How About Creating a Modern Cassette Player?

[restorer-john]

If Fosi could make a basic deck like this one, with good playback heads, it would probably fulfill what most of the current market needs.

The entire premise is nothing more than clickbait from Fosi.

People really have no comprehension of the development and manufacturing costs for high quality miniaturised cassette deck mechanisms and heads.

They would burn their entire R&D budget for the next decade before they got past the front panel and eject mechanism, letalone the head block, transport mechanism and drive components. It took the resources of the world's biggest manufacturers, 30 years to get cassette decks to a point where they surpassed all the characteristics of vinyl. Budgets in the many millions from each. Entire teams of the best engineers in the world. All that ended rapidly once CD took over. By 2000, there wasn't a cassette deck worth buying. Even by the mid 90s, cassette decks were a shadow of themselves from just 5 years before.

The technology is long gone, obsolete and cannot be replicated for what is basically a small market whim.

 

[Doodski]

The entire premise is nothing more than clickbait from Fosi.

People really have no comprehension of the development and manufacturing costs for high quality miniaturised cassette deck mechanisms and heads.

They would burn their entire R&D budget for the next decade before they got past the front panel and eject mechanism, letalone the head block, transport mechanism and drive components. It took the resources of the world's biggest manufacturers, 30 years to get cassette decks to a point where they surpassed all the characteristics of vinyl. Budgets in the many millions from each. Entire teams of the best engineers in the world. All that ended rapidly once CD took over. By 2000, there wasn't a cassette deck worth buying. Even by the mid 90s, cassette decks were a shadow of themselves from just 5 years before.

The technology is long gone, obsolete and cannot be replicated for what is basically a small market whim.

The entire production mechanism presently in place does not provide spare parts nor does it ever have any intention of doing that. Warranty service is a liability. Etc etc...

 

[restorer-john]

The entire production mechanism presently in place does not provide spare parts nor does it ever have any intention of doing that. Warranty service is a liability. Etc etc...

Yeah, it's hilarious. Here's a Pioneer CT-91a mech.

We have diecast alloys, cast and pressed steel, plastic, nylon, ceramics, spring steel, many precision machined (to sub microns) polished shafts and bearings, 3-4 motors (servo), solenoids, optical encoders and heads that cost upwards of $200 or more at replacement cost. And that was in 1989.

The Fosi guys should go buy a real cassette deck, remove the cover and look in awe, instead of silly pie in the sky thought bubble threads.

 

[Doodski]

Yeah, it's hilarious. Here's a Pioneer CT-91a mech.

We have diecast alloys, cast and pressed steel, plastic, nylon, ceramics, spring steel, many precision machined (to sub microns) polished shafts and bearings, 3-4 motors (servo), solenoids, optical encoders and heads that cost upwards of $200 or more at replacement cost. And that was in 1989.

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The Fosi guys should go buy a real cassette deck, remove the cover and look in awe, instead of silly pie in the sky thought bubble threads.

In the high end car cassette head units they commonly used a core mechanism and by swapping out a driver PCB plus a large plunger one could opt in for a feature and so the manufacturers differentiated themselves and with of course outrageously awesome W&F test specs. IF there was a common core product that was a cassette mechanism would there be enough support for that to offer one at retail for multiple brands names so they can spread the mechanism expense(s) around?

 

[rgpit]

How about a high quality DAC with DSP crossover instead? It would pair nicely with your new power amps.

 

[frogmeat69]

Cassettes suck, no thanks.

 

[mhardy6647]

Yeah, it's hilarious. Here's a Pioneer CT-91a mech.

We have diecast alloys, cast and pressed steel, plastic, nylon, ceramics, spring steel, many precision machined (to sub microns) polished shafts and bearings, 3-4 motors (servo), solenoids, optical encoders and heads that cost upwards of $200 or more at replacement cost. And that was in 1989.

View attachment 365876

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The Fosi guys should go buy a real cassette deck, remove the cover and look in awe, instead of silly pie in the sky thought bubble threads.

... and at least three of those little springy-clippy bits absorb enough energy when liberated from their original location during disassembly that each creates its own itty-bitty black hole and then vanishes past the event horizon.

