Originally posted by Rosuav
The phys splitter I had might have been dodgy, which would explain that problem; but since this sort of thing is extremely rare (mostly, if we both want to listen to the same thing, we'll just use larger speakers), it's not worth spending money on. However, if anything had HAD the feature, it would definitely have been handy.
Maybe it is, but considering that most splitters contain less than 6 inches of physical wiring they shouldn't introduce any sort of interference, it should just take slightly more energy to drive the sound across 4 channels instead of 2. So it sounds like maybe there's a problem with the splitter. No idea though.

As for the tape stuff. Yeah a lot of "good" tape players (on home stereo equipment) had Dolby selectors and another setting having something to do with "Metal" (or "Chrome") since there are two flavors of cassettes, ones made with chromium dioxide and ones made with ferric oxide. Which also effects the sound in a minute way.

The problem is, MOST people had no idea about any of this or how to put any of this to use. So all they remember is shitty sound through a walkman (which didn't have any of these usually, mine didn't) or through a boombox, which had a minimal amount of this stuff. But IF you had a good home stereo and knew what you were doing, there was a reason why audio cassette were immensely popular.