I have a few music CD-Rs that are almost 10 years old, still perfectly
readable in any CD reader (car/deck/CDROM), with no signs of aging. But
I have also had some CD-Rs that peeled off after just two years. It
really matters how well they are stored and how often they are used. So
number  1. from your post applies to CDs/CD-Rs just as much as it does
to tapes. Number 2. does not make much sense, because even the best
metallic tapes had far worse fidelity than CDs. If you had talked about
vinyls, then yes, there is more information there than on CDs, but not
on tapes (unless you count hiss as valuable information).

If they are used, tapes degrade even faster than CD-Rs because they
develop that anoying hiss and they generaly lose sound quality. Once
they do, they are pretty much garbage, and need to be re-recorded, just
like CD-Rs. And this is the real drawback to tapes, re-recording them.

I have a few thousand albums in mp3 format, but only about 300 album
CD-Rs for my car (I don't carry all at once though). If they should ALL
fail, it would take about 5mins/CD to reburn (about 25h). Soon I won't
even need to do that, because I am planning on buying a car mp3 deck.
That will mean I can carry all the music I'll realisticaly listen to on
about 30 MP3 CD-Rs.

If i were to re-record 300 albums on tape, it would take at least
150-200 hours. Factor in the cost of a CD-R vs. a tape, and CD-Rs are by
far more economical. A CD-R costs about 20-40c, while a tape is at least
twice that if you can still find them, since they aren't manufactured
anymore.

You may disagree, but tapes should just go the way of the dinosaurs.

Cosmin

Not intending to get into the "analog vs. digital" argument, but I couldn't
resist answering once more...

Nothing is forever. Eventually everything will rot. Does "properly stored"
imply "not ever being played"? The big difference between optical media such
as CDs and tapes is that there is physical contact, wear and tear between
head and tape that will wear out the tape (if listened to).

Go to read Shannon and Nyquist, then come back and explain how there's more
information on tapes. Note - the CD's odd sampling format (44.1kHz) comes
from the fact that the first digital studio recordings were stored on VHS
recorders. VHS recorders were used because a linear tape (such as audio
tape) just does not have enough bandwidth to carry the data. The VHS tape,
with it's staggered diagonal recording, manages a much higher data rate, and
(including error correction codes) this worked out to a practical maximum
sampling frequency of 44.1kHz.

So there. VHS tapes have much higher bandwidth ("information/second") than
audio tapes. VHS tapes could be considered around the same as CD audio data
rate bandwidth.

What do you think tapes are made of? Metal? Nope, my friend, they are
plastic tapes that are coated with magentic material. How this plastic tape
(thinner than CDs, mind you) would be of infinite lifespan while the plastic
of CDs will rot away is beyond me.

Here's an interesting read:
http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/carefordisc/CDandDVDCareandHandlingGuide.pdf

Anything that's important enough to you should be backed up in some what.
Which, on an analog medium like tape, always entails quality loss.

I'm off the soap box now :)

Do you really prefer cassettes over CDs, or are you simply trying to figure
out how to extend the life of your collection?

I'm old enough to have gone through reel tapes, 8-track, and cassettes. I
guess I was lucky to have never fallen for any tape media and couldn't wait
to abandon those technologies to go to CDs, being an early adopter. Problems
that have not been mentioned here is how badly they reproduce soft passages
like piano, largely due to the difficulty of controlling the cassette speed,
dirty heads, mispositioning of the tape on the head, etc. You have the right
to fight for continued use of your cassettes, but if you haven't felt the
wonderful cleanliness of music every time you play it with CDs, you are
missing a wonderful experience...  Al