... or maybe that's just whenever I try to replace belts on a cassette deck.

 

[Doodski]

... and at least three of those little springy-clippy bits absorb enough energy when liberated from their original location during disassembly that each creates its own itty-bitty black hole and then vanishes past the event horizon.

... or maybe that's just whenever I try to replace belts on a cassette deck.

It's one thing to do DIY service at home and a completely different thing when one has a service agreement for warranty service, replacement parts, literature etc.

 

[DJNX]

I'd be interested. I would only care about three things:

-Very low wow & flutter
-1 ohm output impedance for the headphone out
-Replaceable battery or option for AA

 

[Doodski]

I'd be interested. I would only care about three things:

-Very low wow & flutter
-1 ohm output impedance for the headphone out
-Replaceable battery or option for AA

For personal cassette systems look to Sony and Panasonic. To see what a full blown in-house team can offer and make money at.

 

[EERecordist]

I have young friends who do cassette releases and used music stores can get ridiculous prices for original commercial cassette releases. I don't think there is a market for what you are proposing. Young vintage aficionados can get a player in a thrift store that records too. Some people just collect vintage media and display it without ever playing it.

That being said, the SoundBurger is back.

So I think if you want to manufacture a new cassette deck, you should find an agency to market it, which is expensive. Then the kids can compose mix tapes on their DAW and print it to cassette, which would require record.

 

[Billy Budapest]

The entire premise is nothing more than clickbait from Fosi.

People really have no comprehension of the development and manufacturing costs for high quality miniaturised cassette deck mechanisms and heads.

They would burn their entire R&D budget for the next decade before they got past the front panel and eject mechanism, letalone the head block, transport mechanism and drive components. It took the resources of the world's biggest manufacturers, 30 years to get cassette decks to a point where they surpassed all the characteristics of vinyl. Budgets in the many millions from each. Entire teams of the best engineers in the world. All that ended rapidly once CD took over. By 2000, there wasn't a cassette deck worth buying. Even by the mid 90s, cassette decks were a shadow of themselves from just 5 years before.

The technology is long gone, obsolete and cannot be replicated for what is basically a small market whim.

I don’t think the technology is “long gone.” It’s documented in engineering papers and service manuals. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. To restart manufacturing would be the expensive part. I agree with what you said about it probably being prohibitively expensive.

I am not sure what you mean by calling this thread “clickbait”—there is no way for Fosi to make money off people simply opening the forum thread. That’s what “clickbait” is—a tantalizing headline that leads to a story or video that has little or nothing to do with the headline, yet reading the story or playing the video results in ad dollars going to the author, either by being paid by YouTube or by advertisements on the article page. Fosi’s forum thread doesn’t do this.

 

[tmtomh]

The entire premise is nothing more than clickbait from Fosi.

Is there some unwritten forum rule that we have to be a**holes to manufacturers and assume the worst motives?

Isn't it a good thing - not to mention fun - to have manufacturers posting here to ask what we think of product ideas and to ask for our input before they even design a product? Isn't that the kind of thing a lot of us have always wished we could be a part of?

We can say No thanks to a cassette player without being d**ks to Fosi just for having asked us our opinion.

 

[restorer-john]

Is there some unwritten forum rule that we have to be a**holes to manufacturers and assume the worst motives?

No, of course not and I'm not being an a**hole. I am being 100% realistic- never shy away from saying it how it is.

Seriously, there's zero chance Fosi or any other Chinese company will now, or ever, produce a cassette deck with the rec/play performance of even a mid priced 1970s piano-key mech dolby B cassette deck from any of the big Japanese players. Letalone Dolby C, S or DBX (all those encoders are retired from licensing) equipped machines from 1982 (Dolby C) onwards.

There is also zero chance they will ever come within cooee* of any of the quality portable Walkman style handhelds from the early 1980s onwards. I think people are living in dreamland and have forgotten (if they ever knew) what went into the engineering of those products.

