10 ms·

This word gets thrown around a lot but, hipsters! As others have attested there is nothing good about tapes. There are very good reasons why vinyl has survived

This word gets thrown around a lot but, hipsters! As others have attested there is nothing good about tapes. There are very good reasons why vinyl has survived (You can manipulate it with your hand when djing, and see the music on it, also its technically possible to get better sound quality than digital via high quality, high speed, vinyl and an all analog recording to stamping process) But tapes, no, they are shit. The only reason to use them is some form of conspicuous consumption, signaling how cool and wacky u are. additional, if u really want a kooky old physical medium go with minidiscs! They were amazing!

Nav_Panel 10y ago
> The only reason to use them is some form of conspicuous consumption, signaling how cool and wacky u are 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.
- mrob 10y ago
  If the sonic characteristics complement the music then write it to tape during production before transferring it to a medium with accurate sound reproduction. You don't need every listener to have their own tape hardware (which might not suit the music as well as your own).
  - Nav_Panel 10y ago
    A lot of our feelings about music are bound up in our expectations of the medium. When I listen to a digital recording, I expect it to be pristine. There can be a feeling of inauthenticity when the sonic characteristics don't match the actual playback medium. This feeling can persist even for separate analog media, such as listen to compilations of old 78s distributed on an LP. 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.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- stinos 10y ago
  inherently gratifying. It is a more multifaceted Thing, an object with a mass and volume and cover 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.
- 10y ago
woofyman 10y ago
The problem with vinyl is it degrades every time you play it and you have to be very careful handling it so you don't get fingerprints on it.
- jedimastert 10y ago
  cassettes degrade as well
- AgentME 10y ago
  Someone should make a media player that adds some noise to your MP3 files every time you play them. Or maybe it just lossily re-encodes it at the same bit rate.
  - XorNot 10y ago
    It's the hiss and scratch as you put vinyl onto play that does it. There's an anticipation associated with that sound, particularly the way the noise stabilizes as the needle moves into the recorded part of the track and quietens. To me it's always been very similar to the experience of when a live orchestra is about to play and the audience quietens.
- dTal 10y ago
  Product idea: a vinyl record player with a built-in A/D converter, hard drive and label recognition. The first time you play a new record it records it. The second time you play it you hear the recording, and the player makes a show of spinning the record and moving the needle (without actually touching it). All the tactile pleasure of vinyl, none of the degradation. The needle would last longer too. If the hard drive runs out of space it can just drop stuff out of cache. Would also be fun to watch unsuspecting vinyl nerds gush over "superior analog sound".
  - lb1lf 10y ago
    >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.
yarrel 10y ago
I love MiniDiscs. DAT is where it's at, though.
- flycaliguy 10y ago
  Mini discs actually do have a unique playback feature among physical recordings. A random shuffle setting can be played without any gaps. Aphex Twin released a recording that took advantage of this. I love art and it's ability to interact with an audience on multiple levels.
  - fbnlsr 10y ago
    > Aphex Twin released a recording that took advantage of this. Did he? I remember Autechre did (under the name Gescom). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minidisc_(album) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minidisc_(album)
- digi_owl 10y ago
  If only Sony Music had not been so copy adverse that they effectively gave the format concrete DRM boots...
  - lb1lf 10y ago
    -Just buy a pro deck, which ignores the SCMS copy protection bits. :) (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.)
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    Sony was still fighting copyright when they launched DAT (IIRC, the Japanese DAT players that launched before the US didn't have DRM), it was the US record industry that opposed it vehemently, bringing Sony to testify in front of congress. There's a scathing open letter you can find from the US recording industry basically calling the Japanese invaders trying to kill music. 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=PT10&dq=you+of+japan+invent+marvelous&source=bl&ots=5G4SLJGQHh&sig=CgzWzqjDGocwzAZG6nGq1MPrjZI&hl=ja&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=you%20of%20japan%20invent%20marvelous&f=false https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=oCQEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT10&lpg...
shams93 10y ago
Its easy to drop into your pocket when you buy one at a show, try dropping a cd or vinyl record into your back pocket lol
- nizmow 10y ago
  Maybe a 1GB USB stick?
  - everyone 10y ago
    download link
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    I seem to recall a DAP that was basically a USB stick in a dock.
oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
The fact that you could easily record onto cassette was a BIG bonus. I really liked minidisc for about 2 years, but it was gone in a flash.
- everyone 10y ago
  The minidisc players themselves were amazing at recording too. Mine has built in compression and normalization when recording. I've recorded a load of gigs with a tiny clip on mic powered by an AA battery. I got very good sound quality, better then any bootleg Ive heard not taken of the mixing desk.
