I've "tried" cassette tapes three times now. The first, which at this point is insignificant, is when they were period-accurate, and I didn't have a frame of r

I've "tried" cassette tapes three times now. The first, which at this point is insignificant, is when they were period-accurate, and I didn't have a frame of reference. They were pretty good then. The second time was around 2009, when I bought my first car, and the steering wheel had buttons that could control (pause / seek, not just rewind / fast forward) the cassette deck. So I bought a recorder and started moving some music onto it. When I got it into the car, though, I learned about "wow and flutter": the motors in the cassette deck being ten years old, they no longer rotated at a constant speed. Instead, they'd speed up and slow down, sometimes at unpredictable frequencies, so the pitch of the music would be increasing and decreasing all the time. Sort of like a truck horn, constantly going by you. The third time was just this year, when I had the opportunity to buy an album digitally for $9, or digitally and with a cassette for $10. Naturally, I had to see what I'd get. I put it in a (different) car's cassette deck, and this time was greeted with music that sounded like it was recorded by Alvin and the Chipmunks. This car doesn't get driven much, and when the alternator is charging the battery, 12 volts is more like 15 - and the motors in the cassette deck again care about that. Digital has its own shortcomings (I own too many devices with horrid DACs), but I vastly prefer being able to listen digitally and get a better-sounding result.