called a "cassingle", was also part of this era and featured a music single in Compact Cassette form. Until 2005, cassettes remained
2788-478: The dominant medium for purchasing and listening to music in some developing countries , but compact disc (CD) technology had superseded the Compact Cassette in the vast majority of music markets throughout the world by this time. Compact cassettes served as catalysts for social change. Their small size, durability and ease of copying helped bring underground rock and punk music behind the Iron Curtain , creating
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2856-686: The early '70s. By 1968, 85 manufacturers had sold over 2.4 million mono and stereo players. By the end of the 1960s, the cassette business was worth an estimated 150 million dollars. By the early 1970s the compact cassette machines were outselling other types of tape machines by a large margin. The mass production of "blank" (not yet recorded) Compact Cassettes began in 1964 in Hanover , Germany. Prerecorded music cassettes (also known as Music-Cassettes , and later just Musicassettes ; M.C. for short) were launched in Europe in late 1965. The Mercury Record Company ,
2924-498: The early 1960s Philips Eindhoven tasked two different teams to design a tape cartridge for thinner and narrower tape compared to what was used in reel-to-reel tape recorders. By 1962, the Vienna division of Philips developed a single-hole cassette , adapted from its German described name Einloch-Kassette . Philips selected the two-spool cartridge as a winner and introduced the 2-track 2-direction mono version in Europe on 28 August 1963 at
2992-443: The early 1980s some record labels sought to solve this problem by introducing new, larger packages for cassettes which would allow them to be displayed alongside vinyl records and compact discs , or giving them a further market advantage over vinyl by adding bonus tracks . Willem Andriessen wrote that the development in technology allowed "hardware designers to discover and satisfy one of the collective desires of human beings all over
3060-442: The end of cassette Walkman production on 22 October 2010, a result of the emergence of MP3 players such as Apple's iPod. As of 2022, Sony uses the Walkman brand solely for its line of digital media players. In 2010, Botswana-based Diamond Studios announced plans for establishing a plant to mass-produce cassettes in a bid to combat piracy. It opened in 2011. In South Korea, the early English education boom for toddlers encourages
3128-520: The following year, their best year since they opened in 1969. In 2016, cassette sales in the United States rose by 74% to 129,000. In 2018, following several years of shortage, National Audio Company began producing their own magnetic tape, becoming the world's first known manufacturer of an all-new tape stock. Mulann, a company which acquired Pyral/RMGI in 2015 and originates from BASF , also started production of its new cassette tape stock in 2018, basing on reel tape formula. In Japan and South Korea,
3196-456: The globe. Like the transistor radio in the 1950s and 1960s, the portable CD player in the 1990s, and the MP3 player in the 2000s, the Walkman defined the portable music market for the decade of the '80s, with cassette sales overtaking those of LPs . Total vinyl record sales remained higher well into the 1980s due to greater sales of singles, although cassette singles achieved popularity for
3264-404: The inventor of a chromium dioxide (CrO 2 ) manufacturing process, began commercialization of CrO 2 media. The first CrO 2 cassette was introduced in 1970 by Advent , and later strongly backed by BASF , the inventor and longtime manufacturer of magnetic recording tape. Next, coatings using magnetite (Fe 3 O 4 ) such as TDK 's Audua were produced in an attempt to approach or exceed
3332-742: The inventor of the cassette tape , and for his work in helping to develop the compact disc . Ottens was employed by Philips for the entirety of his career. Ottens was born in Bellingwolde on 21 June 1926. Ottens showed an interest in technology and tinkering from an early age. While in his teens, during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II , he constructed a radio that he would use to secretly listen to Radio Oranje broadcasts. In order to avoid Nazi German jammers , Ottens constructed
