Music's weird cassette-tape revival is paying off
fastcompany.com
fastcompany.com
additional, if u really want a kooky old physical medium go with minidiscs! They were amazing!
Disagree.
1. Sometimes the sonic characteristics of tapes DO complement the music. Typically for genres other than popular music or symphonic/classical/orchestral music (where absolute fidelity is king).
2. Physical media as opposed to digital media is, for some/many, inherently gratifying. It is a more multifaceted Thing, an object with a mass and volume and cover -- far more features than a typical audio file might possess. This point might not resonate with some on this forum (especially those interested in minimalism/efficient living), but ask around and you will find that for some people, this makes a dramatic difference.
3. Cassette tapes, as opposed to vinyl records, were extremely easy to produce in small quantities or at home (VHS tapes also have this property). This means that you can find many interesting/unusual cassette tapes (or make them yourself with relative ease). There are many recordings only available on cassette, and others very challenging to find on media other than cassette.
Especially in our world of information hyper-availability, there is a satisfaction in enjoying or creating a tape that only a couple people (or maybe even only one) have ever heard. Some might point to this as a core tenet of "hipsterism," but I argue this isn't about conspicuous consumption, it's about appreciation of novelty (which is a core aspect of... intelligence/pattern recognition capability) and history/unique narratives.
EDIT: looks like the article actually makes the same points that I did, but expressed differently and with a bit more contemporary context/narrative content.
If you feel you can overcome this, by all means do so -- people often rip their cassette tapes and share. But putting the album on a cassette tape or on bandcamp or on vinyl sets an expectation in terms of fidelity, and violating that expectation can disappoint some listeners. It's a similar reason for why "fake vinyl crackle" is seen as incredibly cheesy.
Regardless of my (personal, hipster) feelings, the technique you mention is relatively commonplace.
Also, for some artists, the unpredictability and randomness can be seen as part of the experience, but it takes a very particular/unusually postmodern sort of artist to get away with that.
Also not to forget: the buttons on tape players are real machanical things requiring some force to push them. I don't know why (I also like handtools and powertools, seems related) but something in pushing a nice hardware button satisfies me. Just like taking a tape and feeding it into the player. Something in my brain likes that. Just like limbing trees or scything grass. Sometimes I even do those for no practical reason, just the act alone is satisfying. And that has nothing to do with trying to make sure others know about any possible coolness or wackyness I might posess.
Indeed - this is especially true of synthwave/vaporwave and other genres that are themselves nostalgic for the days of synth-heavy music sold on cassette. A bit of compression and hiss is just right.
Just as some games put fake film grain on screen, some synthwave videos add a "badly tracked VHS" effect.
Yeah, I wouldn't mind a TRONICBOX cassette:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV1N95xZ4es
>"Just as some games put fake film grain on screen, some synthwave videos add a "badly tracked VHS" effect."
Kung Fury is probably a good example of that style:
Getting further distortions from the medium isn't something I want or need.
To me it's always been very similar to the experience of when a live orchestra is about to play and the audience quietens.
Would also be fun to watch unsuspecting vinyl nerds gush over "superior analog sound".
-When in university, I built myself a DAC (nothing fancy - a quad of PCM1704's and a very minor revision to the reference design)
Anyway, I put a couple of tubes on top, connecting only the filament voltage. Lots of oohing and aahing as to how 'organic' and 'analog' it sounded.
DAT is where it's at, though.
I love art and it's ability to interact with an audience on multiple levels.
Did he? I remember Autechre did (under the name Gescom).
(I still use a couple of DAT recorders for live recordings of local bands; both the Sony PCM-M1 and the Technics DA-P1 ignore any attempt at copy protection if you tell it to.)
After losing that battle, Sony said, if you can't beat em, join 'em, and acquired Colombia Records.
edit: found the open letter https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=oCQEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT10&lpg...
Also because the medium is of "worse quality". You can't drive your gain up the wall on vynil, it's just not going to work.
Nyquist–Shannon begs to differ.
N-S requires, for instance, an analog signal which is perfectly band-limited. This implies that it must be of infinite duration, which, obviously, is not the case.
However, it is plenty infinite-ish enough for all practical purposes.
Here's a recording from 1977 of her playing it.
