[HN Gopher] Cassette tapes are making a comeback?
___________________________________________________________________
Cassette tapes are making a comeback?
Author : devonnull
Score : 129 points
Date : 2025-12-04 04:30 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (theconversation.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theconversation.com)
| _wire_ wrote:
| "In many ways, Bob's Big Boy never left, sir. He's always offered
| the same high-quality meals at competitive prices..."
| spaqin wrote:
| Of course cassettes were all around me when I was younger; even
| my first car had a cassette deck. They seemed like an old relic
| in that time already - with the drawbacks mentioned in the
| article, so it was easy to put them away seemingly forever.
|
| However, I got "back" into cassettes recently with some new
| releases. Grabbed a FiiO CP-13, and while the quality still isn't
| great, with low wow and flutter it's perfectly serviceable.
| There's one thing that made it stand out and felt like we missed
| something that's now become a lost art - absolutely no delay
| between pressing play and music playing. No buffering from a
| streaming service, no megabytes pushed into RAM, no decoding, no
| FIFOs being filled before the signal exiting through a DAC.
| albert_e wrote:
| I agree
|
| And also .. there is absolutely no chance that you might
| unexpectedly hear an ad instead of a song.
| Grisu_FTP wrote:
| I personally would never listen through a music player that
| serves ADs. Might just be me and my insane hatred of seeing
| ADs tho.
| itintheory wrote:
| > FiiO CP-13, and while the quality still isn't great
|
| The sad part is that the quality of modern cassette players is
| actually decidedly worse than their vintage counterparts.
| There's essentially only one company producing the actual
| mechanism (Tanashin) and they're cheaply made of low quality
| materials (plastic flywheels etc.). That's the main reason that
| the vintage machines are still fetching higher prices. Also I
| don't think any modern machines have Dolby B-C noise reduction,
| HX Pro, automatic track seek/skip, and whatever other fancy
| features you could find in the likes of a high end Sony or
| Nakamichi deck.
| valesco wrote:
| I found a French manufacturer called wearerewind.com who uses
| a heavier brass wheel and better clarity. Quite pricey
| though, as it is to be expected.
| Touche wrote:
| I've read this but I don't get it. Why can't those parts just
| be 3D printed on demand?
| mrob wrote:
| Tanashin stopped producing tape mechanisms years ago. The
| modern "Tanashin" tape mechanisms are Chinese clones.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I miss driving down the freeway, occasionally seeing the
| shoulders strewn with cassette tape...
|
| Actually, I don't miss that at all.
| finaard wrote:
| I started getting cassette players working again when I had kids
| - I had lots of old cassettes with stories still, and after
| looking into a lot of stuff determined that it is one of the best
| physical storage formats for that kind of content for kids we
| currently have. Its major advantage is that it automatically
| saves state, and the state saving is player-independent. Add to
| that that players typically have large clunky buttons ideal for
| kids hands, and you have something even all the dedicated digital
| kids media players can't compete with.
| ceuk wrote:
| Basically the same story here for me. I have a trove of
| audiobooks I've carted around with me from house to house since
| I left home which my kids now eagerly pick from each night to
| listen to at bedtime. I've even supplemented my collection
| considerably since from eBay and the like.
|
| It's just such a great medium. Fairly resilient, incredibly
| easy to use, compact, cheap ish.
|
| And of course there's the heady dose of nostalgia for us old
| gits :)
|
| If anyone has any recommendations I'd love to hear them. Top
| one from me has to be the BBC dramatised Lord of the Rings
| adaptation which I myself have been listening to off and on
| since I was around 5 or 6
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _compact_
|
| since "compact cassette" is the actual trademark(r), I can't
| help but think you might've been unduly influenced here.
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/i/4b7c08d5084dbabb.png
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Cassette
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Maybe it's just an accurate name? CDs were pretty compact,
| back in the day: think of how many floppies would fit on a
| CD-ROM.
| reel2reel wrote:
| My family had a reel-to-reel player, which was definitely
| not compact. My dad would record tapes from Vietnam and
| send over the recordings so that our family could hear
| him. I was afraid to touch it growing up. Instead, I
| played records on our turntable, and 8-tracks tapes in
| our car and a couple of 8-track players we had. As a
| teenager, I played cassettes, which was awesome. Vinyl
| sounded great and had the best overall experience for
| things like Christmas records, but cassettes had a warm
| feel and you could listen to them in your car, a friend's
| car, on a boombox, etc. and if you had two tape decks,
| you could make mix tapes and share them! Or you could
| just copy a tape for a friend. Those were the days.
| jjgreen wrote:
| My dad had an Akai M8 (7" tapes) that I was not allowed
| to touch under threat of injury, but then he got heavily
| into quad vinyl and gave the beast to me: The whole
| Beatles catalogue on 7" tapes, yay!
| nine_k wrote:
| Unlike a CD, a cassette could fit a pocket. Barely, but
| still. A CD never could.
| nephihaha wrote:
| That is one advantage. Also great in cars if they're not
| chewed up. Very hard to change CDs in a car.
| whackernews wrote:
| Snap. My mates kids have this modern player and I thought it
| was really cool. You get these cards for it and slot them in
| to play the different stories and music. You can even get a
| special card that you can make recordings with. We almost got
| one for our kid until we realised, wait a min, it's a tape
| recorder!
|
| You lose a bit of sound quality but there's no internet-
| cloud-based crap to deal with. You don't need to worry about
| the company failing and bricking the toy or the Chinese
| spying on your kids. Also, they're mostly just mechanical
| machines with a simple circuit so actually fixable, you can
| pick up a 30 year old broken player off eBay and chances are
| a rubber belt has just perished somewhere.
|
| The Harry Potter audio tapes are good. It's read by Stephen
| Fry and he's great!
| georgefrowny wrote:
| > If anyone has any recommendations I'd love to hear them
|
| For kids: Just William (read by Martin Jarvis) and PG
| Wodehouse Wooster books (don't recall who read that).
|
| Early Eddie Izzard shows were also memorably good as audio.
| Very quotable.
|
| There's a gigantic, not always unofficial, archive of Just a
| Minute online, which is excellent car journey material. This
| is the first 5 series, but there's 80-plus series of it in
| total https://archive.org/details/Just-A-Minute
| ceuk wrote:
| I absolutely loved those just william cassettes as a kid!