disordinary 10y ago
What you find with vinyl is labels actually mix the album differently, not because the medium is better quality but because the listener expects different things. Digital music often has a "wall of sound" mixing which results in a loss of fidelity and clipping but vinyl is mixed quieter with clear shapes to the waveform.
- masklinn 10y ago
  > What you find with vinyl is labels actually mix the album differently, not because the medium is better quality but because the listener expects different things. 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.
- ascagnel_ 10y ago
  Don't forget the RIAA curve! http://sessionville.com/articles/what-is-the-riaa-curve http://sessionville.com/articles/what-is-the-riaa-curve
kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
The only good thing about vinyl is the RIAA curve prevents loudness wars. If CDs were mastered correctly without intentional clipping it would be impossible for records to best them in quality.
- maloney 10y ago
  I don't think that is true, given that digital will always be samples of the original. I worked at a mastering studio that had a laser record player, best sound I have heard.
  - lloeki 10y ago
    > I don't think that is true, given that digital will always be samples of the original. Nyquist–Shannon begs to differ.
    - lb1lf 10y ago
      -In all fairness (and this does not have any practical implication whatsoever for the case discussed here, but nit-picking is a favourite pastime of mine), Nyquist-Shannon is not fully satisfied during music reproduction. 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.
      - gugagore 10y ago
        and since we are nit-picking, Nyquist-Shannon doesn't have anything to say about quantized samples.
        dTal 10y ago
        People always forget that part!
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
joshontheweb 10y ago
Not really much of a counter point but you can actually scratch cassette tapes. This guy shows how cool it can be. Never seen anyone else do it though. I want to build my own at some point. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7nImXd0nxU4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7nImXd0nxU4
- SixSigma 10y ago
  For years, Laurie Anderson has been using a violin bow with tape as the "strings" and a tape head as pickups on the violin body. Here's a recording from 1977 of her playing it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZyXwcsboGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZyXwcsboGs
  - joshontheweb 10y ago
    Very cool. Thanks.
legitster 10y ago
Counterpoint: cassettes are between CDs and Vinyls for portability and durability. You can leave them rolling around in your glovebox for eons and still have them play decent music, better than a radio station. 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.
lb1lf 10y ago
>(...)also its technically possible to get better sound quality than digital via high quality, high speed, vinyl and an all analog recording to stamping process -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.
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago
  I thought it was an inherent limitation in LPs (track skipping probability increases with loudness) that meant they are not mastered into oblivion like CDs?
  - lb1lf 10y ago
    -If you wanted to, you could master an LP with 0 dynamic range; it would work just fine. (Provided the average signal level was low enough to keep the needle from going haywire attempting to follow the LF grooves) 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.
    - 10y ago
geon 10y ago
High quality tapes sounded great. https://youtu.be/jVoSQP2yUYA https://youtu.be/jVoSQP2yUYA
- DiThi 10y ago
  Came to say this. Most people only knew about the bad type 1 tapes and very shitty cassette players. Double deck were double shit for the same price. 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.
throwanem 10y ago
> go with minidiscs! They were amazing! 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...
Clubber 10y ago
>if u really want a kooky old physical medium go with minidiscs! They were amazing! 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.
- throwanem 10y ago
  I still use a pair of speakers from a stack like that. They're almost as old as I am and still sound great. Still have the EQ and dual tape deck with the soft open, too - I even still use the latter, to rip tapes of stuff you just don't easily find in any other medium. 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.
riprowan 10y ago
> technically possible to get better sound quality than digital 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....
ZenoArrow 10y ago
>"As others have attested there is nothing good about tapes." 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 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.
boomlinde 10y ago
"Good" in this case is very much in the eyes of the beholder. If your end-goal is accurate reproduction of the recorded signal, both vinyl records and compact cassettes are awful. But that might just not be the end goal. Cassettes certainly have some unique qualities that may be musically useful despite their signal reproduction shortcomings, just like driving a guitar amplifier to distortion has. 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.
LocalH 10y ago
"Tapes are shit" is also a mythfrom a technical perspective. A good recording made onto a good metal tape on a high-end deck from a good source, will sound nearly as good as a CD or clean vinyl on a good turntable. Commercial prerecorded tapes were shit, OTOH, becayse they were always on cheap tape stock, with at best Dolby noise reduction, to maximise sales.