They also degrade in a way that is more pleasing to my ear than a vinyl or a CD. A scratched CD is unplayable, a damaged vinyl sounds bad. But the sound of a distorted tape has a unique sound I find pleasing.
-This, with all due respect, is a myth. Much as I love my LPs, by any objective criteria the CD (or any digital media) beats them handsomely. Dynamic range, frequency response, noise floor, channel separation - even on the best mastered, half-speed cut, heavy vinyl albums noise and distortion is orders of magnitude larger than on any competently mastered CD.
Note 'competently mastered'; it is unarguably true that some recordings are destroyed during mastering for CD as part of the so-called loudness wars; this problem is less of an issue when mastering for vinyl as the audience buying LPs often do so precisely to escape from the loudness wars and the problems caused by it.
However, this is a defect by decision; it is not due to any inherent limitation of the CD medium compared to the LP.
What quickly becomes a problem for LPs is too much energy in the LF/bass region, which will cause the needle to skip and jump all over the place.
The RIAA correction curve is a measure to alleviate this problem, as it strongly emphasizes low frequencies on playback (and, inversely, reduces them before cutting the master disc, leaving much less LF content in the grooves than would otherwise be needed for accurate reproduction.)
I suspect (Mind, this is just a guess) that when someone says an album has 'a separate master for vinyl', what they are really saying is that someone took a copy of the album master before it was sent through the last loudness war compressor - and sent that copy to the LP plant, using the compressed-as-heck master for any other format.
For cd, it's usually brickwall-limited to no more than 10db max dynamic range (often no more than 6db). This makes things sound "better" on typical playback equipment, which is... not good, compared to the sound of live instruments in a room.
Vinyl is a different beast. It needs RIAA equalization on the master (which is reverse-eq'd by the playback equipment) to managed the size of bass grooves and keep the needle from jumping out of the track, and to make the highs physically big enough for the needle to pick up well. Dynamics are constrained by the physical limitations of the media. So it's a separate master.
That's not a big deal, though. The constraints of vinyl slot in quite well with the constraints of speakers and amps! This is why vinyl, despite its on-paper inferiority, can sound as good or better than digital.
But in the end, it's all about the speakers. I mix on a pair of Tannoy System 12 speakers and an old UREI studio amp that would be the envy of many hi-fi nerds - but I don't consider a mix done until it sounds good on my stock iPhone earbuds and shitty car stereo. Mix to the output, not the medium.
[1] Granted, it would have been perfectly possible to master CD audio to vinyl's sonic limitations and even introduce artificial noise if sound engineers chose to do so, and plenty of digital players give you some scope to modify dynamic range
The intent of the mixing engineer and mastering engineer is to make a recording that sounds good everywhere, not just on studio monitors. When I mix records (I've produced several), I check every "final" mix on cheap earbuds and in my bad car stereo. Sounding good on my very expensive Tannoy studio monitors is meaningless if it doesn't sound good in someone else's car.
For that matter, most pop records are mixed on subjectively awful speakers. The most popular pro mixing speaker is the Yamaha NS-10. They sound shrill, piercing, and nasty, with a sharp eq spike right in the 2khz range where ears are most sensitive. If you can make a mix sound good on those, it should sound good anywhere! A lot of mixers also rely on Auratones, which are tiny 5" drivers, often used in mono. No lows, no highs. They're incredibly honest about levels.
There was a definite difference in quality between the LP and the FLAC file, especially when switching from good (LP) to bad(file).
I can only assume but not guarantee that the FLAC file was produced correctly; otherwise the technical environment seemed to be close to perfection. The quality however dropped of considerably with all the other LPs we've tried for many reasons. Quality seems to depend on the recording, mixing and actual physical quality of the LP a lot.
This experience changed my view on the issue for now :)
What do you mean by your usage of "quality"?
What was the "expensive looking box"?
How was it connected to the amp?
Where did the DA-conversion happen?
What was the source for the FLAC?
I'm sorry, but this is barely even anecdata.
The "box" had the hard disks and DAC inside, don't know the correct term. Connection was with short, chunky cables. We switched back and forth using a switch on the amp without any delay. I wouldn't blame the hardware in this situation.
