Some music cassettes have a muffled sound, some don't?
Hey everyone! I have a lot of cassettes from the 80s with recordings of various songs. I've noticed that on some cassettes, the sound is slowly getting weaker, while on others, the sound sounds almost exactly the same as it did back then. It can't be the brand, since I've mostly used the same brand of cassette. Could it be the device used for recording?
If it sounds dull, it’s sometimes just because the recordings come from other devices and the track is not properly adjusted. With such cassettes, it makes sense to copy them to a digital carrier with a corrected track.
If the recordings are quiet, they might have been too low from the beginning. Or the cassettes were incorrectly stored, for example near devices and their power supplies.
These are usually ferro-bands (type 1). On the one hand, the (if taken up) sound already dull, more on the device on which they were taken. On the other hand, these ferro bands are not as durable as chrome bands and sometimes dissolve, especially old BASF bands. In some cases, however, it also has to do with incorrect storage (too high temperature differences, near electrical devices…)