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One even reads nice things about the way cassettes sound, like in this Medium post from Aubrey Norwood: “The sound tape gives is warm. Saturated. It promotes a

One even reads nice things about the way cassettes sound, like in this Medium post from Aubrey Norwood: “The sound tape gives is warm. Saturated. It promotes a degree of imperfection, and creates an underflow of infamous tape hiss that leaves the format feeling nakedly honest, which is gold dust for the sincere-inclined musician.” I hope this kind of sickly-sweet format necrophilia gains further ascendancy, making it easier to offload some of the defunct media on the bay to unsuspecting users; who want to justify this kind of 'authentic' experience.

golergka 7y ago
Tape certainly affects sound, in exactly this way. I don't think that I'll ever start buying cassette recordings, but I routinely use different tape-emulating plugins in my music production to get this particular type of distortion, and I don't think that there are better words to describe it.
- johnnycab 7y ago
  You seem to have gone off on a tangent, with regards to emulating the 'sound' via plugins and distortion filters for music production, without actually having to invest in the physical medium. Whereas, I was commenting on the banality of resuscitating a flawed format based upon nostalgia.
  - golergka 7y ago
    The point is, the tape effect on the sound itself is very real, and it's indeed "warm and saturated" - it's not typical audiophile snake oil.
fzeroracer 7y ago
Is it really that silly? Considering there's been many films that use artificial film grain as well as a resurgence of older graphical techniques such as dithering for video games as an art style. The resurgence of Vinyl, Cassettes etc are all tied to the same core principle I think. It's incredibly easy nowadays to have a perfect or flawless copy of something stored digitally, that people are looking for and celebrating imperfections in the analogue counterparts. After all, it's only a few clicks away to Spotify/Bandcamp etc to receive a digital copy. It's more effort to get a physical copy, let alone one on an older medium.
hondo77 7y ago
"Format necrophilia". Heh. Gotta remember that one.
intopieces 7y ago
Brian Eno: "Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them."

golergka 7y ago

Tape certainly affects sound, in exactly this way. I don't think that I'll ever start buying cassette recordings, but I routinely use different tape-emulating plugins in my music production to get this particular type of distortion, and I don't think that there are better words to describe it.

johnnycab 7y ago
You seem to have gone off on a tangent, with regards to emulating the 'sound' via plugins and distortion filters for music production, without actually having to invest in the physical medium. Whereas, I was commenting on the banality of resuscitating a flawed format based upon nostalgia.
- golergka 7y ago
  The point is, the tape effect on the sound itself is very real, and it's indeed "warm and saturated" - it's not typical audiophile snake oil.

fzeroracer 7y ago

Is it really that silly? Considering there's been many films that use artificial film grain as well as a resurgence of older graphical techniques such as dithering for video games as an art style. The resurgence of Vinyl, Cassettes etc are all tied to the same core principle I think. It's incredibly easy nowadays to have a perfect or flawless copy of something stored digitally, that people are looking for and celebrating imperfections in the analogue counterparts. After all, it's only a few clicks away to Spotify/Bandcamp etc to receive a digital copy. It's more effort to get a physical copy, let alone one on an older medium.

hondo77 7y ago

"Format necrophilia". Heh. Gotta remember that one.

intopieces 7y ago

Brian Eno: "Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them."