I haven't listened to much vinyl in my life but maybe it subconscioulsy triggers some memories but I do not consciously prefer vinyl in any way and as a contrarian I wouldn't mind calling out BS.
Describing sound is hard but I experienced the music a lot better with the LP, would try and call the FLAC "flat, boring, less dynamic" when comparing directly.
All I'm saying is, if you get the chance, listen to a good LP on some audiophile's equipment.
This I agree fully with. However, this is also (IMHO) part of vinyl's challenge - the entry cost for getting blow-me-away-results is much, much higher than for a digital system.
Now, assuming we use the same speakers (Which, if anything, is the one link in the chain where one should put the most of one's budget!) and amps and are left only with the source part:
You can get an excellent DAC for a couple of hundred dollars. If you want something top-of-the-line, inarguably reference-grade, that'll set you back a couple of kilobucks. (There are lots of more expensive DACs; however, at $2k or thereabouts, the Benchmark DAC2 hardly leaves any room for improvement in other factors than user interface and bragging rights.)
As for source - with the DAC sorted, you can use just about anything. Laptop. Old CD-player with a digital output. Anything will do. Total cost (excluding amps/speakers) for a reference-grade system: $2,100 or so. For a system which gets you 99% of the way there - $300 or so. (Obviously, these are very rough ballpark figures, intended to stress the point more than anything else.)
So, how does the analog side of things look?
Good LP players cannot by their very nature be very cheap; there's simply too much precision mechanics about. So, let us say that a 'very good' LP player is the Linn LP12 with no upgrades. That alone appears to set you back in excess of $3k, luckily including what I assume to be a decent, though not stellar pickup.
Adding to that, you need a RIAA preamp; disregard the cheapest ones - look inside, and all you'll find is an op-amp, a voltage regulator and a simple second-order filter. Say, (I am just guessing here, having built my own RIAA preamp years ago) - $500-1,000 will get you up from the basic designs and into the realm of things which can do the LP12 justice. Grand total - $3,500-4,000.
So, twice the cost of the digital reference - and this is still a -by audiophile standards- very basic analog system with lots of room for improvement. Also, chances are the $300 digital system will run circles around it - even more so if you buy some cheap DSP plugins which can emulate the characteristics of LP playback, giving you an experience closer to what vinyl would sound like.
That being said, I fully understand the people who appreciate the tinkering potential of analog systems; you can mix and match accessories and components to a much larger degree than in digital systems, adjust various properties (needle weight; tracking force &c) all influencing the sound; however, when you do that (I do!) you are not necessarily doing it for the sake of faithful reproduction, but rather as a very expensive, very limited way of doing EQ. (Best investment I ever made to my hifi-system: A four-band parametric EQ unit. Sorry, all hardcore audiophiles.)
Short version - the Boston Audio Society invited him to listen to one of his own turntables, using music of his choosing - and also listen (blind!) to the signal from the turntable passed through an A/D-D/A loop. He couldn´'t tell the difference.
http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/bas_speaker/abx_testing2.h...
While not perfect, it is plenty good enough - and, my personal take is that I do not buy <insert media here> to have a perfect reproduction of whatever was created in a studio - I buy <insert media here> to enjoy myself. LPs are brilliant for that purpose.
I just had a discussion with some people who know a lot about music who said that vinyl sounded better because it recorded the shape of the sound waves in music. They didn't have an explanation for how CDs or digital formats like FLAC worked other than that they did some kind of incomprehensible digital process to create sound. I argued that all sound has to be coverted to an analog wave in the end, and they were open to the idea, but I think this perception shows that how people understand the process of how music is created affects their perception of it, just like many or most people would say that music sounds better when it is played live, even while being manipulated through electronic equipment, rather than being recorded on electronic equipment and then played.
Moreover, anyone arguing for "realism" and "accuracy" while blasting the sound of a 100 watt Marshall stack through tinny-sounding earbuds on a recording where an acoustic guitar is louder than the drum kit and the keyboards sound like they were recorded in the Grand Canyon is really, really missing the point.
I have to say I enjoy vinyl for a number of non-qualitative reasons. Nostalgia. Tactility. The cover art. The fact that the medium feels like it has more of a "wholeness" to it. My system is fairly modest: A pair of battered Technics turntables plugged through a mixer as preamp into a bog-standard stereo. It's certainly not audiophile quality.
