We forget what sound “used” to sound like. Long before the days of digital – streaming – bitrates – cloning – DATs – CD’s, it was all so much simpler then. The average home stereo for anyone who could afford it anywhere in the world was basic; turntable, amplifier or perhaps a receiver, a cassette deck, a reel-to-reel machine if you fancied yourself an “audiophile” and of course speakers.
Simple setup, and in 1979 there really wasn’t much in the way of improvement, save for small tweaks and accessories, or whatever technical advances came along in the area of recording. Cassettes were very big at the time, they came a long way since the late 1960s/early 1970s where cassettes weren’t considered for playing back Music but rather recording voice; on-the-spot reporting or lectures and interviews. But cassettes became an industry staple by 1979 – and so there was a clamor to improve the musical aspect of the cassette, subsequently all the different grades of tape and the different biases of machines that flooded the market in the late 70s.
In 1979 and the big introduction at the HI-Fi ’79 Exhibition in London was Metal Cassette Tape – a tape whose primary backing was metal particles as opposed to Oxide particles of the regular tape.
Since the big electronic firms (mostly from Japan) were busy introducing new standards to the industry, the big drawback (and resulting failure) of Metal Cassette Tape was that it could only function properly on a Cassette machine able to take Metal Tape – and that proved to be a tough sell, much as the Elcaset was when Sony introduced it in the mid-70s. The Mini-stereo systems were just being introduced in Japan and noise reduction applications consisted of little black boxes called DBX – or built in systems called Dolby. Like VHS vs. Beta only two or three years earlier, DBX and Dolby were in competition
CD’s weren’t invented yet – and digital recording was only in experimental stages. We had no wi-fi – no mp3 – no cellphones – those were all off in a future that hadn’t been considered yet – or was deemed part of Science Fiction.
So this report, which was broadcast on BBC Radio 2 in June of 1979 as part of the program “Round Midnight” with Bryan Mathew was probably not heard by many people as it was broadcast at one in the morning, hardly a peak hour. The reporter, Adrian Hope gives a rundown of the Exhibition – new products and the introduction of “half-speed mastering”, which became huge with collectors in the late 70’s as well as products for ridding static electricity from vinyl.
Strange, listening to this report, realizing most of what’s being discusses as ‘new and exciting” is obsolete by now – much of it has been forgotten about. But if you’re fan the evolution of home audio, this interview offers some interesting insights.
