13 ms·

The Last Audio Cassette Factory [video]

38 points by chkuendig 11y ago

oconnore 11y ago
And I thought I was a hipster for buying an external Bluray drive...
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Hipster would be to get a external 5.25 drive. Grabbing a BR drive, in particular if it is a burner, is basically about covering ones behind.
dec0dedab0de 11y ago
I go to one or two shows a month with smaller touring bands, generally shows with less than 100 people. Almost all of them have at least one tape now, some are tape only. I think it's kind of silly, like no one remembers what a pain rewinding is. I even have a friend who runs an all tape label. Edit: I bet that's what people older than me thought when I was buying vinyl in 1999.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Is there some advantage to it, or are they just being weirdly retro?
  - dec0dedab0de 11y ago
    One time I was ranting to a guy selling tapes about how I hate tapes, and he said yeah me too, but the kids love it.
    - msandford 11y ago
      The previous generation talks about how vinyl sounds better ("warmer") than CDs. Tape is our generation's vinyl. Eventually when CDs are no longer widely produced (44.1kHz sample rate isn't ideal for the high end) and everyone has switched over to 96kHz or 192kHz at 24 or 32 bits or whatever the 4K TV equivalent in audio is, the next generation will wax nostalgic over CDs and the horrendous loudness wars that made everything sound "better" through dynamic range compression. I mean, I wouldn't bet THAT much money on it. But it definitely seems like the next cycle of the trend.
      - earlz 11y ago
        CDs are digital though.. I mean, sure there is the mastering, but you don't get the same analog subtleties that everyone pines for, be it tape or vinyl. I don't think CDs will ever be regarded as a "better format" for listening. I'm surprised tape is, since it's more limited than vinyl. Vinyl can theoretically encode higher quality audio than CDs in it's own analog way.. of course, it'll all vary with the actual precision it was cut with as well as the precision of the turntable needle. On top of this, some inherit restrictions in Vinyl actually made the loudness wars impossible. I don't recall the exact thing that causes it, but apparently if the signal is poorly mastered for vinyl (ie, too loud), the needle can literally jump out of the groove of the record.
        msandford 11y ago
        I believe the driving force of this phenomena is nostalgia and envy of the experiences that those older than you had. I don't think actual superiority makes any sense at all, because during the early days of CDs they were mastered well and sounded amazing; The Dark Side of the Moon is an album that hasn't embraced the loudness wars and it's clearly superior to tape or vinyl. But if you really like some "historic" band that your elders got to listen to on the radio and go to their shows as they were coming up, and listen to their albums as they were released, you're never going to be able to have those experiences. But you can listen to them on the same format that they originally released their work. It might be argued that the band, producer, studio, mastering guys, etc would have optimized the album for the media it was originally released on, but I suspect that the differences are fairly small. As your ability to reproduce sound gets better, no information is lost. It's lost during mastering for a lower fidelity medium, not in the transfer from a lower fidelity medium to a higher one. This is a psychological phenomena not a technical one.
        mikeash 11y ago
        Can vinyl really encode higher quality audio even in theory? I seem to recall that the noise floor for vinyl is around 60dB, while the quantization noise imposed by a CD is 96dB. It looks like the grooves on a record are a few tens of micrometers tall. If we say they have 65µm of potential variation, then you'd need to be able to resolve features down to a single nanometer to match a 16-bit digital source. I don't think a needle can get anywhere close to that, and I don't even know if the molecules would be that small.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - eastbayjake 11y ago
    I have a 1988 BMW 325i with the original stereo + cassette deck. I don't want to replace the stereo because I'd like to keep it in original condition, so I've been in the market for cassettes! There are a surprising number of older cars -- and some not that old -- where cassette decks were the base model option unless you paid for a CD changer.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      Those fake cassette tapes that have a headphone plug work pretty well, though. Then you can use the audio source of your choice. The real problem is cars made in the few years after CDs completely took over but before the iPod did. A lot of those only do CD and radio and there's nothing good to hook in to for other audio sources, besides using an FM transmitter, or jacking directly into the FM antenna. I owned a car like this and I wished it had tape player!
      - semi-extrinsic 11y ago
        If your car has a stereo with just CD and radio, but with a CD changer option, you can get aftermarket kits that let you hook up your ipod/phone/mp3 and play music. Some can even pass the steering wheel next/back/pause etc. commands to your device.
      - kw71 11y ago
        A lot of those cars have a changer option on the factory stereo which means an emulator can provide an aux input. There are some adapters on the commercial market for this and lots of arduino-style projects published on the web. So far this year I built two such adapters for family and friends.
    - kw71 11y ago