But I am constantly struck by how visitors comment on the sound quality when I play my records for them. To a certain extent, I can put it down to a placebo effect, but many often refer to a "warmer" sound. Even with the dust-crackles and occasional pops!
There are a couple of things I could think of that could explain it. Firstly is that the accepted human range of hearing is 20 Hz to 20 kHz .. from what I recall of CD sampling it is set at 44.1k samples per-second, twice the dynamic-range in anticipation of Nyquist aliasing.
I can't help but wonder if there are "inaudible" frequencies that are chopped out in this scheme. The deep bass-tones that our ears don't pick up but are felt in our body. These frequencies could resonate external physical fixtures perhaps creating a more immersive acoustic experience.
I've also heard it been said that these inaudible frequencies can be picked up by the body, in particular the stomach and chest cavity, which could give the sound a more visceral quality. Certainly this is the case in a club or even a lounge setting. Apart from being able to physically scratch and manipulate this would also explain why vinyl has persisted moreso in these environments.
Aside from this acoustic hocus pocus there might be a more fundamental reason for perceived qualitative differences, and that is to do with implementation. CD as a technology is sufficiently provisioned to capture the entire range of human audio, but for reproduction you are always at the mercy of your DAC.
It's important to remember that when you're listening to digital sound you are listening to an analogue signal that's reproduced by modulating an oscillator, whereas with an analogue recording you're listening to the original analogue signal.
This isn't an issue for well built sound system but is that most people's experience? Whereas whenever we listen to records the DAC simply isn't an issue. This may not result in "better" sound but it would make it distinguishably "different". I remember being struck, when repairing one of my turntables just how little electronics there was on the audio line: Pretty much a straight uninterrupted line from the stylus out to the pre-amp.
One final thought is that, who even listens to CDs any more? We're so used to listening to music on our phones or computers, from a number of formats at varying compression levels and of varying quality, through poor quality headphones or car stereo systems. It could just be that our expectations have been slowly been lowered by ever decreasing reductions in quality to the point that when we do hear something reproduced as its master intended it is a notable experience.
Amps and speakers are the real limiting factors, not the recording medium. They distort very easily (and never read the distortion figures of amps - they're not anything like real world conditions). Mixing is done to make the speakers work well, not to be "accurate".
edit: When tracking and mixing records, I routinely put a high-pass filter on every single track, specifically to prevent subsonic rumble. I often low-pass tracks as well, to limit noise, hiss, and distortion artifacts. This is so routine that even many microphones have a built-in high-pass switch. In mixing, I might high-pass guitars as high as 300hz, throwing away whole octaves of low-frequency information. This is to keep it from conflicting with kick drums, bass guitar, and other instruments that need that space. Solo the guitar in the mix, and it sounds weird. In context, you can't hear the difference in the guitar, and the mix itself sounds better.
Mixing any sort of multitracked pop music is extremely artificial. Consider any record where an acoustic guitar and an electric guitar are roughly the same volume. In practice, you can't even hear an acoustic guitar next to a raging guitar amp! In the stereo field, things are panned hard left, hard right, or center (there's even a word for it - LCR. Off-center panning sounds weird). Radical eq alterations, compression, multi-miking techniques... heck, move a microphone an inch relative to an acoustic guitar, and it can sound completely different. I have started using two mics on acoustic guitars - one about a foot away, and the other six or more feet away, and blending them. The blend sounds better than either mic by itself. And then there are synths, drum machines, and other direct electronic instruments...
Yeah, "naked sound" in recording doesn't exist. I've been playing acoustic guitar for over 30 years, and play drums and sing and do a lot of live folk music. Recorded/amplified music sounds VERY different. And it should.
The human ear can perceive differences in the 5-to-10-microsecond range (you can prove this by testing our ability to work out where a sound came from, based on differences in arrival time at our ears). Successive samples on a CD are 22 microseconds apart - so a CD cannot encode two impulses 5us apart[0].
An analogue medium like vinyl, however, can do just that. Some audio engineers speculate that this is what underlies the supposed "digital sound" - people are in fact identifying a loss of timing information.
