Naxos Picks Up Delos Distribution – Today the largest independent distributor of classical recordings in the U.S., Naxos of America, begins physical and digital distribution of the California-based classical label Delos. Founded by the late Amelia Haygood in l973, Delos was the first independent label to offer CDs and has issued many matrix surround sound CDs as well as a dozen SACDs. The late noted sound engineer and author John Eargle was the label’s Director of Recording, winning a Grammy Award for Sound Engineering in 2001. Some of the luminaries in music on the Delos label include Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, David Shifrin and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, conductor Gerard Schwarz, cellist Janos Starker, flutist Jean Pierre Rampal, The Moscow Chamber Orchestra under Constantine Orbelian, the Dallas Symphony under Andrew Litton, the New Jersey Symphony under Zdenek Macal, the Oregon Symphony under James DePriest and theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore. Concert pianist Carol Rosenberger – who also has a number of distinguished Delos recordings – is Delos’ current director.
So Long Cassettes – NYC publisher Hachette recently threw a mock funeral event for the passing of a piece of technology – the audiocassette. The convenient little tapes were dumped by the music industry some time ago, but lived on with publishers of audio books. A number of outlets continue with them – they are preferred by many people for book readings and audio dramas because it is simple to pick up where you left off, to rewind in case you missed a sentence, more older cars have cassette players in them, and they’re the cheapest media. (The median age of the 200 million cars and trucks on America’s roads is nine years old, and the majority of them probably have cassette players in them – though of course they don’t all work. But in 2007 only 4% of new U.S. vehicles had factory-installed cassette players.)
Hachette gave up on cassettes, releasing its last book on tape in June. A spokesman for the Consumer Electronics Association said even if all music and talk cassette production came to a halt today, “…people would still shop for tape players because of the huge libraries of legacy content which consumers have kept.” In 1994 sales of portable cassette players peaked at 18 million, but are now around 400,000 and expected to taper down to 86,000 in 2012.
Cassettes really took off in l979 when Sony introduced their Walkman portable. It was a big and heavy contraption and sensitive to motion, yet was used by joggers and walkers – the iPod of its day. The enhancement of Dolby B noise reduction reduced cassettes’ hiss and put music cassettes on the map along with inventor Ray Dolby. It was later followed by the further improvement of Dolby C, but the super-fidelity codec of Dolby S arrived too late to save the audiocassette because the new compact disc was on the scene. At one time there were several labels offering audiophile cassettes, dubbed in real time on chromium or metal tape. (I wrote a magazine column reviewing them for some years; I don’t own an iPod because I still have thousands of music cassettes.) Their fidelity often surpassed the CD version and occasionally even the vinyl. Manufacturers such as Nakamichi and Aiwa produced high-end cassette decks which squeezed often unbelievably excellent sonics out of the tiny 1/7th of an inch analog tape traveling at only 1 7/8 inches per second.
In 2006 cassettes accounted for only 7% of sales in the audio-book industry. Publishers such as Macmillan and Random House have also stopped producing books on cassette in the last couple years, but there are holdouts. Recorded Books issues about 700 titles a year. Most libraries also offer many books on cassette. The CES spokesman observed that he feels in about three years cassettes will go the way of eight-track tapes. To keep your tapes alive longer, don’t leave them in the sun or hot car, and store them in played rather than rewound position. Also, clean the heads and rubber rollers of your players regularly with alcohol or use a head-cleaner tape in your car unit.
