Audio Cassette - Successors

Successors

Elcaset was a short-lived audio format created by Sony in 1976 that was about twice the size, using larger tape and a higher recording speed. Unlike the original cassette, the Elcaset was designed from the outset for sound quality. It was never widely accepted, as the quality of standard cassette decks rapidly approached high fidelity.

Technical development of the cassette effectively ceased when digital recordable media, such as DAT and MiniDisc, were introduced in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Anticipating the switch from analog to digital format, major companies, such as Sony, shifted their focus to new media. In 1992, Philips introduced the Digital Compact Cassette (DCC), a DAT-like tape in almost the same shell as compact audio cassette. It was aimed primarily at the consumer market. A DCC deck could play back both types of cassettes. Unlike DAT, which was accepted in professional usage because it could record without lossy compression effects, DCC failed in both home and mobile environments, and was discontinued in 1996.

The microcassette has in many cases supplanted the full-sized audio cassette in situations where voice-level fidelity is all that is required, such as in dictation machines and answering machines. Even these, in turn, are starting to give way to digital recorders of various descriptions. Since the rise of cheap CD-R discs, and flash memory-based digital audio players, the phenomenon of "home taping" has effectively switched to recording to Compact Disc or downloading from commercial or music sharing Web sites.

Because of consumer demand, the cassette has remained influential on design, more than a decade after its decline as a media mainstay. As the Compact Disc grew in popularity, cassette-shaped audio adapters were developed to provide an economical and clear way to obtain CD functionality in vehicles equipped with cassette decks. A portable CD player would have its analog line-out connected to the adapter, which in turn fed the signal to the head of the cassette deck. These adapters continue to function with MP3 players as well, and generally are more reliable than the FM transmitters that must be used to adapt CD players to MP3s. MP3 players shaped as audio cassettes have also become available, which can be inserted into any audio cassette player and communicate with the head as if they were normal cassettes.