3400-1124: The labels facing the user and the tape opening at the bottom, the write-protect notch for the corresponding side is at the top-left. Tape length usually is measured in minutes of total playing time. Many of the varieties of blank tape were C60 (30 minutes per side), C90 (45 minutes per side) and C120 (60 minutes per side). Maxell makes 150-minute cassettes (UR-150) - 75 minutes per side. The C46 and C60 lengths typically are 15 to 16 micrometers (0.59 to 0.63 mils) thick, but C90s are 10 to 11 μm (0.39 to 0.43 mils) and (the less common) C120s are just 6 μm (0.24 mils) thick, rendering them more susceptible to stretching or breakage. Even C180 tapes were available at one point. Other lengths are (or were) also available from some vendors, including C10, C12 and C15 (useful for saving data from early home computers and in telephone answering machines ), C30, C40, C50, C54, C64, C70, C74, C80, C84, C94, C100, C105, C110, and C150. As late as 2010, Thomann still offered C10, C20, C30 and C40 IEC Type II tape cassettes for use with 4- and 8-track portastudios . The full tape width
3468-438: The limitations of the cassette's size and speed, it initially compared poorly in quality. Unlike the 4-track stereo open-reel format, the two stereo tracks of each side lie adjacent to each other, rather than being interleaved with the tracks of the other side. This permitted monaural cassette players to play stereo recordings "summed" as mono tracks and permitted stereo players to play mono recordings through both speakers. The tape
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#17328691876703536-450: The market that use a pure (CrO 2 ) coating. Simple voice recorders and earlier cassette decks are designed to work with standard ferric formulations. Newer tape decks usually are built with switches and later detectors for the different bias and equalization requirements for higher grade tapes. The most common are iron oxide tapes (as defined by the IEC 60094 standard ). Notches on top of
3604-526: The overthrow of the regime of the Shah , Mohammad Reza Pahlavi . During the military dictatorship of Chile (1973–1990) a "cassette culture" emerged where blacklisted music or music that was by other reasons not available as records was shared. Some pirate cassette producers created brands such as Cumbre y Cuatro that have in retrospect received praise for their contributions to popular music. Armed groups such as Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR) and
3672-563: The phrase "cassette player" from its 12th edition Concise version, which prompted some media sources to mistakenly report that the term "cassette tape" was being removed. In India, music continued to be released on the cassette format due to its low cost until 2009. Although portable digital recorders are most common today, analog tape remains a desirable option for certain artists and consumers. Underground and DIY communities release regularly, and sometimes exclusively, on cassette format, particularly in experimental music circles and to
3740-585: The pop acts Seiko Matsuda , SHINee , and NCT 127 released their material on limited-run cassettes. In Reiwa era Japan, the revived popularity of cassette tapes is an example of Showa retro . In the mid-to-late 2010s, cassette sales saw a modest resurgence concurrent with the vinyl revival . As early as 2015, the retail chain Urban Outfitters , which had long sold LPs , started selling new pre-recorded cassettes (both new and old albums), blank cassettes, and players. In 2016, cassette sales increased,
3808-587: The production of Japanese copies of Ottens' system, which were notably larger in size than the original. Wilhelmus F.A. Heylands, a Dutch civil engineer and inventor in Ottens' team at Philips Hasselt, who graduated from TH Aachen (Germany), often explained that the reason for Philips' breakthrough with the Compact Cassette , was the fact that they offered this patent and invention for free to other manufacturers of similar hardware such as National and Sony. Without this,
3876-631: The radio with a primitive directional antenna . After the war, Ottens began attending the Delft University of Technology , where he studied mechanical engineering . While attending university, Ottens worked part time as a drafting technician for an X-ray technology factory. He graduated in 1952. In 1952, Ottens was hired by Philips . He started in the mechanization department of the Main Industry Group in Eindhoven . In 1957, he transferred to
3944-488: The set made it not suitable for their desired product. Philips eventually decided to develop their own cassette, with RCA's cassette as a starting point. Ottens started the design of the cassette by cutting a block of wood to fit into his jacket pocket. This wood block would become the model for what became the first portable cassette recorder, the EL 3300. Ottens managed a team of ten or twelve workers who had experience in designing gramophones and tape recorders to develop
