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The Japanese Hi-Fi Company Keeping a Classic Audio Format Alive

As vintage audio continues its renaissance, only one hi-fi company is making modern players for this classic format.

Teac cassette tape deckTeac

By Tucker Bowe

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Classic cassette tapes may not be as trendy as vinyl or even CDs but they’re still making some noise. According to recent reports, sales of the analog audio format have increased each of the last ten years. In 2023, sales reached a two-decade high.

Part of the reason you might be tempted to get back into cassette tapes is the analog experience. You get to see the tape rotate, hear the player’s mechanical clicks and touch the cassette when rewinding or flipping sides.

And, similar to vinyl, it delivers a warm (and sometimes imperfect) sound that is endearing to hi-fi enthusiasts.

Cassette tapes
Cassette tape sales have increased year over year for over a decade.
Photo by Henry Phillips for Gear Patrol

Believe it or not, cassette tapes are still readily available, even for new albums. Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa, Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo and Harry Styles all made cassette tapes of their latest releases.

Stack the deck

While cassette tapes themselves are easy to come by, however, high-end players are a different story.

You can go the portable route. In fact, FiiO just released a cool transparent player. But most examples on offer aren’t exactly audiophile-grade, so it’s best to steer clear here if high fidelity is the end goal.

You can also shop vintage. Then again, working vintage cassette tapes are incredibly scarce, while those sold for parts can be tricky and expensive to repair.

That leaves you with one option: Teac. The Japanese hi-fi giant has produced cassette decks since 1968 — when it released Teac A-20 — and it still currently makes two players: the Teac W-1200 and the Teac AD-850-SE.

Old-school vibes, new-school sound

The Teac W-1200 is a classic duel cassette deck, each side supporting playback and recording. There’s a mic input for recording karaoke sessions and even a USB output for digitizing your cassettes and uploading them to your computer (up to CD quality audio or 16-bit/48kHz).

The Teac AD-850-SE is quite similar except it sacrifices one of those cassette decks for a CD player, so it can play both old-school audio formats. It also allows you to record mixtapes from one format to the other.

Teac cassette tape deck
Modern Teac players may look old-school but they have the latest noise-reduction technology to reduce tape hiss.
Teac

What’s more, Teac’s modern cassette decks maintain the classic look and feel of previous generations but are updated every few years with the latest noise-reduction technology (equivalent to Dolby NR) to reduce tape hiss.

“These models exist for the people who want to enjoy the sound of the cassette tapes casually and with a certain sound quality,” says Jo Yoshida, Teac’s brand manager. “But they don’t want to deal with the risk of breakdown [or] deterioration over time.”

“These models exist for the people who want to enjoy the sound of the cassette tapes casually and with a certain sound quality.”

As the popularity of cassette tapes continues to trend upward, more and more people are investing in cassette decks, too.

According to Yoshida, sales of both models increased between 120 and 150 percent during the pandemic. Sales slowed for a short time afterward but are climbing back up now.

“Sales in 2023 beat 2022,” he says. “And it appears that 2024 will beat 2023.”

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