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The Elcaset was a short-lived audio format
created by Sony in 1976. At that time, it was widely felt that the
compact cassette was never likely to be capable of the same levels
of performance that was available from reel-to-reel systems, yet
clearly the cassette had great advantages in terms of convenience.
The Elcaset system was intended to marry the performance of reel
to reel with cassette convenience. The name "Elcaset" may simply
mean L-cassette, or large cassette.
The cassette itself looked very similar to a standard cassette,
only very much larger - about three times the size. It contained
quarter-inch tape running at 9,5 cm/s (3.75 inches per second),
giving much greater frequency response and dynamic range. One
unusual difference from compact cassettes was that the tape was
withdrawn from the cassette and then run through the transport
mechanism past the heads, so that the manufacturing tolerances of the cassette
shell did not affect sound quality.
The Elcasete also featured fast que and review letting the user
skip to the next song very quickly, it did this by placing a
separate track on the tape to place markers that the system could
detect and stop at. The system was technically excellent, but a total failure in the
marketplace, with a very low take up by a few audiophiles only.
Apart from the bulky cassettes, the performance of standard
cassettes improved dramatically with the use of new materials such
as chromium dioxide, and better manufacturing quality. For most
people, the quality of cassettes was adequate, and the benefits of
the expensive Elcaset system limited.
Other manufactures like Panasonic JVC and Teac produced their own
version of the Elcaset deck under licence from Sony but they too
found sales of the Elcaset deck were doomed. The system was
abandoned in 1980, when Sony liquidated all their stock via
auction. all the remaining systems were bought by a discount
electrical company in Finland. Many people in Finland snapped up
the remaining units at bargain prices.
The Elcaset is another in the long line of formats that were a
good idea at the time. If development of the Elcaset started a few
years before its release date of 1976, the need for a better
cassette standard would of been great, but by 1976 The Compact
Cassette had improved dramatically to an acceptable standard for
the average user. In contrast the first demonstration of a digital
audio disc was in 1977, the first prototype CD was shown in 1979
and eventually released in Europe and Japan in 1982. Many
audiophiles may of been holding off for the CD player to hit the
shelves.
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