Audio Tapes

The audio tape is a media format in cassette form, either sold blank or with material pre-recorded for commercial release, which is either played in a cassette player or mini-cassette player depending on the actual type of audio tape being utilized. There are a few different format.

The original audio tape is a full sized cassette, usually thirty minutes on each side, for a total of sixty minutes, though double-sized audio tapes, or one hundred and twenty minutes, sixty per side, also became commercially available either blank for consumer recordings or with pre-recorded material such as music, theatrical productions originally meant for radio and thus sellable through the audio tape format, or audio books in which a popular or classic novel is read aloud by a narrator.

The original sized audio tape made its debut in the 1960's, and in the 1980's Sony developed the Digital Audio Tape, or DAT, which was smaller in size than the original audio tape, and used magnetic strips which could record higher quality sound than its predecessor.

Both the original and DAT format audio tape always competed for popularity with, at first, the LP or record, and then against the Compact Disc once that technology was developed. The contrast between the audio tape and the LP was that the audio tape was smaller and portable, leading Sony to develop the Walkman, so people could listen to music as they traveled, something that could not be done with the large oval LP. Though the sound quality on an LP was vastly superior to that on a cassette, even the DAT, which is why both formats were popular. The compact disc, on the other hand, proved to be a vastly superior technology to the audio tape. Also portable, the sound quality on a CD is even better than that of an LP, and is vastly superior to the audio cassette tape.

Though the audio tape is still available, most technology centered retail stores no longer carry cassette players as part of home entertainment systems, thus rendering the audio cassette an obsolete technology where the music industry is concerned. The cassette is mostly used today in the audio book market, but even that market is being taken over by compact discs.

Many devoted members of various religious faiths attempt to gain new members or develop stronger bonds with those already affiliated with their faith by offering prayer audio tapes. Read more about Prayer Audio Tapes at the Prayer Audio Tapes page.