[0] It gets complicated fast, here - the Nyquist theorem says a CD can easily encode a 5us phase difference between two tones - and if the human ear were a linear device with a strict low-pass filter in front of it, that would be the same thing as a 5us time difference between impulses. But the ear is wickedly nonlinear and seems to "care" about impulses for reasons that make obvious evolutionary sense. Long story short, for all their faults LPs do seem to have distinct advantages over CDs when it comes to time resolution.
My father was a radio announcer and technician so he had good players and good tapes that were wonderful, even though I didn't know the metal type.
They were! My high school boyfriend and I traded mixtapes back and forth on them. It was always fun putting one together, and something about the sheer physical nature of the medium was just pleasant in its own right. Really felt like living in the future, too. The timing's about right for minidisc to hit the retro-kitsch window, I think - I bet there's a hipster somewhere in Austin or Portland who's way ahead of me here.
Say, I wonder if I still have my old discs and player...
They were. I still have my old mini-disc recorder in a closet somewhere. Back from the days when the number of components in your stereo "tower" was a marvel. Record player on the top, dual cassette module with the soft open, equalizer with a bunch of sliders on it. Receivers with a multi-channel, digital sound level read out. The analog ones were even cooler. Single CD then CD carousel, 8 track, what? Speakers? the bigger the better! Gordian knot of wires on the back. Hi-tech, baby!
Don't get me started on 80s boom boxes, or "ghetto blasters," as they were affectionately known. Probably get dirty looks for using that term today.
I would've sold a kidney for a component minidisc recorder, back in the day. The ones you could plug a keyboard into, so you could title tracks without poking at tiny fiddly buttons on a pocket recorder for hours at a time? Oh, I'd sit staring at a catalog and dream.
This is simply not true, provided you're not comparing new vinyl on a great turntable to a 64Kbps MP3 from 2001.
You may prefer the sound of vinyl - and that's totally OK - but by any objective standard, "quality digital" reproduction is far more accurate than "quality vinyl" can possibly be - regardless of the vinyl playback technology you want to throw at the argument.
Couple this with the fact that most people listen to vinyl on shit turntables they bought at a clothing store and have no clue how words like "elliptical," "tracking force," or "anti-skating" figure into their listening experience....
Tapes weren't as bad as you may think/remember, at least not from an audio point of view, if you Type-IV cassettes and Dolby S noise reduction you can get pretty decent sound output:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVoSQP2yUYA
I personally preferred MiniDisc, but I don't see them making a resurgence, probably lots of proprietary parts of the tech owned by Sony.
As a form of expression it has no obligation to be convenient or accurate, and it's hard to deny that the medium ultimately is part of the expression.
Commercial prerecorded tapes were shit, OTOH, becayse they were always on cheap tape stock, with at best Dolby noise reduction, to maximise sales.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_We_Trust,_Inc.
It's weird to me whenever the move towards analog is written off as some vapid millennial/hipster trend. The dominance of digital and streaming services has stolen this experience from us, and we are fighting to get it back.
Even in this... you are probably talking about a ridiculously small market.
And the audio person in me cringes. At least records were high quality. Tapes are just terrible.
> Some people want this.
Yep, thanks for making that point.
> Even in this... you are probably talking about a ridiculously small market.
A minority are physical collectors. I'm not sure how small or large it is though, but I'm sure its a minority. Owning a copy doesn't mean you own the music anyway.
Also of importance is that people who listen to music on the move (during sports or workout) really don't want to mix music.
Streaming audio is a compromise between full on DJing and listening to radio in the sense that the listener decides what he or she is going to listen to. So they may very well make their own playlists. But one can also pick a pre-made playlist which makes it more akin to FM radio (and you won't make your playlist during sports / workout either). The difference is the far more wide choice.
I have noticed that with writing software. I sometimes think it would be really nice to have something tangible you can touch as a result of my work.
Though, I don't find it that bad unless there are hills involved.
Edit:. And no, I didn't have anything to back up the claim. Just echoing what I used to hear a lot.
However, today's autos have typically 8 or 9 gears, allowing the gearbox to present a near ideal load for the engine at all times; I suspect they now tie or even win with manuals efficiency-wise.
Also, autos are said to be more reliable - primarily, I suspect, as they are immune to much of the abuse a driver can expose a manual to.
I used to collect books. It was a big part of my life.
