Editing Cassette tape (section)

===Audio===
[[File:Panasonic-Anrufbeantworter.jpg|thumb|upright|A dual cassette-based Panasonic [[answering machine]]]]
[[File:Aiwa cassette player..jpg|thumb|An early-2000s portable cassette recorder designed for basic dictation and voice recording]]
The Compact Cassette originally was intended for use in [[dictation machine]]s.<ref name="TheRegister" /> In this capacity, some later-model cassette-based dictation machines could also run the tape at half speed (<sup>15</sup>⁄<sub>16</sub> in/s) as playback quality was not critical. The cassette soon became a medium for distributing prerecorded music—initially through the Philips Record Company (and subsidiary labels [[Mercury Records|Mercury]] and [[Philips Records|Philips]] in the US). As of 2009, one still found cassettes used for a variety of purposes, such as [[journalism]], oral history, meeting and interview transcripts, audio books, and so on. Police are still big buyers of cassette tapes, as some lawyers "don't trust digital technology for interviews".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2009/05/19/demand_actually_increasing_for_cassette_tapes |title=Demand actually increasing for cassette tapes |publisher=AfterDawn |date=18 May 2009 |access-date=25 February 2014 |archive-date=17 November 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151117023942/http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2009/05/19/demand_actually_increasing_for_cassette_tapes |url-status=live }}</ref> However, they are starting to give way to Compact Discs and more "compact" digital storage media. Prerecorded cassettes were also employed as a way of providing chemotherapy information to recently diagnosed cancer patients as studies found anxiety and fear often gets in the way of the information processing.<ref>Aston, Val. "Chemotherapy Information for Patients and their Families: Audio Cassettes, a New Way Forward". ''[[European Journal of Oncology Nursing]]''. 2.1 (1998): 67-8.</ref>

The cassette quickly found use in the commercial music industry. One artifact found on some commercially produced music cassettes was a sequence of test tones, called [[SDR (audio)|SDR]] (Super Dynamic Range, also called XDR, or eXtended Dynamic Range) soundburst tones, at the beginning and end of the tape, heard in order of low frequency to high. These were used during SDR/XDR's duplication process to gauge the quality of the tape medium. Many consumers objected to these tones since they were not part of the recorded music.<ref>{{cite web|title=Analysis of an SDR Cassette Tape|url=http://www.lenrek.net/experiments/sdr-cassette/|date=April 2009|access-date=31 August 2009|archive-date=26 January 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210126055603/http://www.lenrek.net/experiments/sdr-cassette/|url-status=live}}</ref>