4012-906: The size even further, to 11.5 cm, so that the discs would be compatible with existing car radio systems. The laser for the ALP also had to be modified from what was used in VLP's, as the VLP laser was too large for the design that Ottens envisioned. Using resources from the NatLab, a new solid state laser was developed that was smaller and more suitable for Ottens design. However, after years of experimentation, Ottens and his team determined that analog technology would cause too much background noise and would not be able to compete with gramophone records. They subsequently decided to start development on new digital technology. As Philips' audio division did not have adequate in-house knowledge for developing this technology, Ottens formed
4080-482: The sound quality of vinyl records . Cobalt - adsorbed iron oxide (Avilyn) was introduced by TDK in 1974 and proved very successful. "Type IV" tapes using pure metal particles (as opposed to oxide formulations) were introduced in 1979 by 3M under the trade name Metafine. The tape coating on most cassettes sold as of 2024 are either "normal" or "chrome" consists of ferric oxide and cobalt mixed in varying ratios (and using various processes); there are very few cassettes on
4148-420: The success of the EL 3585, Philips Hasselt started working on plans to develop a portable cassette recorder . The goal for this "pocket recorder," as it was nicknamed, was to be inexpensive and small, with low battery consumption but reasonable sound quality. Originally, Philips planned on working with RCA and using their RCA tape cartridge system cassette, but Ottens found that the dimensions and tape speed of
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#17328691876704216-528: The tape; one stereo pair or one monophonic track is played or recorded when the tape is moving in one direction and the second (pair) when moving in the other direction. This reversal is achieved either by manually flipping the cassette when the tape comes to an end, or by the reversal of tape movement, known as "auto-reverse", when the mechanism detects that the tape has ended. After the Second World War , magnetic tape recording technology proliferated across
4284-551: The world, independent of region, climate, religion, culture, race, sex, age and education: the desire to enjoy music at any time, at any place, in any desired sound quality and almost at any wanted price". Critic Robert Palmer , writing in The New York Times in 1981, cited the proliferation of personal stereos as well as extra tracks not available on LP as reasons for the surge in popularity of cassettes. Cassettes' ability to allow users to record content in public also led to
4352-508: The world. In the United States, Ampex , using equipment obtained in Germany as a starting point, began commercial production of tape recorders . First used in studios to record radio programs, tape recorders quickly found their way into schools and homes. By 1953, 1 million US homes had tape machines. In 1958, following four years of development, RCA Victor introduced the stereo, quarter-inch, reversible, reel-to-reel RCA tape cartridge . In
4420-490: Was finalized by March 1979. It was presented by project lead Joop Sinjou at a two-day press conference in Eindhoven to over 300 journalists. Immediately after the conference, Ottens and Sinjou traveled to Japan, wanting to gain support for the compact disc and make it a world standard. While on the trip, they reached an agreement with Sony, who was ahead of Philips in digital development and optical recording, but had not yet found
4488-413: Was mediocre, but it improved dramatically by the early 1970s when it caught up with the quality of 8-track tape and kept improving. The Compact Cassette went on to become a popular (and re-recordable ) alternative to the 12-inch vinyl LP during the late 1970s. As with prerecorded reel-to-reel and 8-track, sales were slow to start, but picked up rapidly to tie with the 8-track before superseding it by
4556-501: Was not considered a serious drawback in mobile use. With the introduction of electronic skip protection it became possible to use portable CD players on the go, and automotive CD players became viable. CD-R drives and media also became affordable for consumers around the same time. By 1993, annual shipments of CD players had reached 5 million, up 21% from the year before; while cassette player shipments had dropped 7% to approximately 3.4 million. Sales of pre-recorded music cassettes in
4624-639: Was split into two projects: Video Long Play and Audio Long Play. The development of the Audio Long Play, or ALP, required major changes in design when compared to the Video Long Play. The VLP, being the size of an LP , had space for 48 hours of music. However, Ottens recognized that this was not a practical amount of playing time, and in 1972, he commissioned technicians to start testing with smaller discs. The technicians originally experimented with 17.8 cm plates, and when those proved successful, reduced
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