| Completely forgot they existed, must have been lost or
| broken. Will definitely be repurchasing
| arethuza wrote:
| I still have the BBC Radio 4 version of _His Dark Materials_
| on CD somewhere - I ripped them years ago and listen to the
| digital version. I 've experienced HDM in various forms,
| including the stage version and of course the books, but I am
| most fond of the Radio 4 version.
| huxley wrote:
| John Le Carre's "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"and Umberto Eco's
| "The Name of the Rose" were constant companions for me on
| road trips (sadly no English unabridged "Foucault's Pendulum"
| exists)
| perilunar wrote:
| I noticed that when my kids were little they could use cassette
| players well before they could read. They would choose music
| based on the pictures on the cassettes and the covers. We had a
| (clickwheel) iPod for our own music, but they couldn't work it
| because they couldn't read the text-only interface.
| georgefrowny wrote:
| > Its major advantage is that it automatically saves state, and
| the state saving is player-independent.
|
| Yes, it's pretty mad if you think if what you would need to do
| to replace it.
|
| Either you have a system with QR codes or simple ID chip to
| refer to some URL. Now you need a server, media licensing
| agreements and somewhere to store progress information,
| subscriptions, on and on. And the eternal temptation to abuse
| the data if it's in the cloud.
|
| Or you store all the audio in the card, and now you need a
| memory chip and PCB in every card, plus some proprietary
| USB/WiFi/Bluetooth device to write the cards.
|
| And the barely-makes-contact head system is genius too rather
| than sliding gold contacts. And it just has paper label
| inserts.
|
| The only real down sides of cassettes other then the obvious
| physicality if you don't like that, is they integrate badly
| into modern cars, have a fairly short run length (and
| occasionally get chewed up). And if lots of need to be authored
| quickly, that's too bad!
| prmoustache wrote:
| Physical medias are great for kids. Also teach them to respect
| stuff.
| stryan wrote:
| Taylor Swift (and Ed Sheeran) releasing her albums on vinyl is
| what caused vinyl prices to sky rocket, so not happy to hear
| she's moving onto cassettes too. I moved to collecting tapes due
| to vinyls being too expensive to get for anything but my most
| loved albums.
|
| Some genres just feel better to listen to on tape too: lofi black
| metal, dungeon synth, hardcore, anything that likes to play with
| lo-fi sounds for aesthetic sounds nice on tapes and it really
| adds to the experience.
| jghn wrote:
| I lived through vinyl, 8-track, cassettes, and CDs. I digitized
| all of my music over 20 years ago and no longer even own a
| physical media playback device. I can't fathom going back.
| Digital or bust.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| I would especially not go back to tape. sssssssssssssssssssssss
| jghn wrote:
| 8-track is lower than cassette in my book, but they share a
| common factor!
| Aldipower wrote:
| Why not? Now after 20 years passed you won't hear it anymore!
| :-P
| devilbunny wrote:
| If you want the cassette experience without the massive
| downsides of cassettes, pick up an old Minidisc recorder.
| Physical media that are nearly infinitely re-recordable (unused
| ones are expensive but used ones from Japan are not) and nearly
| indestructible. The NetMD ones have been bid up in price
| because of transfer speed but older ones that only do real-time
| transfers are not hideously expensive.
| jghn wrote:
| I remember minidiscs, but never had my own player. But I
| don't want any sort of physical media.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yep. Picked up a few MiniDisc players. My daughter is
| fascinated with them.
| iszomer wrote:
| I still have a few specialty MD's from various brands such as
| the mona/bitclub; my last recorder was the RH1 and I
| regretted ever letting that unit go.
| linehedonist wrote:
| But why would I want the cassette experience in the first
| place?
| devilbunny wrote:
| Mix tapes were a very cool experience that a Spotify
| playlist can't replicate. Beyond that, ask someone who
| wants it. I don't, but they are a really cool piece of
| tech.
| binary132 wrote:
| Minidiscs were so cool! I was surprised to see they still
| make them. Unfortunately they're not all that cheap but not
| terrible.
| devilbunny wrote:
| They don't still make them. It's all NOS or used.
| netrap wrote:
| Only recently discontinued in Feburary 2025!
| Aldipower wrote:
| You do not get tape saturation with minidisc, thus you cannot
| get the "cassette experience".
| tkgally wrote:
| Same here. And I've been old-guy grumbling for years now about
| kids-these-days getting into vinyl and other retro technology
| that I was happy to be rid of.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Owning bit-perfect rips of your favourite music is a sweet
| spot. I have no interest in tape - of any kind - or vinyl.
|
| The one frustration is that continuous FLAC playback appears to
| be an arcane programming challenge that only a select few
| developers have mastered. Especially on mobile.
|
| And unless you set up a server the business of getting files
| onto and off devices is insanely perverse.
|
| But in terms of sound quality and convenience, lossless rips
| win over anything else.
|
| Going back to physical seems almost pointlessly decadent.
| jjav wrote:
| Cassettes were always a pain, but LPs are an awesome medium
| even today.
|
| While it's convenient to just listen to anything with a click,
| the joy of the experience is gone. Purposefully pulling out an
| LP and setting it on the turntable, sitting on the couch to
| meaningfully listen while reading the album cover is a much
| more engaging musical experience.
|
| Yes, I don't have time to do that much anymore either. But when
| possible, it is much more enjoyable.
| wkjagt wrote:
| Not trying to correct you, just looking for the right word.
| Digital isn't the right term here, because CDs are also
| digital. I'm trying to come up with the word for the opposite
| of physical media, but strangely I can't. Maybe streaming, but
| how would MP3s on a USB drive fit in?
| Anthony-G wrote:
| Ethereal, Ephemeral?
|
| I know what you mean but I can't think of any word that
| describes the concept (without requiring further
| elaboration).
| beAbU wrote:
| Maybe "mediumless" is the right word.
|
| Although, if we want to pedantic: music stored on a hard disk
| is still stored on a medium, but you can't pop the hard drive
| into any old player and play the music.
| kgwxd wrote:
| "physical media" is an inaccurate, redundant, phrase.
| Joeboy wrote:
| The issue here is, "physical" is a misleading word. Digital
| works are also held on physical media. The distinction is
| whether the work is stored on a _dedicated_ physical object.
|
| Edit: I suppose a jukebox confuses things as I think it
| belongs in the "physical media" box, but it isn't dedicated
| to a specific work. Hmm.
| littlekey wrote:
| Anyone have recommendations for a cassette player?
