Introduction - Moving from Cassette to CD

Many churches operate a "tape ministry" - recordings of their church services for shut-ins, missionaries, and others who cannot attend regular Sunday worship. But with cassette technology now over 40 years old, perhaps the time to move on has arrived.

If it's not broke, why fix it?

The humble cassette has served us well - low cost, easy duplication, reasonably robust, and everyone has a player. Well at least that's how it looked a few years ago. But with many manufacturers pulling out of the cassette market completely, things are beginning to change. The downward price spiral for blank cassettes has stopped, duplication equipment is becoming more difficult to obtain while maintenance costs remain relatively high, and the once standard car cassette players have been replaced by CD players in even the most basic models. The days of the cassette are numbered.

Compact Disc - the right move?

The Compact Disc is not a new invention by any means - it was invented by Sony and Philips in 1979, and came to the market in the early 80's. Unlike other formats which have come and gone (anyone still got a Digital Cassette Deck, or know where to buy pre-recorded MiniDiscs?), the CD has become a well established standard. Like the cassette before it, it is now a very low cost medium, is robust, and players are cheap and easily available. Portable players can be picked up for around £15 in supermarkets, and as already mentioned, CD's are fast becoming the standard for in-car entertainment.

What has changed recently is the ease with which consumers can easily produce high-quality duplicated CD's at very low cost. Computer duplication has been around for a few years now, and sticky-label printers were a reasonable way of achieving a semi-professional finish. But new low cost technology has reduced the cost of duplication, and increased the quality of finished products even further, as we shall see.

> Mastering CD's