      I think you are smart to not have hacked one of those aftermarket stereos that kids buy into such an awesome car. You aren't stuck with cassettes - you can upgrade without looking like a retard. The radios that came in e32 and e34 match the colors and legend typefaces. Then you can make or buy an aux input adapter that emulates alpine mbus.
- toxican 11y ago
  I don't get it. Wouldn't it be easier/cheaper for them to produce CDs? Or is it an "indie cred" type thing?
  - dec0dedab0de 11y ago
    I think there is the general feeling that CDs are the same thing as a download, and if you're going to buy something physical it should be different than the download. Along that line of thinking tapes are much cheaper than vinyl, at least in short runs.
    - toxican 11y ago
      I follow that logic, but I don't necessarily agree with it. If they want to give an album a little more umpf, maybe include some stickers, exclusive tracks, etc. with the CD? If I went to a concert and they only had cassette copies of their albums, I wouldn't be walking out of there with a copy of their album because I don't own anything capable of playing it anymore. edit: spelling
      - dogma1138 11y ago
        Wont surprise me if most people buy it as a collectible doo-dad to display rather than actually listen too, pretty much anyone i know that bought the Guardians of the Galaxy tape thing just has it on their display wall of geekdom heck I'm not sure most of them even thought that it would actually play.
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    Consider that tapes require more materials and that the production capacity is near non-existent there is no way they are cheaper than CD's they are probably several times more expensive than CD's these days. Early on CD's were more expensive but you have completely different fabrication process and royalties to deal with, but today nope. So it is nothing more than an "indie" thing and like many comments on YT said thank the hipsters and they are kinda right. I also wonder if there are any bands that do analogue recording since i don't think a single studio exists that isn't digital these days and if it does then considering the price of that rare gear and the expertise needed to operate it it would also be much much more expensive than traditional recording.
- OneOneOneOne 11y ago
  Vinyl makes more sense to me. I monkeyed around with cassettes for a little while but type II always sounded muted. Never played with type IV. Also, my older cassettes seemed to degrade. Even older commercial tapes sounded bad with time.
  - oqnet 11y ago
    I was told they demagnetize over time, not sure if that's BS or not though.
- dghughes 11y ago
  They should release it on wax cylinders with a bonus bowler hat.
51Cards 11y ago
To those here who don't understand it... Why do we seek out retro gaming machines? Fire up a Commodore 64? Dig the Z80 unit out of the closet? Have massive projects attempting to bit emulate old TV gaming systems? Are these in some way better than our current hardware? Retro has its own appeal... for a game, a vintage automobile, a manual transmission, a paper photograph, 35mm film, a watch without a microprocessor, a softer audio sound, or the scrape of a needle over vinyl. Someone will love it on nostalgia alone even if the world has "moved on".
- mrob 11y ago
  Old games console + CRT TV is objectively better than almost everything modern by at least one measure: control latency. Punch-Out!! for NES is literally impossible to complete on a lot of modern hardware, because it doesn't take much additional latency to push the reaction time requirements beyond human ability. And even with less demanding games the feeling of responsiveness you get with original hardware is very noticeable.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  Little odd to read "a manual transmission" listed amongst other retro things. It is the most popular style of transmission in the world. Even in the US most vehicles larger than a minivan are manual transmission. Most people drive that way, it isn't odd, retro, or hipster. It is the norm, the US is the oddity. CVTs might change that a little as we go more hybrid/electric, but as of 2015, manual remains the norm.
  - 51Cards 11y ago
    True on this one as I am a manual driver myself, though I've had this debate recently with several members of the generation after mine. :) Being from North America myself (Canada) the percentage of people who can use a manual transmission is plummeting. In general many couldn't understand why you would manage your own gears when you have traction control, highly efficient automatics, and tiptronic options in most cars now. Agreed, probably not a solid part of that list yet, but not far from it with electric vehicles on the rise as well.
  - 11y ago
larrys 11y ago
Not sure I agree with the "warm analog sound of tape". I do agree vinyl has a nice sound. As someone who grew up with high end cassette decks (denon iirc and Ohm speakers) (with dolby which always muted the highs for me) there is really (in my opinion) nothing nice about the sound of a cassette to my ears.
- robodale 11y ago
  "warm analog sound of tape"...yea more like "dull hiss..."
  - msandford 11y ago
    To people who grew up with tape, that dull hiss means "music is about to happen!"
pnut 11y ago
I sort of get the appeal of the audio cassette. You can throw it directly into your backpack or pocket, no delicate fiddliness like a CD. It has enough physical substance to be meaningfully comparable to its contents, in contrast to a USB thumb drive, plus it has a finite amount of storage. The limited storage is important in the context of mixtapes. That was a currency back in the 80's and 90's, a very meaningful and thoughtful gift to give or receive. Like a love letter. You only got 20 or so songs, and that's it. Giving someone a subset of your torrent library is not the same.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