Now I pretty much only buy books on Kindle. I almost sort-of miss buying books. But only in theory. In practice I much prefer having my current library in my pocket at all times.
Same with music. I have my entire library on my hard drive, and I can copy large portions of it onto my phone and/or the USB flash drive I keep in my pocket. I don't touch the physical CDs unless I think a rip didn't work right, and then only long enough to re-rip the music. When I buy new music I don't even get physical CDs any more.
Mix tapes? I could potentially just stick that same USB drive into a friend's computer and copy all the music he thinks I might want to try out. Many hours of music, in a few seconds of transfer. Try that on tapes.
Not that I'd do that, of course, since it would be illegal, and I certainly wouldn't post about doing illegal things on HN. :P
Playlists also do exist, and I use them. I do miss the ability to transfer a playlist to someone else -- they don't transfer very well, given their dependency on paths to the music -- but not enough to wish for tapes back into my life. Besides, when I make a playlist today, my "mix" often has many hours of music in it; I've had playlists with over 40 hours of music, and I enjoy hitting "shuffle" and listening to all the songs in a different order.
But the point is, while I believe you that "people" want do interact with physical objects, I think it is a minority of people who want that. A very small minority. Because the digital experience is just strictly better. And most people, especially people who've been stuck using tapes because they were the only option at the time, realize that tapes in fact suck.
This. Once I got a Kindle, I actually read more. Because you know it's convenient and has a build in light. Spotify let's you publish/share playlists, so that's also sorted.
The only issue I have is that you don't really own anything. I just de-DRM Kindle books and assume that the availability of songs I like to listen to will increase in the future because royalties will cost less for older songs. Who knows what I'll be listening to in 10 years time?
I'd also say not having a collection of <x> as a proxy for <personality trait y> has made my house more welcoming, less pretentious and makes moving easy. Not saying that you can't have a collection for pure enjoyment, or that everybody who has one is compensating, but if you think your collections "says something about you", it probably does but not in the way you want.
I used to collect stamps, comics, books, CDs, video games. I believe it's was a compulsive behavior of mine.
Then I had to move to another city and leave all of it behind, stored in my parents' house. Then I started collecting digital music to replace my physical library, and had tons of music I never listened to. One day my external drive crashed and I lost it all.
I then realised collecting physical and digital stuff was hampering me. Physical stuff is hard to drag with you anytime you have to move. Digital stuff ends up taking space as well, because you start to collect physical media to store the digital stuff in it.
Nowadays I just listen to whatever is available on Youtube and read books on an e-reader.
I keep my music in my computer which I regularly back up to two different external drives in a rotating manner.
Not because I'm specifically worried about losing my music, but because I just do regular backups in case any of my drives fail and/or I finally get stung by a ransomware trojan (thus TWO external drives; they're never both plugged in at the same time).
Yeah, see its all nice if its little. I had 1000's of cds, carting them around every time one moves apartment is a massive pain in the ass. Also making sure that the cds are in the right boxes, that someone hasnt borrowed one or misplaced it. Also finding the album your looking for. I still have the cds in storage. I also still curate my music collection, its a big folder now. I have a copy of it on my phone on a 256Gb micro sd card, and a couple of backups.
I've transitioned through tapes, cds, minidiscs and digital. Digital is better in so many ways. Being able to have all my music with me to choose from all the time is amazing, up until not too long ago I used to always have a bag of about 30 minidiscs with me. Another great thing is how universal digital is, I can take audio from any source and convert it to fit into my digial collection, this is factastic if youre djing, you can mix in old stuff from the radio, and old weird vinyl recording, samples from tv shows whatever!
I can understand people who grew up with digital wanting to mess around with something different and weird, but if they're serious about music and start amassing a collection then the massive benefits of digital become obvious.
additional: I do have a bit of vinyl too, that I sometimes use. But I dont bother djing with it anymore. It is nice to put on a record when u have guests or something.
In the digital world so much of what we produce, consume, and interact with has no physical manifestation what we can strongly identify with. The computer is an abstract filing cabinet which can display what you're looking for on its own screen, or plays abstract 'music files', or streams 'video' from subscription apps. We're essentially asking the computer to recall these things from its "memory", and luckily, they remember with exact accuracy much more than a human would. While we can experience these things, we can't hold them in our hand; we can't share them in a self-contained, self-describing form (like handing someone a book) -- if we can share them at all.
