alt Hacker News>but it is really hard to make a good sounding cassette, particularly if you dont know what you are doing (like me).
All these modern cassette players use the same super basic mechanism. To make a good sounding tape you would need vintage hardware with Dolby noise reduction and less wow/flutter.
Yeah, with high-end vintage decks in good shape, tapes can sound pretty decent, more than enough for day-to-day listening.
A type I tape recorded on a modern player? It'll sound horrible.