| turboladen wrote:
| How about a Nakamichi Dragon? https://ebay.us/m/zrtUQA
| creeble wrote:
| Looks just like mine.
|
| But for $30, you can't beat this:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Cassette-Converter-Portable-
| Recorder-...
| itintheory wrote:
| You can definitely beat that for $30. Hit the thrift stores
| and you can find vintage machines that will greatly
| outperform this. You may need to replace a belt on some,
| but many are working just fine.
| tom_ wrote:
| The cheapest one you can find. They all suck, and this way
| you'll spend the least amount of money.
| ffuxlpff wrote:
| Actually the price and quality range of cassette players is
| wider than probably in any other format. The good ones were
| really good.
| nvader wrote:
| Pretty clear-cut example of the Submarine[0] genre.
|
| [0] https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html For those who aren't
| up-to-date with their HackerNews lore.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Strong disagree. This trend has been underway for a few years
| already. There are a few reasons for this:
|
| 1. Musicians love tape. We like the frequency roll-off, we like
| the imprecision - but these are nostalgia. What we like most is
| the with tape your options are largely reduced to Record and
| Play, because doing anything more complicated (eg editing via
| punch-ins with synchronization) is such a PITA. They're a great
| tool for just making you commit to a performance instead of
| editing it to death.
|
| 2. In similar fashion, young people are fascinated by a medium
| you have to sit through by default, because skipping around is
| inconvenient and might damage your tape. _Not_ being able to
| listen nonlinearly promotes a different sort of engagement with
| the material from the fragmented one provided by streaming. To
| a lesser extent, music on tape has better dynamics not because
| the medium is superior, but because maximizing loudness over
| the entire track means the whole recording will be saturated.
| This is desirable in some genres (metal, some kinds of dance
| music), but most cassette recordings avoid maximizing loudness
| which sounds refreshingly different to people who grew up
| during the Loudness War.
|
| 3. Chinese bootlegs. In the 80s and 90s China was a target
| country for first world garbage disposal, so unsold CDs and
| cassettes would be damaged by being run through a table saw and
| then shipped to China in bulk for recycling, sold by weight.
| While publication or importation of western music was heavily
| restricted by censors, garbage imports were uncontrolled, and
| enterprising minds soon observed that damaged media could often
| be rendered playable, at at least in part. This led to the
| emergence of a "dakou" (Da Kou - saw cut) music scene, with
| parts of albums being sold to enthusiasts in semi underground
| stores with no regard to release date, genre, or marketing
| campaigns. This had a big impact on China's domestic music
| scene.
|
| 4. Differing media preferences. Other countries (but Japan in
| particular) never lost the taste for physical media the way
| Anglosphere countries did. Japan was always record collectors'
| paradise because industry cartelism kept the price of physical
| media high, but buyers were rewarded with high production
| quality of CD mastering, vinyl grade, and printed media, and
| labels would typically add bonus tracks exclusive to the
| Japanese editions of albums. A combination of Japanese taste
| for the best-quality version of something and 30+ years of
| economic stagnation meant Japanese consumers were more into
| maintaining and using their hifi equipment; if you watch
| Japanese TV dramas a fancy stereo is still a common status
| marker, much like expensive furniture. Record stores are still
| a big deal, and music appreciation its own distinct hobby and
| and social activity in a way that fell out of fashion in other
| countries.
|
| 5. Developing world and cheap distribution. Cassettes were
| popular in Africa and other developing economies for decades
| for reasons that should be obvious, and they're popular again
| with emerging/underground artists for similar reasons. You can
| self-release on cassette very very cheaply, at the loss of time
| efficiency. You won't make much money doing this, but you can
| make a bit, and it's a way to target serious fans who like
| collecting things and want to support obscure and cool artists
| who have not yet got big and sold out. Also making $3 on a
| cassette sale through Bandcamp or at a show may be easier than
| 1-2000 plays on Spotify or some other service for artists who
| are not already famous. Self-releasing on vinyl is also
| possible but typically you need to invest $1-2000, whereas you
| can get into duplicating your own cassettes for $50 or a few
| hundred $ in bulk. Vinyl is the way to go if you need to reach
| DJs but cassette players are dirt cheap or free for consumers
| and are less effort to use than a record player.
|
| Physical media are still a Big Deal for people who obsess over
| music, who care about quite different things from the median
| consumer.
| FieryMechanic wrote:
| I could skip around on tapes relatively well on a walkman,
| you just had to remember the counters or roughly how long it
| was to rewind/fast forward. It wasn't that inconvenient. It
| just wasn't as quick as an mp3 player, CD or Winamp.
| AIorNot wrote:
| So are 80s phones! Lol (I hated both)
|
| https://tincan.kids/?srsltid=AfmBOopPdHpavGKB5WUVhZZDk34dKul...
| behnamoh wrote:
| whatever is old is new again. it's a story as old as time.
| hackingonempty wrote:
| Cassettes lack the one thing LP records do better than digital
| formats: a large surface to display album art and roll a doobie.
| SequoiaHope wrote:
| These kids and their vapes.
| stemlord wrote:
| true but j cards hold the torch for diy unique and handmade
| artwork anyway
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| Been following people who have been making electronic music mixes
| between two cassette decks and a mixer which are worth a listen.
| The thing that's interesting is that you can pitch up and down in
| ways that sound nice:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzsa1M7s1sk
|
| Anyways, here's the mixes:
|
| Trippy Ambient Cassette-Only Mix by Bop | Rewind Ritual 01
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feHvyc69xe4
|
| Cassette-Only Drum & Bass Set by BOP | Live at SK1 Records
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHmBcBPV-3U
|
| DnB mix with cassette tapes (DJ Ponkachonka)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8jp5TcherI
|
| Cassette mix drum & bass (2005 - 2010) (DJ Ponkachonka)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpqui0lo-v4
|
| What's crazy is that at least the portable cassette decks aren't
| cheap anymore. Look on eBay at prices and be amazed
| 95014_refugee wrote:
| @ooedotech https://youtu.be/urGmmkUDi20 etc.
| xg15 wrote:
| I find it depressing that there seem to be only two ways to
| distribute media and manage one's audio collection: Either ultra-
| convenient but fully locked down streaming services - or analog
| "vintage" media like vinyl or cassettes, which do give you a
| physical medium under your full control, but also require you to
| forego all the progress we made with digital media.
|
| The one thing that's absent: Plain old audio files that you can
| store on your hard drive and copy to your phone or other devices.