Nav_Panel 10y ago

> The only reason to use them is some form of conspicuous consumption, signaling how cool and wacky u are 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.

mrob 10y ago
If the sonic characteristics complement the music then write it to tape during production before transferring it to a medium with accurate sound reproduction. You don't need every listener to have their own tape hardware (which might not suit the music as well as your own).
- Nav_Panel 10y ago
  A lot of our feelings about music are bound up in our expectations of the medium. When I listen to a digital recording, I expect it to be pristine. There can be a feeling of inauthenticity when the sonic characteristics don't match the actual playback medium. This feeling can persist even for separate analog media, such as listen to compilations of old 78s distributed on an LP. 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.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
stinos 10y ago
inherently gratifying. It is a more multifaceted Thing, an object with a mass and volume and cover 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.
10y ago

woofyman 10y ago

The problem with vinyl is it degrades every time you play it and you have to be very careful handling it so you don't get fingerprints on it.

jedimastert 10y ago
cassettes degrade as well
AgentME 10y ago
Someone should make a media player that adds some noise to your MP3 files every time you play them. Or maybe it just lossily re-encodes it at the same bit rate.
- XorNot 10y ago
  It's the hiss and scratch as you put vinyl onto play that does it. There's an anticipation associated with that sound, particularly the way the noise stabilizes as the needle moves into the recorded part of the track and quietens. To me it's always been very similar to the experience of when a live orchestra is about to play and the audience quietens.
dTal 10y ago
Product idea: a vinyl record player with a built-in A/D converter, hard drive and label recognition. The first time you play a new record it records it. The second time you play it you hear the recording, and the player makes a show of spinning the record and moving the needle (without actually touching it). All the tactile pleasure of vinyl, none of the degradation. The needle would last longer too. If the hard drive runs out of space it can just drop stuff out of cache. Would also be fun to watch unsuspecting vinyl nerds gush over "superior analog sound".
- lb1lf 10y ago
  >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.

yarrel 10y ago

I love MiniDiscs. DAT is where it's at, though.

flycaliguy 10y ago
Mini discs actually do have a unique playback feature among physical recordings. A random shuffle setting can be played without any gaps. Aphex Twin released a recording that took advantage of this. I love art and it's ability to interact with an audience on multiple levels.
- fbnlsr 10y ago
  > Aphex Twin released a recording that took advantage of this. Did he? I remember Autechre did (under the name Gescom). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minidisc_(album) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minidisc_(album)
digi_owl 10y ago
If only Sony Music had not been so copy adverse that they effectively gave the format concrete DRM boots...
- lb1lf 10y ago
  -Just buy a pro deck, which ignores the SCMS copy protection bits. :) (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.)
- kalleboo 10y ago
  Sony was still fighting copyright when they launched DAT (IIRC, the Japanese DAT players that launched before the US didn't have DRM), it was the US record industry that opposed it vehemently, bringing Sony to testify in front of congress. There's a scathing open letter you can find from the US recording industry basically calling the Japanese invaders trying to kill music. 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=PT10&dq=you+of+japan+invent+marvelous&source=bl&ots=5G4SLJGQHh&sig=CgzWzqjDGocwzAZG6nGq1MPrjZI&hl=ja&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=you%20of%20japan%20invent%20marvelous&f=false https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=oCQEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT10&lpg...

shams93 10y ago

Its easy to drop into your pocket when you buy one at a show, try dropping a cd or vinyl record into your back pocket lol

nizmow 10y ago
Maybe a 1GB USB stick?
- everyone 10y ago
  download link
- digi_owl 10y ago
  I seem to recall a DAP that was basically a USB stick in a dock.

oneeyedpigeon 10y ago

The fact that you could easily record onto cassette was a BIG bonus. I really liked minidisc for about 2 years, but it was gone in a flash.

everyone 10y ago
The minidisc players themselves were amazing at recording too. Mine has built in compression and normalization when recording. I've recorded a load of gigs with a tiny clip on mic powered by an AA battery. I got very good sound quality, better then any bootleg Ive heard not taken of the mixing desk.

