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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

#101

Post by cl0ne »

32qwef wrote: post #14
achileas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's art and nice to display. People do the same with vinyl records, comics, etc., definitely looks cool to have for collectors and lovers of old tech.

Yes. I actually kept some of the cassettes I was given, and they do look nice on a shelf. Plus it's a way to support the band. I once considered releasing a tape with no music on it. Just nice cover art. I wonder if anyone would know?

I have a copy of this "LP". It's just the cover art, no actual record inside. I guess that made some people pretty mad who actually bought it. https://www.discogs.com/Pigeon-Religion-Why-Do-You-Hate-Pige...

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

#102

Post by KozmoNau7 »

acomjean wrote: post #62

Wasn't Mini-discs music on a floppy? IN the US as s format mini-discs weren't very successful, but I used one in grad school. Put my CDs onto discs. Energy efficient, didn't skip, remote on the headphone extender cord and sounded great. The blank disks were fun colors. I have a mini home stereo with a minidisc changer, I tried a few recently and they still work. Mageneto Optical technology. MP3s killed them. People w…

I've started a small collection of obsolete media. So far it's just cassette tapes, floppy disks, minidiscs, the stuff I grew up with. But I'm slowly adding stuff, just because I think it's neat to keep them as reminders of what we used to use.

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

#103

Post by bane »

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).

Yeah! The demoscene was releasing size restricted albums (music disks) for decades before vaporwave was even thought of as a term.

Here's half a million songs: https://modarchive.org/

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

#104

Post by Intermernet »

21 wrote: post #31

> Cassette players, they’re not really manufactured anymore, and the prices are going up on used ones Tascam just released a new deck cassette player, with USB: https://ask.audio/articles/tascam-announces-202mkvii-dual-ca...

Unfortunately, as far as I know, no-one can license Dolby NR anymore. If you want to record or playback tape with noise reduction you're pretty much limited to "vintage" equipment.

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

#105

Post by xiii1408 »

slededit wrote: post #81
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It looks fancy enough and you can show your friends how retro you are. Sure a CD player would be better in every way, but everyone has those. Sound is really secondary here.

People still have CD players?

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

#106

Post by bane »

chippy wrote: post #73

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 subc…

One of the things that, to me, makes it such a vibrant genre is the huge emergent tree of sub-genres that seemingly sprout out of it on a weekly basis. This means that if you're able to accept the basic premise of the genre, there's probably some sub-genre that you can get into.

It reminds me of what we now call the EDM scene, but back in the 90s when it was "Techno" or just "electronic music". There was an attempt to try to map out those sub genres in a great flash presentation: http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/

Since it's valuable, and we're still early in it, it would be great to also do this with vaporwave.

Another important part of the scene is that it's not just a music scene, but a more general cultural movement with visuals, palettes, clothes, food, tv and so on. And on one of the powers of it is that it can not only create new stuff, but draw on an entire cultural period that's already happened.

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

#107

Post by Roboprog »

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…

Well said. E.g. - There’s a lotta love out there for DACs with limited bits (e.g. - 10 bit digital to analog converters in low end 80s synths)

FM8 doesn’t sound quite like a DX100, and all that...

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

#108

Post by Roboprog »

fzzzy wrote: post #16
Paul_S wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think mod releases and midi releases will probably happen eventually.

Not exactly “releases”, but freemidi.org gives you a lot to play with.

https://freemidi.org/random

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

#109

Post by morganw »

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

The Yamaha Disklavier has a floppy library. Hal Leonard still sells Pianosoft https://www.halleonard.com/search/search.action?menuid=3984&...

There were also diskettes with standard MIDI files voiced for General MIDI for karaoke & education, playable on the Roland SoundBrush (sequence player for the SoundCanvas synth) and MT-80S https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ks3ucumilU and the Yamaha MDP10 "boomboxes" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikneZi7vUsE

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

#110

Post by meowface »

samfriedman wrote: post #68
badpenny wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1.

Yes, which was interestingly a side project of Daniel Lopatin, better known by his experimental electronic moniker Oneohtrix Point Never.

One of the greatest electronic musicians of the decade, in my opinion.
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