|
| Edit: Ok, there are still more options left than I thought. I
| take that back then :)
| theresistor wrote:
| As far as I know Apple will still sell you individual tracks
| (DRM free, I think?), though it's a bit hidden.
| snapetom wrote:
| Apple has neglected the iTunes store for years. Yes, you can
| still buy tracks, but it's really crappy. 1) The catalog is
| nowhere near as extensive as Apple Music. 2) It's AAC 256kbps
| format only. Not lossless.
|
| Apple goes along with the enshitification of everything and
| wants you to rent your music, not own it.
| flotzam wrote:
| Bandcamp is huge
| navbaker wrote:
| I regularly buy full albums and individual tracks on the Apple
| Store. AFAIK Amazon also still offers the same, both stores are
| DRM free
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Amazon are MP3 though. :-(
| eikenberry wrote:
| I only buy archival (flac) downloadable files. Some places I've
| purchased music from..
|
| - https://bandcamp.com/ - https://us.7digital.com/ -
| https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/shop
|
| If I can't find them there I will grab the audio off youtube or
| hit the torrents. Used to buy CDs and rip them, but those are
| getting hard to find (and it was a PITA).
| jghn wrote:
| I buy music either on bandcamp or iTunes, both of which gives
| me DRM free audio files. I then store them locally.
| 4k93n2 wrote:
| syncthing is a very useful utility for this. just install it on
| 2 devices, add a folder, then the files will sync over the
| network whenever both devices are on.
|
| if you have an old phone or laptop lying around gathering dust
| you can set up syncthing on that and have it act as the always-
| on server. something simple like a raspberry pi with an
| external drive would do either.
|
| every syncthing folder has a .ignore file where you can add
| patterns to reduce the overall size of the folder, which can be
| useful if youre going to try and sync your music library to
| your phone. its very basic but it can be useful in some cases.
| like adding *.flac would ignore all .flac files and only sync
| .mp3 does. or maybe if you have a few artists with very large
| folders you could ignore them and sync the rest. i havnt found
| a good solution to that problem yet tbh
| CompoundEyes wrote:
| Did a remix awhile back and printed to a cassette using a Tascam
| 414 Portastudio. Brought it back into the computer at about three
| quarters of normal speed twisting the dial occasionally. The
| other side of tape was Fleetwood Mac "The Dance" my dad dubbed
| for me in the 90s. The imperfections of that old hissy tape with
| backwards Stevie Nicks bleeding through collapsed the stereo
| field in a nice way. I welcome this trend!
| Wistar wrote:
| Quick! Fins a Nakamichi 550 Portable. Amazing sonic and build
| quality.
| glimshe wrote:
| I remember being SO HAPPY when I got rid of all my cassette tapes
| and vinyl discs for CDs. I was an early adopter of digital and,
| to this day I don't regret it. There's no way I'm going back.
|
| What's next? VHS?
| mistyvales wrote:
| Terror Vision releases modern movies on VHS.. $30+ a pop
| mauvehaus wrote:
| I put The Full Monty in a combo VHS/TV machine in a hostel a
| few years back, and was pleasantly surprised by how good it
| looked. Admittedly on, like, a 17" or 19" screen, but still.
| Turns out when you aren't trying to record 6 hours of video on
| a 2 hour tape from broadcast TV, the format performs pretty
| well. Yes, I lived through that. Star Trek marathons were the
| motivator for that.
|
| I could see dumber things happening.
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| >What's next? VHS?
|
| Yes, please! I've been thinking of starting a collection.
| 2000UltraDeluxe wrote:
| Lots of tapes more or less being given away here. Check your
| local flea markets!
| asdff wrote:
| VHS is still the only way to watch the star wars you grew up
| with. Lucas lost his mind and started meddling with the
| finished product again in the DVD era.
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| It's been thirty years since I last used a cassette tape (the
| adaptor things you'd stick in the car radio don't count) and I've
| never once missed them.
| jdalgetty wrote:
| Yea, I was pretty happy to move from tapes to cds.
| prmoustache wrote:
| You couldn't instantly record the radio on CD and until
| computers with CD recorder were common it was harder to
| share/copy/mix stuff between friends. Tapes were useful
| before MP3/broadband/p2p file sharing were a thing even long
| after CD had become common. As a teenager I couldn't afford
| every CD and vinyl release I liked and even if I had the
| means the records weren't necessarily available in store
| locally. Many of us had to rely on that tape being ready in
| the deck and ninja reflexes to hit the record button fast
| enough.
|
| Minidiscs would have been better but harder to
| finance/justify as a kid.
| geekamongus wrote:
| Vinyl resurging, I can understand. But cassette tapes were always
| so fragile. I can't count how many got twisted up in the player
| and lost forever.
|
| Their only redeeming quality was the mix tape.
| 2000UltraDeluxe wrote:
| But what a quality that was!
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| That and piracy.
|
| You gotta love the cahones of the guy that, in the 1970's,
| opened a record rental store in a college town... and sold
| blank cassettes as well.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _Vinyl resurging, I can understand. But cassette
| tapes...their only redeeming quality was the mix tape_
|
| their ONLY redeeming quality? mix or not mix, did you ever try
| to record a vinyl?
| parineum wrote:
| I don't understand vinyl either. Tape is worse but vinyl has
| all of the same downsides, sonically. The "Warmness" people are
| always talking about is a symptom of fragility. Unless you're
| going to get a laser player, your vinyl gets worse with every
| listen. And if you're using a laser, you loose the garbage that
| is referred to as "Warm". Nevermind if they get left somewhere
| warm.
|
| It's objectively worse than lossless digital in every way
| except coming with a big artwork surface. I'd rather buy a
| poster.
|
| I'd rather listen to music as close to was intended and for it
| to stay that way as long as possible.
| lloeki wrote:
| > your vinyl gets worse with every listen
|
| Worn out vinyl grooves are typically caused by an unbalanced
| tonearm or damaged stylus.
|
| Realistically if the tonearm is adequately balanced and the
| stylus is kept clean you're looking at hundreds to thousands
| of listens before it has any kind of even slightly
| discernible effect.
|
| There's a much more likely chance of vinyls being damaged by
| simply handling them.
| parineum wrote:
| How many people are performing proper maintenance on their
| record players?
|
| The point stands either way. Vinyl isn't durable. It gets
| worn by proper usage and worse by improper usage.
|
| My FLAC files are as perfect as the day I got them and are
| backed up both at home and remotely. Vinyl is an inferior
| format but people like rituals and hobbies but then they
| tell themselves lies about how it's actually better.
|
| It's fine if you find it romantic and pleasing to pull out
| the vinyl, put it on the player then read the liner notes
| while listening to the album. That's awesome. It's the same
| for lots of hobbies I have but let's not act like it's
| technically superior in any way.
| jsf wrote:
| Personally, I'm holding out for the CD comeback.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Ah yes, the record player of the 80s. Hipsters gonna hipster...
