davorp
Rock on!
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Tell us about your stereo!
- Thread starter Hepcat
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Hepcat
retired
Interesting article!
Craig in Indy
Your cool Uncle
Anyone remember Sony's ill-fated Elcaset? It was a large-format analog tape cassette format that was said to provide the benefits of reel-to-reel (tape width and speed) and cassettes (a closed, contained shell to protect the tape), though its size was considerably larger than cassettes, and therefore of questionable portability.
Unfortunately for Sony, it came along right when all the major advancements were being made in compact cassette tape formulations, and in noise reduction technology by Dolby Labs and others, so the Elcaset's raison d'etre (reduced hiss, extended frequency response and greater dynamic range, all in a cassette-enclosed tape medium) was short-lived. I remember one reviewer at the time calling it the perfect solution to a non-existent problem.
No question, though - for gearheads it would have been pretty neat - imagine a piece of equipment that used big honkin' hi-tech cassettes. Wouldn't that have been a cool thing to have around?
Unfortunately for Sony, it came along right when all the major advancements were being made in compact cassette tape formulations, and in noise reduction technology by Dolby Labs and others, so the Elcaset's raison d'etre (reduced hiss, extended frequency response and greater dynamic range, all in a cassette-enclosed tape medium) was short-lived. I remember one reviewer at the time calling it the perfect solution to a non-existent problem.
No question, though - for gearheads it would have been pretty neat - imagine a piece of equipment that used big honkin' hi-tech cassettes. Wouldn't that have been a cool thing to have around?
Craig in Indy
Your cool Uncle
I don't have any pics of any the tape decks themselves, but here's a shot of one of the cassettes, with a standard compact cassette in the foreground for scale:
Craig in Indy
Your cool Uncle
Oh, no question they required a different player. And not just because of the size of the cassette. Like most R-to-R machines, Sony's Elcaset machines had 3 heads, where most cassette decks of the time had only two (until Nakamichi ushered in the era of truly high-fidelity cassette decks). Plus the tape was wider, and ran at a higher speed. And like they did with the Betamax VCR decks, the tape was mechanically withdrawn from the cassette body and stabilized on capstains and rollers inside the guts of the deck, so as to reduce wow and flutter. That way the quality of the recording and playback process wasn't as the mercy of a potentially poorly made tape shell mechanism. That was an admirable effort, but I lost count of how many times I had a Betamax machine crap out on me with a tape inside of it, with no way to eject the cassette.
Yeah and to top it all off Sony being complete morons refused to just patent it collect royalties and allow others to use the Beta format...end result VHS slaughtered them on the consumer side of things.
If I did buy one of those decks I would have hung on to it for sure. I almost bought a Revox reel to reel deck on e-bay three years ago, I was in a collecting mood but that has passed now.
If I did buy one of those decks I would have hung on to it for sure. I almost bought a Revox reel to reel deck on e-bay three years ago, I was in a collecting mood but that has passed now.
A 15 year old Technics receiver, 2 big ass Cerwin Vega speakers and a Sony CD player/burner. I rarely listen to that one, though. Usually just a hundred dollar Sony CD/Tuner/Audio In job with XM Radio plugged in and usually through a pair of Bose headphones. I've got just under 2,000 CDs and one day soon I'll need to rip them all to wav files. Not today, though.
