Today I went in to work and one of my co-workers handed me a couple of old cassettes and asked if I'd burn them for him. They are of a 1989 radio recording.
 
Fortunately, with my RME, I can record the tape without having to stop mixing in Sonar. ;-) that's just too cool.
 
Next, tape sounds really terrible compared to the concert I recorded last weekend. Band aside, what we use today is SOOOOO MUCH BETTER!
 
It's hard to believe I used to take so much pride in my cassettes. Is it possible that my cassettes sounded this bad? haha
 
There's some kinda weird panning or filtering happening. There's almost nothing above 8K... what's up with that??
 

I think one problem is that cassettes might be worn out and thus reduce the quality. I read somewhere that old recordings automatically lose high frequencies. Also maybe the cassettes were originally not recorded using high quality equipment thus making the sound quality of the cassettes worse. And perhaps the cassettes themselves are not of good quality.

One word... Noise reduction.

Ok, so that's two words. Cassette recorders used to have Dolby B or Dolby C or DBX or nothing. If you choose the wrong option on playback it will not sound as it was intended.

What you're describing is some form of noise reduction on playback that wasn't used to record in the first place, hence the loss of everything over 8k.

Most noise reduction systems expect that the recording had some form of pre-empahsis or boost, and as suggested, if it is engaged on playback for a recording that didn't have pre-emphasis then the recording will sound muted.
 
I think it's just as likely that the cassette recorder's or the player's heads have some wear, or maybe the bias adjustment was/is not ideal, or the radio transmission and the routing to the recorder was not providing FM's ideal top end of 15kHz, or perhaps it was an AM transmission pushing the limits of the 5kHz limit.
 
Who knows????? :-)
 
Cassettes had a regrettable noise floor but they also were capable of providing a frequency response that spanned across the traditionally quoted hi-fi range if the equipment was well made, well adjusted, and fed a full range signal.

Tape of all kinds loses it's magnetism slightly as the years go by and that results in reduced sound quality with a loss of highs first followed by increasing muddiness in the overall sound.
 
The ones I love have been literally under the car seat on the floor and are now covered with spilled and dried soda and dust from 200,000 miles of travel and the case is cracked.
 
I've had people hand me cassettes, knowing I'm into recording, and ask me to do the same thing..... "Can you make me a copy of this on CD?"  And after listening to the quality of the contents, I regret telling them yes.  I have used Ozone and noise reduction and still ended up with a pure mess.  I don't take projects like this often, but I can't say "no" to my mother in law..... so I simply preface it with... " No guarantees on the results"....
 
 

The dolby/noise reduction on the play back device was off, but thanks for the comment. Until I read your post, Karen, I had forgotten to check it.
 
There is no bias nob on this deck. The only nob is recording level.
 
Thanks for all the helpful thoughts, everyone!

You could ofc try to hunt for the radio recording online just in case someone who has the rights for that recording has recorded it and put it on some web site where it can be obtained legally.

Hey, has anyone mentioned noise reduction yet? 

Guitarhacker
Tape of all kinds loses it's magnetism slightly as the years go by....

So true. I've got rolls and rolls of duct tape sitting on the workbench that have absolutely no magnetism.
 
 
...
 
 
btw, duct tape has excellent noise reduction characteristics.

Bad tape used in the cassette or both bad.