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| Even when I was a kid an cassettes were the height of tech I
| hated them. They sound like crap and you can't even try to skip
| meaningfully and rewind is a nightmare.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Well, they kind of never were the _height_ of tech. To be sure,
| the cassette Walkman was a kind of height of tech (probably in
| spite of the format though).
| zzo38computer wrote:
| I might use audio cassettes if I want to record my own audio
| temporarily (and later copy it to a CD if I decide to keep it; I
| have done this before), especially if the higher quality of CDs
| is not needed. For most uses I would probably not use audio
| cassette tapes; I prefer to use CDs.
|
| (One feature of audio cassettes is that it will stay where it was
| left off (even if it is removed and used in a different player),
| although this can be both an advantage and a disadvantage (for
| one thing, each cassette has only one position). At least, you
| can easily rewind it back to the beginning. There are other
| advantages and disadvantages as well)
| bobanrocky wrote:
| Wish i had kept my old Sony walkman! Quite a sturdy guy as i
| recall ..
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| If you were free to invent a completely new form of physical
| media for music roughly in the same space as casettes/vinyls/cds,
| what would you invent?
|
| Casettes save state but you to rewind. Vinyl have a great album
| art, but are fragile. CDs and Casettes are small and allow saving
| and making mix tapes at home. Can we mix and match? How?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Why not MiniDisc?
| SpecialistK wrote:
| The machines are quite expensive, especially the NetMD models
| with USB. And for the best choices you need to order from
| Japan.
| perilunar wrote:
| Never really understood buying pre-recorded cassettes. It was
| better to buy the vinyl and make your own tapes.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, if the cost of the pre-recorded cassette were comparable
| to a blank tape, okay, fine. (But they weren't.)
| dfe wrote:
| Did people just forget the era of CD burning? Cassettes sucked.
|
| Normal non-tech people were ripping CDs with iTunes. "Rip. Mix.
| Burn." was a nationwide if not worldwide advertisement.
|
| All of this still works, if you have a CD drive.
|
| If you're going to bother buying a cassette player... what's the
| allure for that over a CD-R and a basic CD player. CD players in
| cars are going away, but they're still around in houses and
| inexpensive small boomboxes.
|
| But then... what's the allure of that over say any old audio
| player that takes SD cards or just a USB stick. A lot of modern
| cars and also stereo receivers and TVs will take a USB stick and
| play files from it. These players are incredibly prevalent and
| very easy to use. And loading the music from a computer or even a
| tablet is easy.
|
| Of these three, cassette is the absolute least likely to be
| available anywhere.
|
| You can still have the experience of making a playlist and even
| putting the files on a USB stick for someone. Importantly, they
| can actually play it on their own listening device.
| Touche wrote:
| CDs skip very easily so they're not good for portability. So
| that limits their use to in the house, and they're you're
| competing with vinyl. Cassette fill a niche in the nostalgia
| world being something you can more easily use on the go.
| vel0city wrote:
| I had lots of CD and mp3-CD players with good anti-skip. Some
| would even buffer enough or the song to stop the CD for
| several seconds at a time, especially so on my later
| mp3/ATRAC CD players. The crappier ones added crappy audio
| compression to fit it's tiny memory, but better ones could do
| the raw data and had no (at least to me) loss in quality and
| later the mp3/ATRAC ones would just buffer the actual file
| data.
|
| I don't think I've ever experienced a car CD player skipping
| due to shock. I'm sure it could happen, but I don't do much
| trail driving at high speeds personally.
|
| I listened to my CD players while biking, hiking, and more.
| No reason to leave the CDs at home unless you already
| upgraded to one of those fancy hard drive mp3 players.
| AngryData wrote:
| Yeah it was probably around 2003 I listened to all my music
| on MP3 CDs I made and it had like 30 seconds solid of
| buffering that I never managed to hit unless I sat their
| purposefully shaking my player in my hands to watch the
| buffer meter go down.
| seized wrote:
| There were many portable CD players with enough buffering
| that they'd never skip. Panasonic Shockwave (IIRC) for
| example. And car heatunits.
|
| You had to get a very old or seriously cheap portable player
| to get skipping.
| ares623 wrote:
| Cassettes get distorted too when moving (.e.g running).
| There's very cool tech in some models that prevent this
| distortion but they are more expensive.
| hereme888 wrote:
| Well-timed article. Today I discovered the FM-84 Atlas album.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Great album. I've been listening to almost nothing but
| synthwave for years.
| RiverCrochet wrote:
| My cousin had many old tapes from 1994-1995 of radio recordings.
| They've been put up for years and he's been recently listening to
| all of them. Most still work. He says that 30-ish years is the
| longest time he's seen a storage medium last. So he's been
| recording YouTube audio he wants to keep over them.
|
| The article is also wrong on several points regarding the
| attributes of the medium:
|
| > Meanwhile, cassettes break and jam quite easily.
|
| No they don't. It happens sometimes but really tapes and decks
| were pretty reliable as long as you didn't have foreign material
| in the deck. CDs and vinyls are more fraglie. A Sony tape deck my
| cousin has had a belt wear out, but it was fixable. Unlike your
| Airpod batteries.
|
| > Choosing a particular song might involve several minutes of
| fast forwarding, or rewinding, which clogs the playback head
|
| Lol, clogging the head? No, tapes don't do that.
|
| > and weakens the tape over time.
|
| I recall that anything more than a 45-minute tape ("C90") is too
| thin and could experience this issue. So I never bought C100s or
| C120s (if those existed). Wearing tapes out wasn't a thing I ever
| experienced back in the day.
|
| > The audio quality is low
|
| I don't know the specs of all the Dolby NR stuff (which was a
| technology on later decks) but decent quality tapes had full
| frequency range. Given things like the loudness war and the
| artifacts of compressed audio, tape is perfectly fine for most
| typical music listening.
|
| > and comes with a background hiss.