disordinary 10y ago

What you find with vinyl is labels actually mix the album differently, not because the medium is better quality but because the listener expects different things. Digital music often has a "wall of sound" mixing which results in a loss of fidelity and clipping but vinyl is mixed quieter with clear shapes to the waveform.

masklinn 10y ago
> What you find with vinyl is labels actually mix the album differently, not because the medium is better quality but because the listener expects different things. 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.
ascagnel_ 10y ago
Don't forget the RIAA curve! http://sessionville.com/articles/what-is-the-riaa-curve http://sessionville.com/articles/what-is-the-riaa-curve

kevin_thibedeau 10y ago

The only good thing about vinyl is the RIAA curve prevents loudness wars. If CDs were mastered correctly without intentional clipping it would be impossible for records to best them in quality.

maloney 10y ago
I don't think that is true, given that digital will always be samples of the original. I worked at a mastering studio that had a laser record player, best sound I have heard.
- lloeki 10y ago
  > I don't think that is true, given that digital will always be samples of the original. Nyquist–Shannon begs to differ.
  - lb1lf 10y ago
    -In all fairness (and this does not have any practical implication whatsoever for the case discussed here, but nit-picking is a favourite pastime of mine), Nyquist-Shannon is not fully satisfied during music reproduction. 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.
    - gugagore 10y ago
      and since we are nit-picking, Nyquist-Shannon doesn't have anything to say about quantized samples.
      - dTal 10y ago
        People always forget that part!
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

joshontheweb 10y ago

Not really much of a counter point but you can actually scratch cassette tapes. This guy shows how cool it can be. Never seen anyone else do it though. I want to build my own at some point. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7nImXd0nxU4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7nImXd0nxU4

SixSigma 10y ago
For years, Laurie Anderson has been using a violin bow with tape as the "strings" and a tape head as pickups on the violin body. Here's a recording from 1977 of her playing it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZyXwcsboGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZyXwcsboGs
- joshontheweb 10y ago
  Very cool. Thanks.

legitster 10y ago

Counterpoint: cassettes are between CDs and Vinyls for portability and durability. You can leave them rolling around in your glovebox for eons and still have them play decent music, better than a radio station. 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.

lb1lf 10y ago

>(...)also its technically possible to get better sound quality than digital via high quality, high speed, vinyl and an all analog recording to stamping process -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.

semi-extrinsic 10y ago
I thought it was an inherent limitation in LPs (track skipping probability increases with loudness) that meant they are not mastered into oblivion like CDs?
- lb1lf 10y ago
  -If you wanted to, you could master an LP with 0 dynamic range; it would work just fine. (Provided the average signal level was low enough to keep the needle from going haywire attempting to follow the LF grooves) 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.
  - 10y ago

geon 10y ago

High quality tapes sounded great. https://youtu.be/jVoSQP2yUYA https://youtu.be/jVoSQP2yUYA

DiThi 10y ago
Came to say this. Most people only knew about the bad type 1 tapes and very shitty cassette players. Double deck were double shit for the same price. 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.

throwanem 10y ago

> go with minidiscs! They were amazing! 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...

Clubber 10y ago

>if u really want a kooky old physical medium go with minidiscs! They were amazing! 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.

throwanem 10y ago
I still use a pair of speakers from a stack like that. They're almost as old as I am and still sound great. Still have the EQ and dual tape deck with the soft open, too - I even still use the latter, to rip tapes of stuff you just don't easily find in any other medium. 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.

riprowan 10y ago

> technically possible to get better sound quality than digital 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....

ZenoArrow 10y ago

>"As others have attested there is nothing good about tapes." 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 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.

boomlinde 10y ago

"Good" in this case is very much in the eyes of the beholder. If your end-goal is accurate reproduction of the recorded signal, both vinyl records and compact cassettes are awful. But that might just not be the end goal. Cassettes certainly have some unique qualities that may be musically useful despite their signal reproduction shortcomings, just like driving a guitar amplifier to distortion has. 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.

LocalH 10y ago

"Tapes are shit" is also a mythfrom a technical perspective. A good recording made onto a good metal tape on a high-end deck from a good source, will sound nearly as good as a CD or clean vinyl on a good turntable. Commercial prerecorded tapes were shit, OTOH, becayse they were always on cheap tape stock, with at best Dolby noise reduction, to maximise sales.