Tape recording has become extremely popular as a form of sound recording. In old machines, the reels of tape used to be very cumbersome and difficult to handle. Nowadays, the tape cassette's tape is only one-eighth of an inch in thickness, which is half the width of the original open reel decks. The music is encoded onto magnetic tape by stripes of differing magnetism. This magnetism is present within an iron oxide film, coated onto an acetate base strip. If the tape is then transported past a coil of wire in the playback head, the varying levels of magnetism are read, and this induces a similar current to be produced. These signals are then amplified and played through a loudspeaker.
A disadvantage of tape recording is that tape cassettes run at fairly slow speeds, approximately 4.76 centimetres per second, (or one and seven eighths of an inch per second) which means that the tape's high frequency response becomes limited. In a bid to overcome this problem DAT (Digital Audio Tape) has been introduced. These tapes require a special playback recorder but boast a recording quality higher than compact disc!
The major drawback with DAT is that existing compact cassettes cannot be replayed on DAT machines. Philips have recently announced DCC (Digital Compact Cassette), similar in nature to DAT, but DCC players will also play standard audio cassettes.