|
| I've always _liked_ the faint airy sound of tape silence in a
| weird way. But in most cases were you listen to music in real
| life, you don 't notice it when the songs start playing.
|
| The really cool thing about tapes are the same cool thing that
| playing an MP3 locally has: you can listen, give, trade, or share
| the audio without things on the Internet tracking or preventing
| you from doing it. In a time where digital freedom and creative
| artistic recognition is becoming less and less, this is one
| gateway into the offline world, which is going to be where the
| real interesting stuff starts to happen if current trends
| continue.
| tom_ wrote:
| _Are_ CDs more fragile? All of mine still seemed to work last I
| checked. I gave up on tapes years ago, because they 'd always
| fuck up one way or the other. The sound quality was also
| annoyingly bad, and track search was a faff.
|
| (I think I prefer measles to tapes. Neither killed me, but at
| least nobody reminisces fondly about that time they had
| measles!)
| jaredhallen wrote:
| I mostly agree. Tapes worked pretty well. The big advantage
| of CD's from my perspective was the ability to jump straight
| to a track. Rewinding and fastforwarding was quite annoying.
| But CD's skipped like crazy on any mobile application,
| especially on the early hardware. Of course mp3's solved
| this. And there was a nice time, albeit short, time where we
| downloaded music and felt as if it was ours to own. Granted,
| a lot of this was probably pirated, otherwise maybe you
| ripped a CD. But still it represented a great state of solid
| technology (they just played for you without any fuss) and
| reasonable ownership. Then along came streaming. It does, of
| course, have its advantages, but they come with many
| significant drawbacks.
| seszett wrote:
| > _there was a nice time, albeit short, time where we
| downloaded music and felt as if it was ours to own.
| Granted, a lot of this was probably pirated_
|
| Nothing prevents you from doing it today, and there is more
| music to download than ever before.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Some of us never stopped. I never got into the whole
| streaming thing. My music collection today is a hard
| drive full of files, just as it was in 1999. No internet
| connection needed. No wondering if service X has song Y.
| I can load the whole library onto a phone, my car,
| wherever I want to play it. Peak music media.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Depends on what you mean by fragile. CDs are really
| susceptible to bitrot
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot
|
| Archival discs are made with gold backing, which is much more
| robust than the aluminum reflector used in mass-pressed
| discs.
| Supernaut wrote:
| > CDs are really susceptible to bitrot
|
| Define "really susceptible"? I've bought hundreds of albums
| on CD over the last four decades, and only one of them has
| ever gone bad on me.
|
| The first CD I ever purchased, manufactured in 1990, still
| sounds as good as the day I bought it.
| account42 wrote:
| IME that's mostly a problem with self-recorded disks while
| pressed discs are quite durable in practice. Maybe if you
| keep them in a very humid/hot environment you get different
| results.
| leetnewb wrote:
| I bought a new album on CD a couple of years ago. Badly
| scratched straight out of the case. Guess that wasn't really
| the right comparison though.
| beAbU wrote:
| Scratched enough that it was not working any more? IME CDs
| work surprisingly well even with scratches, way way better
| than LPs though. You need to properly gouge the surface
| before things become problematic.
| mrob wrote:
| I have CDs from the 80s that still play perfectly. The only
| CDs I've had fail were a multi-disc set that were packaged
| with foam padding in the case, touching the label side of the
| disc. The plasticizer leached out and diffused into the
| protective lacquer, which softened and stuck to the foam, and
| tore away when I took them out, pulling chunks of the metal
| layer with it.
|
| They weren't anything rare so I wasn't too bothered, but it
| later occurred to me that they technically could have been
| saved. The data is pressed into the polycarbonate, so if I'd
| very carefully peeled off all the metal, ideally in a laminar
| flow cabinet to avoid any dust, and then had them re-coated
| in aluminum with vacuum deposition, they would probably have
| still played. I think this is true for CDs lost to "disc rot"
| too.
|
| I don't have any nostalgia for tapes. I used them as a child,
| but I never liked them. The first music I bought was on CD. I
| still buy a lot of used CDs on Ebay. Lots of great bargains
| are available and they sound identical to brand new CDs. It's
| worth finding sellers who'll combine postage and buying in
| bulk or you'll end up paying more for postage than the discs
| themselves.
| RiverCrochet wrote:
| Really thinking about it, maybe they're not more fraglie. CDs
| scratch easily but tapes are still exposed on the bottom, so
| you really want to keep both in their cases.
|
| I still think it's wild that portable (as in the Walkman
| sense) CD players were a thing - a spinning disc with a
| precision optical pickup with very little separating it from
| the outside world that b1umps around on your hip as you walk.
| I guess it's equally crazy to have a tape motor on your hip,
| but it just seemed less fragile to me.
|
| My musical habits for the past few years have been long mixes
| of songs on YouTube, that I don't really skip around in. I
| think YouTube's ads that annoyingly hit between every video
| nudged me in that direction; but that's why I made mixtapes
| back in the day when you bought an album but there was only 1
| or 2 good songs on it.
| bagels wrote:
| My experience with tapes does not match yours. I've seen both
| audio and VCR tapes unspool by playing or trying to remove them
| from the player.
| whycome wrote:
| That must be an issue with the player
| Cpoll wrote:
| I estimate renting over 1200 VCR tapes in my lifetime, and
| I've never had one unspool. The cassette problem was common
| enough that fixing it with a pencil was part of the
| zeitgeist, but I can't remember anything like that for VHS.
| __del__ wrote:
| i had ONE cassette unwind. my less careful friend was
| always winding them with a pencil. the culprit? button
| mashing between fast-forward and play.
| usefulcat wrote:
| I grew up in the 80s, and was a prolific user of both video
| tapes (mostly VHS) and cassette tapes. I can't recall ever
| having a tape get eaten by any deck, either video or audio.
|
| Not saying it never happens, but if it was common I
| absolutely would have encountered it many times over.
| parineum wrote:
| > I can't recall ever having a tape get eaten by any deck
| ... if it was common I absolutely would have encountered it
| many times over.
|
| Common enough that you know the slang for it, despite it
| not happening to you.
| asdff wrote:
| I think it happened more as the players aged and wore out.
| In the 90s and 2000s I remember it happening pretty
| commonly although cd or dvd skipping was way worse. A
| couple years ago we took the old family vcr player out of
| the parents attic and tested it out. It was a great vcr at
| the time, sony with all the bells and whistles. But it
| immediately at the tape and I mean ate it. Had to take it
| apart and route the tape out myself and I'm pretty sure its
| ruined the tape. We spent 2 hours on youtube with it taken
| apart and gave up the project indefinitely.
