3 ms·

I really appreciate the skill of the person operating the machine but it doesn't sound particularly different from any random CD to me. I guess it's an interest

by simias 7y ago

I really appreciate the skill of the person operating the machine but it doesn't sound particularly different from any random CD to me. I guess it's an interesting constraint for the DJ though, you can't swap the tape in and out without rewinding it first, you can seek randomly like on a vinyl. It's a cool art performance but the resulting audio on its own is fairly mundane as far as I can tell. It sounds a bit compressed but that's fairly common for that type of music so it's hard to judge if it's a constraint of the hardware or an artistic choice.

pimeys 7y ago
It's about the craft, the engineering. He's a legend, but here he just plays around and has fun with his hobby project. Typically he plays CDJ and before that vinyl with an additional tape reel if needed.
sramsay 7y ago
I do a lot of stuff with audio, and I can definitely hear the difference. And while I am absolutely crazy about the sound of analog tape, at the same time, I can think of brutally clean, digital recordings that just completely blow my mind. Horses for courses, I guess.
marcan_42 7y ago
There is no objective audio quality improvement to using analog equipment (vs correctly engineered digital). The appeal of analog is in the physicality of it, the constraints, the user interface, and the way it colors (i.e. distorts) the sound. It's art, and it's great, but at the end of the day you can always digitize the result and it'll sound the same, and theoretically you can also emulate almost any analog audio processing digitally (though it might be hard and nobody might have implemented it yet). The way to enjoy analog is to pay no attention to all those ignorant audiophiles who still claim it has a quality advantage over digital (while having not the slightest idea how the Nyquist-Shanning sampling theorem works), and enjoy it for what it is. Art. A tool. Nostalgia. Imperfection. Constraints. Skill. It's 2020 and we still enjoy 8-bit games. Analog is the same thing. And it shouldn't go away, just like retro gaming shouldn't go away. Just ignore that dude who says that LPs have better audio quality than CDs. Now I hope I don't spawn a generation of gameophiles that say that SNES mode7 3D is higher quality than an Nvidia RTX :-)

by simias 7y ago

pimeys 7y ago

It's about the craft, the engineering. He's a legend, but here he just plays around and has fun with his hobby project. Typically he plays CDJ and before that vinyl with an additional tape reel if needed.

sramsay 7y ago

I do a lot of stuff with audio, and I can definitely hear the difference. And while I am absolutely crazy about the sound of analog tape, at the same time, I can think of brutally clean, digital recordings that just completely blow my mind. Horses for courses, I guess.

marcan_42 7y ago

There is no objective audio quality improvement to using analog equipment (vs correctly engineered digital). The appeal of analog is in the physicality of it, the constraints, the user interface, and the way it colors (i.e. distorts) the sound. It's art, and it's great, but at the end of the day you can always digitize the result and it'll sound the same, and theoretically you can also emulate almost any analog audio processing digitally (though it might be hard and nobody might have implemented it yet). The way to enjoy analog is to pay no attention to all those ignorant audiophiles who still claim it has a quality advantage over digital (while having not the slightest idea how the Nyquist-Shanning sampling theorem works), and enjoy it for what it is. Art. A tool. Nostalgia. Imperfection. Constraints. Skill. It's 2020 and we still enjoy 8-bit games. Analog is the same thing. And it shouldn't go away, just like retro gaming shouldn't go away. Just ignore that dude who says that LPs have better audio quality than CDs. Now I hope I don't spawn a generation of gameophiles that say that SNES mode7 3D is higher quality than an Nvidia RTX :-)