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Cassette tapes are making a comeback?

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Re: Cassette tapes are making a comeback?

#31

Post by navbaker »

xg15 wrote: post #20

I find it depressing that there seem to be only two ways to distribute media and manage one's audio collection: Either ultra-convenient but fully locked down streaming services - or analog "vintage" media like vinyl or cassettes, which do give you a physical medium under your full control, but also require you to forego all the progress we made with digital media. The one thing that's absent: Plain old audio files th…

I regularly buy full albums and individual tracks on the Apple Store. AFAIK Amazon also still offers the same, both stores are DRM free

Re: Cassette tapes are making a comeback?

#32

Post by eikenberry »

xg15 wrote: post #20

I find it depressing that there seem to be only two ways to distribute media and manage one's audio collection: Either ultra-convenient but fully locked down streaming services - or analog "vintage" media like vinyl or cassettes, which do give you a physical medium under your full control, but also require you to forego all the progress we made with digital media. The one thing that's absent: Plain old audio files th…

I only buy archival (flac) downloadable files. Some places I've purchased music from..

- https://bandcamp.com/ - https://us.7digital.com/ - https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/shop

If I can't find them there I will grab the audio off youtube or hit the torrents. Used to buy CDs and rip them, but those are getting hard to find (and it was a PITA).

Re: Cassette tapes are making a comeback?

#33

Post by snapetom »

theresistor wrote: post #23
xg15 wrote: post #20

I find it depressing that there seem to be only two ways to distribute media and manage one's audio collection: Either ultra-convenient but fully locked down streaming services - or analog "vintage" media like vinyl or cassettes, which do give you a physical medium under your full control, but also require you to forego all the progress we made with digital media. The one thing that's absent: Plain old audio files th…

As far as I know Apple will still sell you individual tracks (DRM free, I think?), though it’s a bit hidden.

Apple has neglected the iTunes store for years. Yes, you can still buy tracks, but it's really crappy. 1) The catalog is nowhere near as extensive as Apple Music. 2) It's AAC 256kbps format only. Not lossless.

Apple goes along with the enshitification of everything and wants you to rent your music, not own it.

Re: Cassette tapes are making a comeback?

#35

Post by jghn »

xg15 wrote: post #20

I find it depressing that there seem to be only two ways to distribute media and manage one's audio collection: Either ultra-convenient but fully locked down streaming services - or analog "vintage" media like vinyl or cassettes, which do give you a physical medium under your full control, but also require you to forego all the progress we made with digital media. The one thing that's absent: Plain old audio files th…

I buy music either on bandcamp or iTunes, both of which gives me DRM free audio files. I then store them locally.

Re: Cassette tapes are making a comeback?

#39

Post by itintheory »

spaqin wrote: post #3

Of course cassettes were all around me when I was younger; even my first car had a cassette deck. They seemed like an old relic in that time already - with the drawbacks mentioned in the article, so it was easy to put them away seemingly forever. However, I got "back" into cassettes recently with some new releases. Grabbed a FiiO CP-13, and while the quality still isn't great, with low wow and flutter it's perfectly…

> FiiO CP-13, and while the quality still isn't great

The sad part is that the quality of modern cassette players is actually decidedly worse than their vintage counterparts. There's essentially only one company producing the actual mechanism (Tanashin) and they're cheaply made of low quality materials (plastic flywheels etc.). That's the main reason that the vintage machines are still fetching higher prices. Also I don't think any modern machines have Dolby B-C noise reduction, HX Pro, automatic track seek/skip, and whatever other fancy features you could find in the likes of a high end Sony or Nakamichi deck.

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