| tombert wrote:
| > CDs... are more fraglie.
|
| CDs can be scratched more easily, obviously, and ruin them, but
| if you kept the production CD in good shape they will last a
| long time.
|
| About three years ago, I decided to buy one of those "random
| 100 CDs" on eBay, just to see what kind of weird stuff I would
| get. A few of the CDs in there were pressed in 1984, and they
| ripped just fine onto my 2022 laptop into FLAC and I listen to
| the FLAC files regularly. As far as I can tell there were no
| checksum errors or skips or anything like that.
|
| _Burned_ CDs and DVDs do not have that luxury, especially
| cheap ones. My dad found out that a lot of his home movies that
| he had archived on burnt DVDs were literally starting to rot
| away. Fortunately in his case he had the habit of burning like
| twenty copies of each of his collections, so I don 't think he
| actually lost anything, and I was able to show him how to
| extract images from it, but I consider ourselves lucky.
|
| > I've always liked the faint airy sound of tape silence in a
| weird way.
|
| Me too! Honestly there's something kind of charming about being
| forced to hear the artifacts of the actual medium that carries
| the sound. The light hiss has a certain "purity" to it, for
| want of a better word. It's also why I like watching movies
| from the 1960s-1970s; they couldn't make everything completely
| silent, so there was always a small hiss. It makes movies like
| Straw Dogs much more unnerving.
|
| > The really cool thing about tapes are the same cool thing
| that playing an MP3 locally has:
|
| Yeah, and CDs as well. For reasons that I am equal parts
| surprised about and grateful for, CDs never had any DRM; I can
| take an exact copy of my CD to my computer, copy it to all my
| devices, stream it with Jellyfin, remix it with Acid or
| SoundForge, or pretty much anything else I can think of. Given
| that CDs still sound _excellent_ , I think you could make an
| argument that it's objectively the best audio media that ever
| got widespread adoption.
| moosedev wrote:
| > CDs never had any DRM
|
| Oh, but they did, and quite infamously :D
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk.
| ..
|
| https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2005/11/5549-2/
|
| https://www.networkworld.com/article/715376/network-
| security...
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240779158_Lessons_f.
| ..
| tracker1 wrote:
| "Hey, I can't burn my presentation to disc."
|
| I _still_ refuse to buy Sony labelled products from that
| one. When you have to go through several dozen computers to
| wipe their rootkits off... even though creating a custom
| deployment image was faster, it was still a massive time
| consuming pain I 'd never put on anyone.
|
| If they'd have released a simple, single download, then
| maybe I'd have been less burned... but having to install
| custom uninstaller per machine, with an email address, and
| that software itself left another security hole... I'm out.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I have never experience reel-to-reel. That is the format I would
| like to get into.
|
| My sense though is that anything made of rubber on these old
| machines need replacing. I'm a little intimidated about spending
| so much on a device only to be unable to restore it.
| analog31 wrote:
| I sold my Studer-ReVox B77 in mint condition to a collector for
| the price of a new high-quality digital recorder.
|
| The thing was sitting in its original carton, barely used.
| Between the hassle of hauling it around, and the cost of tapes,
| I never actually took it anywhere to record anything.
| z3ratul163071 wrote:
| weren't we done with this millennial nostalgia hipster bcrap in
| the 2010s?
| floatin wrote:
| Should be possible to store digital music on cassettes as well
| just like you would with a tape backup. Would probably increase
| both the quality and storage capacity of cassettes.
| nickt wrote:
| Like DCC (1992)?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Compact_Cassette
| jasonjayr wrote:
| https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-which-settings-s...
|
| According to that article, it looks like the best cassettes (if
| everything goes right) could have a bandwidth of 20kHz. So a
| quick calculation of 8bit samples: (20000 * 8) / 1024 == about
| 156kB/s bitrate. If i did my math correctly, a 90 minute
| cassette could keep 824 MB (raw)
|
| The article suggests that they struggle to sustain 20kHz, and I
| assumed you could keep 8 bits per sample cleanly, but the
| actual data size would probably be much smaller than that. Keep
| in mind, besides the mechanical wear and tear, seeking in the
| digital data would be tricky, the data stream would have to
| lose some of that raw data size for framing + synchronization
| marks.
| nottorp wrote:
| What I'm saying has nothing to do with modern DATs of course
| but iirc the zx spectrum tapes were like 10 kb per minute...
|
| They did have to work with any crap tape recorder and the
| interface circuitry wasn't much.
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| Can confirm. I've bought around 20 cassette tapes over the last 2
| years - mostly new releases or re-releases of old stuff from the
| CD-era. I get way more enjoyment out of tapes than CDs. I think
| its because they're more hand's on, and I find the sound of my
| cassette deck soothing.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| The most interesting thing about this article was the _Bow Wow
| Wow_ song linked. It 's a song about music piracy (including a
| usage of the word "pirate") from 1980, including this stanza:
|
| _It used to break my heart when I went in your shop_
|
| _And you said my records were out of stock_
|
| _So I don 't buy records in your shop_
|
| _Now I tape them all 'cause I'm 'Top Of The Pops'_
| jackdoe wrote:
| I stopped using my smartphone for about 1 year now and bought a
| walkman fiio cp13, it is really cool, but it is really hard to
| make a good sounding cassette, particularly if you dont know what
| you are doing (like me).
|
| I record stuff from youtube and make mix tapes.
|
| I am experimenting with "not getting what I want the second I
| want it", e.g. "I want to listen to XYZ", 1 second later I click
| on spotify and its done. Now I have to wait, first XYZ might not
| be on the cassette I have with me, or it might be 5 songs later,
| and I dont want to waste battery rewinding, sometimes I rewind
| with the pencil if I am really desperate.
|
| But the feeling of excitement when the song you wanted comes up
| is really nice :)
|
| Some people recommend the `rewind` player instead of cp13, as it
| also has bluetooth.
|
| We have forgotten how `not to get things NOW`. It took me a while
| to get used to it. There has to be some minimal amount of effort
| for a `thing`, when you go below it, it just becomes nothing.
| Maybe thats just me.
| ValentinPearce wrote:
| I'm looking at cassettes that way as well, a physical
| limitation to avoid instant gratification and to take my time.