38 points by chkuendig 11y ago

oconnore 11y ago

And I thought I was a hipster for buying an external Bluray drive...

digi_owl 11y ago
Hipster would be to get a external 5.25 drive. Grabbing a BR drive, in particular if it is a burner, is basically about covering ones behind.

dec0dedab0de 11y ago

I go to one or two shows a month with smaller touring bands, generally shows with less than 100 people. Almost all of them have at least one tape now, some are tape only. I think it's kind of silly, like no one remembers what a pain rewinding is. I even have a friend who runs an all tape label. Edit: I bet that's what people older than me thought when I was buying vinyl in 1999.

mikeash 11y ago
Is there some advantage to it, or are they just being weirdly retro?
- dec0dedab0de 11y ago
  One time I was ranting to a guy selling tapes about how I hate tapes, and he said yeah me too, but the kids love it.
  - msandford 11y ago
    The previous generation talks about how vinyl sounds better ("warmer") than CDs. Tape is our generation's vinyl. Eventually when CDs are no longer widely produced (44.1kHz sample rate isn't ideal for the high end) and everyone has switched over to 96kHz or 192kHz at 24 or 32 bits or whatever the 4K TV equivalent in audio is, the next generation will wax nostalgic over CDs and the horrendous loudness wars that made everything sound "better" through dynamic range compression. I mean, I wouldn't bet THAT much money on it. But it definitely seems like the next cycle of the trend.
    - earlz 11y ago
      CDs are digital though.. I mean, sure there is the mastering, but you don't get the same analog subtleties that everyone pines for, be it tape or vinyl. I don't think CDs will ever be regarded as a "better format" for listening. I'm surprised tape is, since it's more limited than vinyl. Vinyl can theoretically encode higher quality audio than CDs in it's own analog way.. of course, it'll all vary with the actual precision it was cut with as well as the precision of the turntable needle. On top of this, some inherit restrictions in Vinyl actually made the loudness wars impossible. I don't recall the exact thing that causes it, but apparently if the signal is poorly mastered for vinyl (ie, too loud), the needle can literally jump out of the groove of the record.
      - msandford 11y ago
        I believe the driving force of this phenomena is nostalgia and envy of the experiences that those older than you had. I don't think actual superiority makes any sense at all, because during the early days of CDs they were mastered well and sounded amazing; The Dark Side of the Moon is an album that hasn't embraced the loudness wars and it's clearly superior to tape or vinyl. But if you really like some "historic" band that your elders got to listen to on the radio and go to their shows as they were coming up, and listen to their albums as they were released, you're never going to be able to have those experiences. But you can listen to them on the same format that they originally released their work. It might be argued that the band, producer, studio, mastering guys, etc would have optimized the album for the media it was originally released on, but I suspect that the differences are fairly small. As your ability to reproduce sound gets better, no information is lost. It's lost during mastering for a lower fidelity medium, not in the transfer from a lower fidelity medium to a higher one. This is a psychological phenomena not a technical one.
      - mikeash 11y ago
        Can vinyl really encode higher quality audio even in theory? I seem to recall that the noise floor for vinyl is around 60dB, while the quantization noise imposed by a CD is 96dB. It looks like the grooves on a record are a few tens of micrometers tall. If we say they have 65µm of potential variation, then you'd need to be able to resolve features down to a single nanometer to match a 16-bit digital source. I don't think a needle can get anywhere close to that, and I don't even know if the molecules would be that small.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- eastbayjake 11y ago
  I have a 1988 BMW 325i with the original stereo + cassette deck. I don't want to replace the stereo because I'd like to keep it in original condition, so I've been in the market for cassettes! There are a surprising number of older cars -- and some not that old -- where cassette decks were the base model option unless you paid for a CD changer.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Those fake cassette tapes that have a headphone plug work pretty well, though. Then you can use the audio source of your choice. The real problem is cars made in the few years after CDs completely took over but before the iPod did. A lot of those only do CD and radio and there's nothing good to hook in to for other audio sources, besides using an FM transmitter, or jacking directly into the FM antenna. I owned a car like this and I wished it had tape player!
    - semi-extrinsic 11y ago
      If your car has a stereo with just CD and radio, but with a CD changer option, you can get aftermarket kits that let you hook up your ipod/phone/mp3 and play music. Some can even pass the steering wheel next/back/pause etc. commands to your device.
    - kw71 11y ago
      A lot of those cars have a changer option on the factory stereo which means an emulator can provide an aux input. There are some adapters on the commercial market for this and lots of arduino-style projects published on the web. So far this year I built two such adapters for family and friends.
  - kw71 11y ago
    I think you are smart to not have hacked one of those aftermarket stereos that kids buy into such an awesome car. You aren't stuck with cassettes - you can upgrade without looking like a retard. The radios that came in e32 and e34 match the colors and legend typefaces. Then you can make or buy an aux input adapter that emulates alpine mbus.
toxican 11y ago
I don't get it. Wouldn't it be easier/cheaper for them to produce CDs? Or is it an "indie cred" type thing?
- dec0dedab0de 11y ago
  I think there is the general feeling that CDs are the same thing as a download, and if you're going to buy something physical it should be different than the download. Along that line of thinking tapes are much cheaper than vinyl, at least in short runs.
  - toxican 11y ago
    I follow that logic, but I don't necessarily agree with it. If they want to give an album a little more umpf, maybe include some stickers, exclusive tracks, etc. with the CD? If I went to a concert and they only had cassette copies of their albums, I wouldn't be walking out of there with a copy of their album because I don't own anything capable of playing it anymore. edit: spelling
    - dogma1138 11y ago
      Wont surprise me if most people buy it as a collectible doo-dad to display rather than actually listen too, pretty much anyone i know that bought the Guardians of the Galaxy tape thing just has it on their display wall of geekdom heck I'm not sure most of them even thought that it would actually play.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  Consider that tapes require more materials and that the production capacity is near non-existent there is no way they are cheaper than CD's they are probably several times more expensive than CD's these days. Early on CD's were more expensive but you have completely different fabrication process and royalties to deal with, but today nope. So it is nothing more than an "indie" thing and like many comments on YT said thank the hipsters and they are kinda right. I also wonder if there are any bands that do analogue recording since i don't think a single studio exists that isn't digital these days and if it does then considering the price of that rare gear and the expertise needed to operate it it would also be much much more expensive than traditional recording.
OneOneOneOne 11y ago
Vinyl makes more sense to me. I monkeyed around with cassettes for a little while but type II always sounded muted. Never played with type IV. Also, my older cassettes seemed to degrade. Even older commercial tapes sounded bad with time.
- oqnet 11y ago
  I was told they demagnetize over time, not sure if that's BS or not though.
dghughes 11y ago
They should release it on wax cylinders with a bonus bowler hat.