I've got decks with quartz locked direct drive closed loop dual capstans and 4 motors. Responses out to 24kHz. Walkmans with direct drive capstans and W&F below the best TTs. What are they going to use for motors? A cheap pancake Mabuchi clone or are they going to pour a few milllion into developing the motor and control circuitry- nah. And heads? Nobody is making heads of even basic hifi quality in quantity or at a low price. Once answering machines went to digital, and CD took over in the car, that was the end of large scale head manufacture.

I cannot buy a head in 2024 with a response better than 14kHz- they simply are not made. And they are just cheap permalloy costing around $18 each.

The quality tape formulations are simply not made anymore. (thank goodness, the byproducts of manufacture were pretty toxic)- so what are they going to play? Ratty old pre-recorded tapes that spent 15 years on the dashboard in the sun, or buried in a damp suitcase in a basement?

*Australian word.

 

[thewas]

People really have no comprehension of the development and manufacturing costs for high quality miniaturised cassette deck mechanisms and heads.

They would burn their entire R&D budget for the next decade before they got past the front panel and eject mechanism, letalone the head block, transport mechanism and drive components. It took the resources of the world's biggest manufacturers, 30 years to get cassette decks to a point where they surpassed all the characteristics of vinyl. Budgets in the many millions from each. Entire teams of the best engineers in the world. All that ended rapidly once CD took over. By 2000, there wasn't a cassette deck worth buying. Even by the mid 90s, cassette decks were a shadow of themselves from just 5 years before.

The technology is long gone, obsolete and cannot be replicated for what is basically a small market whim.

Exactly, a German magazine measured recently one of the new portable cassette players, probably even my first portable childhood Philips cassette recorder had better FR response than that:

Source: https://www.stereo.de/artikel/fiio-cp13-cassettenspieler-walkman-test

 

[Doodski]

There is also zero chance they will ever come within cooee* of any of the quality portable Walkman style handhelds from the early 1980s onwards. I think people are living in dreamland and have forgotten (if they ever knew) what went into the engineering of those products.

I used to grab a small cardboard box and fill it up with Walkmans and work on them till lunchtime and do this often. I had part numbers memorized, MODs memorized etc and was all about Walkman stuff. You are correct on the Quartz Lock and tidy tape path/transport never coming back.

 

[splitting_ears]

The quality tape formulations are simply not made anymore. (thank goodness, the byproducts of manufacture were pretty toxic)- so what are they going to play? Ratty old pre-recorded tapes that spent 15 years on the dashboard in the sun, or buried in a damp suitcase in a basement?

Some alternatives do exist:

• https://www.recordingthemasters.com/blank-cassettes
• https://www.atrtape.com/products?category=Cassette+Tape

And as mentioned earlier, there are a lot of cassettes being released and sold every day. For independent artists they're much easier to sell at shows (or even online) than CDs, at least here in Europe.

 

[Billy Budapest]

The quality tape formulations are simply not made anymore. (thank goodness, the byproducts of manufacture were pretty toxic)

Something that I find amusing—by the late 80’s, premium normal position tapes (think TDK AR-X, Maxell XLI-S, etc.) exceeded the performance of many Type II tapes and were more or less comparable to metal tapes. Gamma ferric oxide is still produced in bulk today for use in many industries and could be used to produce extremely high quality recording media without resorting to chromium dioxide used in some Type II tapes (the manufacturing of which can result in toxic waste products like hexavalent chromium).

 

[Joe Smith]

I do think the best bet is to keep your old decks running, and have backups, for those of us still enjoying use of tape! The Marantz PMD-502 deck from last decade is a good unit that doesn't break the bank, sounds good, and has a lot of useful features, for instance. And is not that hard to service.

I use new old stock tapes or the current Recording the Masters Fox cassettes, they work pretty well for general purposes.

I think the biggest push for a new basic deck that could play to 15khz is all of the band cassettes still being produced. Might be a niche for a basic playback machine that sounds "good enough." But I agree on this with John, it's a long shot re profitability.

 

[HoweSound]

Really? I still remember the painful process of recording tapes from vinyl, fussing with level matching and hyper-vigilance trying to stop the tape at the exact end of track moment, then cueing the tone arm and hitting record at the precisely correct moment to avoid pops and crackles when the needle hits the disk. Now I just copy my flac library to usb. Not going back.