(Originally posted by me on 'Tom Hanks about Typewriters' [1])
"Also last year, the National Audio Company — the largest cassette tape manufacturer in the U.S. — saw a 20% increase in its commercial tape duplication business (this doesn't include blank tapes or audiobooks), according to a company spokesperson. This continues an upward-sloping trend for the Missouri-based company, which did more business in 2014 than at any other point since its factory opened in 1969."
I'm not very prolific, but I have a couple. Both came with a d/l url. I don't own a tape player, but having physical correlates to information products does have something engaging about it. I suspect it is a trend we'll see more and more of, not just a tapes. c.f. Amibo, Steel/Tinbox games/bluray.
I personally suspect the 'it sounds better' thing is post-hoc rationalisation, mostly, given how trivial it would be to record/recreate the tape-butchered sound in a digital format.
But there's a general nostalgia thing happening all over, and tape and vinyl seem to be part of that.
When I switched from tape to vinyl in the 70s I noticed I enjoyed some of my collection less, even though I was hearing a lot more detail.
I've often wondered if there's a psychoacoustic effect which forces your brain to work harder to parse sound on cassette.
It's such a lofi medium I suspect your brain fills in the missing detail with what you'd like to hear. So it's more involving than (say) FLACl, which gives you all the detail you want - and then some.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burger_Records
'Get Bent in 2011 went on to say, "Burger’s played a crucial role in the revival of the cassette tape, as well as in the promotion of the thriving Orange County garage scene."'
http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/5/9409563/reel-to-reel-tape-...
Rented car in salt lake. Only cassette: Aqua "I'm a Barbie girl" over and over through grand tetons and Yellowstone.
No streaming memories.
Sorry. Cassettes are life recalling and totally cool despite "issues"
Here's an example:
From a marketing perspective the strategy seems to foster a sense of rarity and exclusivity (sort of like Snapchat's Spectacles). You are only part of the in club if you go through the effort of obtaining a (physical!) tape and the means to play said tape.
How on earth are you supposed to play that back?
I can play music from it in both of my cars (USB ports), at most places I visit (plug it into a computer), and the music doesn't degrade with playback.
Oh, and I could throw about 133 hours of high quality audio onto it and it would still be half empty.
AND...my phone has plenty of room for another 8Gb of music, and to play that I just need to hit play; plugging it in to an amp or headphones is optional, but recommended.
Why are we even having this discussion?
And to address the bit about the phone, you'd be surprised how fast phone storage fills up with other stuff. My (admittedly several years old) phone's 8gb storage is more than half filled by system bloat so I have to use an sd card to put music on it. And that's not even including apps. This, unfortunately, isn't really an option anymore for the vast majority of phones (with the notable exception of most Samsung phones).
Or you can spend $15 on an MP3 player (or pick one up at a thrift store for less). Considering tapes cost more than digital tracks, you'd save enough by buying digital to pay for the MP3 player and the cassette adapter by just forgoing a couple of tapes.
As to "cost effective": Blank tapes cost way more than blank CD-Rs. A quick search finds 30 name-brand discs for six bucks [0], and I've seen them less than $0.01 each in bulk. [0b] Tapes cost nearly a dollar each.
Almost everyone, in college or otherwise, needs to have a computer, or has access to one (libraries!), and most inexpensive computers have CD-Rs. If you don't have a CD burner in your computer, one costs less than a decent cassette recorder. $11.99 on Amazon will get you one, in fact. [1]
And it will be faster to make copies onto CDs, and the copies will be strictly better, than using tape.
Tapes are simply a retro "style" thing. They're not cheaper, and they suck. Trying to justify them in any way just doesn't work.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Verbatim-Branded-Recordable-30-Disc-9...
[0b] https://www.amazon.com/Smartbuy-700mb-80min-Recordable-1000-...
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Elephant-XuBlack-External-Supports-Co...
When I was a kid, my parents' station wagon had an 8-track deck in the dash. We had a converter that plugged into it that would let us play our cassettes.
