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Cassette tapes are making a comeback?

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Re: Cassette tapes are making a comeback?

#161

Post by kgwxd »

nemo8551 wrote: post #140
cellularmitosis wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it is really hard to make a good sounding cassette It is unfortunate that cassettes are the lowest fidelity consumer medium (of modern times). But there is some room to optimize within that space. If you are curious: The cassettes available today are Type I, Type II ("high bias") and Type IV ("metal"), each being higher fidelity than the last, but not all portable players supported these types of tape. Dolby B/…

I wish the comeback was minidisc. I was just the right age to think this was the future of portable music. Mostly because I could record radio, other cds and cassettes onto them.

I had a 4 track mini disc recorder, and dreams of becoming the go-to "audio engineer" for all the bands in my school :)

Re: Cassette tapes are making a comeback?

#163

Post by Anthony-G »

wkjagt wrote: post #156
jghn wrote: post #10

I lived through vinyl, 8-track, cassettes, and CDs. I digitized all of my music over 20 years ago and no longer even own a physical media playback device. I can't fathom going back. Digital or bust.

Not trying to correct you, just looking for the right word. Digital isn't the right term here, because CDs are also digital. I'm trying to come up with the word for the opposite of physical media, but strangely I can't. Maybe streaming, but how would MP3s on a USB drive fit in?

Ethereal, Ephemeral?

I know what you mean but I can't think of any word that describes the concept (without requiring further elaboration).

Re: Cassette tapes are making a comeback?

#164

Post by kgwxd »

Simple "mp3" player with terrible screen/interface, low-capacity SD cards with some wav files, decorated like a mix-tape, curated for straight-through listening. Perfectly scratches the retro/disconnected itch for me.

Re: Cassette tapes are making a comeback?

#165

Post by stinos »

K0balt wrote: post #158

Based on the assumption that the appeal here is the experience, not the actual legacy media, it seems like it would be trivial to implement a digital stream standard so that audio cassette players could record and play a digital stream for higher fidelity with an identical experience? Or would that not be possible on legacy media because of bitrate limitations? I can easily imagine the DAC/ADC and amplifier tuning/st…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Tape

Re: Cassette tapes are making a comeback?

#166

Post by beAbU »

leetnewb wrote: post #146
tom_ wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are CDs more fragile? All of mine still seemed to work last I checked. I gave up on tapes years ago, because they'd always fuck up one way or the other. The sound quality was also annoyingly bad, and track search was a faff. (I think I prefer measles to tapes. Neither killed me, but at least nobody reminisces fondly about that time they had measles!)

I bought a new album on CD a couple of years ago. Badly scratched straight out of the case. Guess that wasn't really the right comparison though.

Scratched enough that it was not working any more? IME CDs work surprisingly well even with scratches, way way better than LPs though. You need to properly gouge the surface before things become problematic.

Re: Cassette tapes are making a comeback?

#167

Post by Aldipower »

devilbunny wrote: post #47
jghn wrote: post #10

I lived through vinyl, 8-track, cassettes, and CDs. I digitized all of my music over 20 years ago and no longer even own a physical media playback device. I can't fathom going back. Digital or bust.

If you want the cassette experience without the massive downsides of cassettes, pick up an old Minidisc recorder. Physical media that are nearly infinitely re-recordable (unused ones are expensive but used ones from Japan are not) and nearly indestructible. The NetMD ones have been bid up in price because of transfer speed but older ones that only do real-time transfers are not hideously expensive.

You do not get tape saturation with minidisc, thus you cannot get the "cassette experience".

Re: Cassette tapes are making a comeback?

#168

Post by beAbU »

wkjagt wrote: post #156
jghn wrote: post #10

I lived through vinyl, 8-track, cassettes, and CDs. I digitized all of my music over 20 years ago and no longer even own a physical media playback device. I can't fathom going back. Digital or bust.

Not trying to correct you, just looking for the right word. Digital isn't the right term here, because CDs are also digital. I'm trying to come up with the word for the opposite of physical media, but strangely I can't. Maybe streaming, but how would MP3s on a USB drive fit in?

Maybe "mediumless" is the right word.

Although, if we want to pedantic: music stored on a hard disk is still stored on a medium, but you can't pop the hard drive into any old player and play the music.

Re: Cassette tapes are making a comeback?

#170

Post by Aldipower »

annoyingnoob wrote: post #13
jghn wrote: post #10

I lived through vinyl, 8-track, cassettes, and CDs. I digitized all of my music over 20 years ago and no longer even own a physical media playback device. I can't fathom going back. Digital or bust.

I would especially not go back to tape. sssssssssssssssssssssss

Why not? Now after 20 years passed you won't hear it anymore! :-P
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