51Cards 11y ago

To those here who don't understand it... Why do we seek out retro gaming machines? Fire up a Commodore 64? Dig the Z80 unit out of the closet? Have massive projects attempting to bit emulate old TV gaming systems? Are these in some way better than our current hardware? Retro has its own appeal... for a game, a vintage automobile, a manual transmission, a paper photograph, 35mm film, a watch without a microprocessor, a softer audio sound, or the scrape of a needle over vinyl. Someone will love it on nostalgia alone even if the world has "moved on".

mrob 11y ago
Old games console + CRT TV is objectively better than almost everything modern by at least one measure: control latency. Punch-Out!! for NES is literally impossible to complete on a lot of modern hardware, because it doesn't take much additional latency to push the reaction time requirements beyond human ability. And even with less demanding games the feeling of responsiveness you get with original hardware is very noticeable.
Someone1234 11y ago
Little odd to read "a manual transmission" listed amongst other retro things. It is the most popular style of transmission in the world. Even in the US most vehicles larger than a minivan are manual transmission. Most people drive that way, it isn't odd, retro, or hipster. It is the norm, the US is the oddity. CVTs might change that a little as we go more hybrid/electric, but as of 2015, manual remains the norm.
- 51Cards 11y ago
  True on this one as I am a manual driver myself, though I've had this debate recently with several members of the generation after mine. :) Being from North America myself (Canada) the percentage of people who can use a manual transmission is plummeting. In general many couldn't understand why you would manage your own gears when you have traction control, highly efficient automatics, and tiptronic options in most cars now. Agreed, probably not a solid part of that list yet, but not far from it with electric vehicles on the rise as well.
- 11y ago

larrys 11y ago

Not sure I agree with the "warm analog sound of tape". I do agree vinyl has a nice sound. As someone who grew up with high end cassette decks (denon iirc and Ohm speakers) (with dolby which always muted the highs for me) there is really (in my opinion) nothing nice about the sound of a cassette to my ears.

robodale 11y ago
"warm analog sound of tape"...yea more like "dull hiss..."
- msandford 11y ago
  To people who grew up with tape, that dull hiss means "music is about to happen!"

pnut 11y ago

I sort of get the appeal of the audio cassette. You can throw it directly into your backpack or pocket, no delicate fiddliness like a CD. It has enough physical substance to be meaningfully comparable to its contents, in contrast to a USB thumb drive, plus it has a finite amount of storage. The limited storage is important in the context of mixtapes. That was a currency back in the 80's and 90's, a very meaningful and thoughtful gift to give or receive. Like a love letter. You only got 20 or so songs, and that's it. Giving someone a subset of your torrent library is not the same.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]