Also, the cassette-playing tech today is far better than it was. Listen ro them without noise reduction tech. Scan for a song without silence detection. Then come back and brag about your vintage sony walkman.
Tapes are shit. Hiss, flutter, wow, head misalignment, Dolby NR. "Ah, which Dolby NR?" - well, exactly. And we haven't even got onto Type I vs Type II vs Type IV, and your C120s that snap if you so much as look at them, and the tapes that get tangled and snagged and melted in your car stereo, because they're right next to some air ducts that blow fan-assisted hot air from a big lump of hot metal barely half a metre away.
Also, tapes are a useless size. CDs hold like 70 minutes. So you have a C60, and it's not enough, or a C90, and it's too much - even assuming you don't have any bin-packing problems.
Honest to god. Tapes. TAPES.
If you like the sound (what is wrong with people??), then for God's sake, at least record from your stupid tape deck to the PC, then FLAC it, because then at least you'll avoid that fast forward and rewind nonsense. Battery life on MP3 players is a lot better too.
I don't know what to say.
EDIT: classic quantity/quality tradeoff: exchanged intemperate language for the FLAC suggestion
EDIT 2: I think this is the first time in a long time I've seen the word "weird" used in a link and it's actually appropriate
Also, I'm not sure where they were trying to go with the "tapes are cheaper and more convenient than vinyl! This is great for small indie bands!". Is this 1970?
Well yeah - there's no D so you can't have DRM. Tapes have a built in mechanism to prevent rampant copying though - they degrade with each generation.
They made sense since it was possible to copy from another format, such as vinyl/radio/CD even another cassette. It was the only format you were able to copy to (technically you could with 8-tracks, but you could not easily get blanks). Nowadays, if you really wanted a copy, straight to digital.
Cassettes weren't _that_ bad. The problem is that there were essentially different grades of tapes and players that supported different noise reduction techniques, and people tend to remember the ones played back with low end gear.
Here's a great video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVoSQP2yUYA
Well, not exactly.
Talk about fragile. A slight scratch and its toast. Durable? Hardly. Not sure how many CD's I had to re-buy because of minor chips or the dreaded "pinhole of death" I can't count. Or what about the green marker urban legend (http://www.snopes.com/music/media/marker.asp). They were also anything but "compact" compared to cassettes. And are you old enough to remember those long CD boxes (https://images.eil.com/large_image/Queen_A+Collection+Of+Emp...) that were a total wasted of cardboard?
Or maybe finally being excited to get your favorite artists old recordings on CD, only to buy the CD, rip it open and read on the back, "WARNING: The music on this Compact Disc was originally recorded on analog equipment, prior to modern noise reduction techniques. This Compact Disc preserves, as closely as possible, the sound of the original recording, but its high resolution also reveals the limitations in the master tape, including noise and other distortions."
I agree that CD's were markedly better, but let's not forgot they still had some serious flaws themselves.
Look at all the 60 year old used vinyl records that have survived and are still just as playable to this day. There's tons of them floating around. On the other hand, it's much harder to find even a 30 year old used CD that still plays fully and without error.
CDs that were handled as carefully as people handle vinyl have lasted at least as well (I don't have any 30 year old CDs but I do have some just getting to 20 years, and those still play fine).
In my opinion, your analysis lacks one or two components that are essential to the "cassette" experience:
1. Sonic Artifacts - Some bands dig the warpy, tinny sound. I'm not personally a fan, but I'm a bit biased.
2. Tape Compression - A lot of bands simply cannot, or choose not to, control their dynamics, causing clipping to occur. On an old-school straight-to-tape recording setup, this clipping will sound far better than the harsh, horrible digital clipping found in today's digital setups.
3. Playback Setting - In my experience, the typical consumer of today's cassette tapes is not playing the album through a hi-fi system. They're probably using a portable jambox that they took out of their mom's attic or one they picked up one day at their local Goodwill/pawn shop. Fidelity is nowhere near important to this individual, and they probably wouldn't fret very much if their junky/old equipment got damaged or stopped working.
What? I haven't used a cassette in over a decade, but I still remember how they are used, and it didn't involved complicated trickery. Turn on and open the deck, slide in the cassette, close, and press play. Maybe rewind when you're done, and eject.
Streaming music is arguably more complicated, but that's not stopping it.