At a boot sale, I came across a high-end Sony Walkman for the princely sum of £1. A few cars down were a box of 45 cassettes for £4. As a fan of Vinyl, I thought it pertinent to give the cassette a re-evaluation.
The Sony WM EX550 harks from about 1997, so is 30 years old and needed some TLC. a new belt brought my total outlay to £10, but I was then pleasantly surprised at how good it sounded through the same Sennheiser earbuds which I usually use with my iPod and 320K mp3 files. Sure, there was some background hiss, but what really impressed me was the detail present.
Listening to familiar material like Queen live at Wembley you hear crowd banter and keyboard fills which are clear on vinyl as well, but sadly missing on mp3. For all its drawbacks cassette is a none lossy format which can deliver an excellent portable listening experience without breaking the bank. It would be nice to think that polyester is the new vinyl. Let’s hope the hipsters don’t latch on and price it out of the market.