Most common format
Compact Cassette
The standard Philips Compact Cassette used for music, home recordings, interviews, spoken word and personal archives.
Professional transfer of compact cassettes, microcassettes, dictaphone tapes and related audio formats to high-quality digital files.
Discuss Your Tapes →Compact cassettes can contain irreplaceable family recordings, interviews, music, lectures, oral histories and personal memories. We carefully transfer your tapes and create digital files that are easier to access, share and preserve.
Digital output options: WAV • BWF • AIFF • MP3 • CD. Archive transfers can be supplied at up to 24-bit / 192 kHz where appropriate.
The term “cassette” covers several related formats and recording systems. The physical cassette, tape formulation, recording mode and intended equipment can all affect the transfer process.
The standard Philips Compact Cassette used for music, home recordings, interviews, spoken word and personal archives.
Common Compact Cassette playing times. Longer tapes such as C120 use thinner tape and can require particularly careful handling.
Ferric tape, the most widely encountered Compact Cassette formulation. Found across domestic music, voice and home-recording collections.
Higher-performance tape used for music and higher-quality recordings. Often marked Chrome, CrO₂ or High Bias.
An early dual-layer cassette formulation. Less common today, but important when working with historic or specialist collections.
Metal-particle tape designed for high-quality recording. These cassettes can be found in premium music and enthusiast collections.
Small-format magnetic cassettes commonly used in dictation machines, compact recorders and personal voice-recording equipment.
Voice-recording formats used for dictation, interviews, meetings and office records. The recorder and cassette type can vary considerably.
A compact digital tape format used extensively for professional, broadcast, music and archival recordings. Transfer requires compatible DAT equipment.
Some collections contain a mixture of domestic Compact Cassettes and professional or specialist cassette-based media.
Digital multitrack recording on S-VHS-based cassettes, used in professional and project studios.
Digital Audio Tape used for masters, location recording, broadcast and professional audio archives.
Many family collections combine cassettes with open-reel recordings. We can preserve both as part of one audio project.
Magnetic tape is vulnerable to age, contamination, mechanical problems and deterioration. A cassette may look perfectly normal while the tape, shell, pressure pad or internal mechanism has become fragile.
We work with individual family recordings as well as larger collections containing interviews, oral histories, lectures, music and historic sound recordings.
For important material, we can provide high-quality WAV/BWF preservation files alongside convenient MP3 access copies, making the recordings easier to use while retaining a high-quality master.
Explore Audio Preservation →If you are unsure whether your tape is a standard Compact Cassette, Microcassette, Dictaphone format, DAT or another specialist format, send us a photograph and we can help identify it.