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Vaporwave’s Mini-Boom of Floppy Disk Releases

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Re: Vaporwave’s Mini-Boom of Floppy Disk Releases

#71

Post by throwaway2048 »

21 wrote: post #53
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably mean quality cassette players. Even that Tascam is made using standard cheap mechanisms, it only has the most basic noise reduction (Dolby B) and no tape type selection. To even come close to justifying its $500 price tag, it should have a proper high-quality direct drive 3-head mechanism, Dolby B, C and S, as well as HX-Pro, at the very minimum to take the cassette tape seriously as a medium for music.…

Nobody buys a cassette today because they are looking for the highest quality possible, the most pristine reproduction. I would even venture to say that a distinctive low quality sound would be preferable, if it sounds like a digital it's not so fun anymore.

If you dont care about quality, why would you spend $500

Re: Vaporwave’s Mini-Boom of Floppy Disk Releases

#72

Post by soundwave106 »

poisonarena wrote: post #29

I get the cassette thing because that was an audio format people used for albums, but in the 90s nobody released albums on floppy discs, so this is like all gimmick

I remember in those days there was a lot of "demo scene" music that was traded electronically. Not usually by floppy disc, but, well, it could have been.

(Surprising no vaporwave artists has gone this route: release a vaporwave "album" on floppy disc, done entirely in ScreamTracker, and recommended to be played ideally on your Gravis Ultrasound...)

Re: Vaporwave’s Mini-Boom of Floppy Disk Releases

#73

Post by chippy »

Vaporwave is a huge genre which covers a wide range of styles. Here are two favourites which show different styles. From down tempo electro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GW6sLrK40k to new reworking of 80s pop songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jynPLTeBaFc

The main thing that ties in the different styles is the slight feeling of nostalgia and the internet subculture central to it. The playfulness with the subculture is a core element of the subculture. "Vaporwave is dead" is an example of such. It's post-hipster in a way as hipsters are too serious, always searching for the authenticity, where vaporwave will copy and rework stuff. It's kind of close to the way Discordianism worked - is it a music genre thats disguised as a joke or a joke thats disguised as a music genre?

Re: Vaporwave’s Mini-Boom of Floppy Disk Releases

#74

Post by bitwize »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #3

My mind just can't accept that this isn't a parody / publicity stunt.

It's both sincere and a parody. It harks back to the early 90s, the birth of the internet in the public consciousness, and the feeling that the primitive Windows and Mac machines we had were precursors to the Ono-Sendai cyberdecks we would soon be having. But there's a sense of "oh how naïve we were back then" to it.

Re: Vaporwave’s Mini-Boom of Floppy Disk Releases

#75

Post by KozmoNau7 »

vertexFarm wrote: post #54
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably mean quality cassette players. Even that Tascam is made using standard cheap mechanisms, it only has the most basic noise reduction (Dolby B) and no tape type selection. To even come close to justifying its $500 price tag, it should have a proper high-quality direct drive 3-head mechanism, Dolby B, C and S, as well as HX-Pro, at the very minimum to take the cassette tape seriously as a medium for music.…

The tape deck manufacturers today know what's up. Nobody is trying to get serious hi-fi out of tapes anymore. There are cheaper and more effective ways of doing that today. People using tapes are looking specifically for the imperfections of the medium. Trying to get perfect reproduction out of one would be like selling a synthesizer that only produces the most perfect, clean sine wave. Nobody wants that. The distort…

No of course not, it would be a waste of money to force cassette tapes into having decent sound quality. Anyone who cares about that is going to be using either lossless files or a good modern lossy codec.

What people want is the shitty version of cassette tape, the one they grew up listening to on their birthday present portable tape players. Probably tapes recorded on a middling-quality player from an LP.

And I get it. If I were to buy a classic car of some sort, you can absolutely bet it would have a tape deck, and I would gladly use it.

Re: Vaporwave’s Mini-Boom of Floppy Disk Releases

#76

Post by KozmoNau7 »

acomjean wrote: post #61
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably mean quality cassette players. Even that Tascam is made using standard cheap mechanisms, it only has the most basic noise reduction (Dolby B) and no tape type selection. To even come close to justifying its $500 price tag, it should have a proper high-quality direct drive 3-head mechanism, Dolby B, C and S, as well as HX-Pro, at the very minimum to take the cassette tape seriously as a medium for music.…

>A Type IV "metal" tape with Dolby S and recorded using HX-Pro can sound seriously good We had one of those 3 head tape decks growing up. The one we had a yamaha with dolby hx-pro,b,c and dbx. We used to tape cds and try to a/b compare them. The 3 heads were erase, record and play, which meant you could monitor the recording as it was happening and adjust levels and such. (and results in the weird behavior of the "ta…

DBX was really cool, there were also DBX-encoded LPs available for a while. Unfortunately it also made the recordings sound absolutely horrible if your player didn't support DBX (as you noticed), so it was a massive failure.

The days of physical media for music are generally over, but I just feel cassette tapes could have been so much better than they ended up being.

Re: Vaporwave’s Mini-Boom of Floppy Disk Releases

#77

Post by KozmoNau7 »

slededit wrote: post #46
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably mean quality cassette players. Even that Tascam is made using standard cheap mechanisms, it only has the most basic noise reduction (Dolby B) and no tape type selection. To even come close to justifying its $500 price tag, it should have a proper high-quality direct drive 3-head mechanism, Dolby B, C and S, as well as HX-Pro, at the very minimum to take the cassette tape seriously as a medium for music.…

People still buying cassettes are doing it for the LoFi sound anyways. They know their market.

People who will spend $500 on a mediocre tape deck?

Re: Vaporwave’s Mini-Boom of Floppy Disk Releases

#78

Post by detaro »

Paul_S wrote: post #10
JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #8

Making something that can fit on a floppy disc is pretty cool restriction to give yourself imo. Do you just cripple the bitrate to squeeze a 3+ minute song on, do you stick to super short songs or do you find alternate means of maximising the space (I'm thinking potentially a mixture of midi files with some guidelines, and super low encoded vocals) Floppy discs are much more aesthetically pleasing than cassettes (alt…

I was disappointed that the floppies didn't contain mods (tracker music).

music as C64 software: https://www.goto80.com/floptrik

Re: Vaporwave’s Mini-Boom of Floppy Disk Releases

#79

Post by H1Supreme »

wkubiak wrote: post #64
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably mean quality cassette players. Even that Tascam is made using standard cheap mechanisms, it only has the most basic noise reduction (Dolby B) and no tape type selection. To even come close to justifying its $500 price tag, it should have a proper high-quality direct drive 3-head mechanism, Dolby B, C and S, as well as HX-Pro, at the very minimum to take the cassette tape seriously as a medium for music.…

Quality/higher-end cassette players for playing generally lo-fi music? Something's wrong here. I mean, in the article one guy says that he managed to compress and put 3 songs onto 1 floppy and was satisfied with the listenable end result.

Maybe it was all 8-bit?
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