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9.2 Which tapes should you use?
In order to make a good recording you must make sure you are using some decent tapes. If you
should choose to use a wrinkly tape that has been lying on the attic for 30 years, stored extremely
hot during summer and extremely cold during winter, then be prepared for a very unreliable
recording.
Now there is no need to buy the most expensive tape you can find, because that was never the
intention of the good people of Commodore, they designed the datasette in a time where tapes
where most likely to be very noisy, the high end audio tapes with super low noise and high
dynamic range were designed many years later. So to make a long story short, the normal regular
(cheap) tape also know as type I is perfectly fine for making you recordings on in a datasette. But to
provide you with some knowledge about the various types of tape existing and how to recognize
them, a short overview below:
Type IV:
tapes referred to as “metal”, it can be identified by the
wider write protect tab hole and extra holes in the center of the tape.
Type III:
tape consisting of ferrichrome (FeCr), it can be identified
by the markings on the tape only, because it has no extra holes and
therefore looks like Type I
Type II:
tape consisting of chrome and cobalt, it can be identified by
the wider write protect tab hole.
Type I:
tape consisting of iron oxide, this tape only has a write
protect tab and does not always carry the marking Type I, simply because
the first type is never really referenced. Think of the movie Back to the
future, Bttf II and Bttf III. When they made the first movie they didn't
know they were going to make two more. Really old tapes most certainly
won't have this marking, newer tapes might have this marking but most
likely won't as it is not a big selling point, when laying on the shelf next to
a Type IV.
Type IV referred to as “Metal” was a completely new formulation. It used pure metal particles
instead of metal oxides, hence the name “Metal” as it is based on pure metal and not on metal-
oxides. These “metal” tapes were a hard-wearing tape with superior frequency response and greater
dynamic range. BUT it also had some disadvantages such as
excess wear on tape heads , and
expensive to buy.
The main reason for all the various types of tapes was because in the 70's Type I tapes were rather
noisy, they had a nasty “hiss” in the background, which was very noticeable when you had some
quiet music and the volume turned up quite high. So tape manufacturers started making tapes that
didn't have this problem. However, the datasette is not a high-end audio recorder, it is a digital
storage device, therefore the small “hiss” noises in the background of the signal are no issue at all
for the data recorded onto a tape. So buying a type IV tape sounds nice at first, but does not offer
real benefits. Also we may state that Type I tapes produced today are of a much better quality then
the ones made in the 70's.
Regarding tape length, just don't use 90 minutes (or longer) tapes, as these tapes are much thinner.
Therefore these kind of tapes are easily damaged. Regular 60min tapes are fine. But shorter tapes
are most likely more preferred if you only intend to store just a single game on a tape. However you
are free to cut the tape to size by opening the tape enclosure, but that's an exercise for the pure
tinkerer and certainly not something for the faint hearted.
2019-10-27 Page 53 of 76 CASSIOPEI v2.0