| yourusername wrote:
| >but it is really hard to make a good sounding cassette,
| particularly if you dont know what you are doing (like me).
|
| All these modern cassette players use the same super basic
| mechanism. To make a good sounding tape you would need vintage
| hardware with Dolby noise reduction and less wow/flutter.
| 2000UltraDeluxe wrote:
| Yeah, with high-end vintage decks in good shape, tapes can
| sound pretty decent, more than enough for day-to-day
| listening.
|
| A type I tape recorded on a modern player? It'll sound
| horrible.
| cellularmitosis wrote:
| > but it is really hard to make a good sounding cassette
|
| It is unfortunate that cassettes are the lowest fidelity
| consumer medium (of modern times). But there is some room to
| optimize within that space. If you are curious:
|
| The cassettes available today are Type I, Type II ("high bias")
| and Type IV ("metal"), each being higher fidelity than the
| last, but not all portable players supported these types of
| tape.
|
| Dolby B/C noise reduction could improve the dynamic range of
| tapes a bit, but again not all portable players supported this.
|
| The ultimate was "dbx", which dramatically improved noise
| reduction and dynamic range ("tape hiss" was essentially
| inaudible), but now you're in the territory of needing
| dedicated rack-mount equipment to record and play your tapes.
|
| My dad was a bit of an audio buff, so I got to experience these
| things as a kid.
|
| Edit: according to gemini AI:
|
| * Type I had a dynamic range of about 50bB (roughly 8 bits)
|
| * High quality tape with Dolby B, C and dbx yielded roughly 65,
| 75, and 85dB SNR (about 11, 12.5, and 14 bits)
|
| So you could get pretty close to CD quality, but not quite.
| jackdoe wrote:
| > Type IV
|
| also they are 20$ per cassette :)
| cellularmitosis wrote:
| Wow! And Type I are about $2.80 on amazon. That's quite the
| span!
| bayindirh wrote:
| Type IV cassettes were always exorbitantly expensive both
| due to high cost and low demand (and rarity of the
| hardware which can record them well).
|
| So, if you were able to afford a Nakamichi / Technics /
| Akai, then you'd be able to afford them back in the day.
| inkyoto wrote:
| Type IV (also known as Metal) cassettes came in stunning
| industrial designs - BASF, TDK, Maxell etc.
|
| They were worth owing even if a Nakamichi was out of
| reach.
| nemo8551 wrote:
| I wish the comeback was minidisc. I was just the right age to
| think this was the future of portable music.
|
| Mostly because I could record radio, other cds and cassettes
| onto them.
| kgwxd wrote:
| I had a 4 track mini disc recorder, and dreams of becoming
| the go-to "audio engineer" for all the bands in my school
| :)
| bayindirh wrote:
| Recording with Dolby-B on a Sony consumer level integrated
| Hi-Fi produced pretty solid sounding cassettes back in the
| day, given you have used TDK's chrome or metal blanks.
|
| Some gotchas: - Loudness wars were just
| beginning. - Many CDs had some analog stages in its
| recording/mastering stages, so none of them was sounding
| "razor sharp" anyway.
|
| Yesterday, I have listened Depeche Mode's Best of album on an
| Mechen M-30 with a good but not exquisite pair of Philips
| neck headphones, encoded as FLAC, and it sound superbly
| enjoyable. While I love vinyl, no, I won't return back to
| cassette (even though I have a nice deck), thank you.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| >Edit: according to gemini AI:
|
| >* Type I had a dynamic range of about 50bB (roughly 8 bits)
|
| >* High quality tape with Dolby B, C and dbx yielded roughly
| 65, 75, and 85dB SNR (about 11, 12.5, and 14 bits)
|
| >So you could get pretty close to CD quality, but not quite.
|
| Source? AI content without it is less than worthless.
| cellularmitosis wrote:
| Did you actually try any searches? Or is this just an
| excuse to broadcast your feelings about AI?
|
| The author of the Ogg format claims a bit more pessimistic
| range of bit depth:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ9IXSUzuM
|
| Here are some measurements of type I, II and IV:
|
| http://www.ant-
| audio.co.uk/Tape_Recording/Measurements/HD3_v...
|
| http://www.ant-
| audio.co.uk/Tape_Recording/Measurements/HD3_v...
|
| http://www.ant-
| audio.co.uk/Tape_Recording/Measurements/HD3_v...
|
| Here are the specifications of a typical dbx unit:
| https://www.hifiengine.com/manual_library/dbx/222.shtml
| Aldipower wrote:
| The measurements you are linking to are showing the level
| of distortion (HD3 v level) not dynamic range! The Y-axis
| on the graphs is showing the 3rd harmonic in dB in
| relation to the mV given in on the x-axis. This has
| absolutely nothing to do with dynamic range and it is
| also not the signal-to-noise-ratio. The fundamental
| frequency in those measurements was at 315 Hz. HD3 refers
| to Harmonic Distortion at 3rd level.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| Chances are you're not listening to it in an environment
| that's quiet enough for 65dB SNR to be even noticeable.
| j45 wrote:
| It's less about fidelity, more about portability and
| customizability.
|
| Today we can hear all the hifi we want, it's a trip to see
| what the imagination can fill in as well.
|
| If you're really into walkmans, check out the Panasonic ultra
| small ranges.
| prmoustache wrote:
| The point about fidelity/quality is moot anyway when most
| people are listening to overcompressed[1] music on crappy
| bluetooth speakers and/or in a noisy environment.
|
| [1] as in dynamic range compression, not encoding
| j45 wrote:
| Some decade, bluetooth will get there.
|
| While it's improved a great deal, there remains a gap.
|
| Noise cancellation is getting pretty good.
| prmoustache wrote:
| It is not necessarily a protocol/technology issue, more a
| cultural one. Most people are just not looking at quality
| first and will buy whatever is cheap, loud and has the
| form factor they want. Music is so compressed nowadays
| that they don't even hear a difference between crappy and
| better quality speakers.
| j45 wrote:
| Very plausible. Until they hear the same song much
| clearer and wonder what the difference was, as long as
| they enjoy music :)
| Hackbraten wrote:
| > The cassettes available today are Type I, Type II ("high
| bias") and Type IV ("metal")
|
| That statement feels a litle misleading. The only type of
| cassettes produced today is Type I.
|
| Everything else is new old stock, where you might end up with
| a decades-old, chemically degraded cassette.
| baobun wrote:
| > decades-old, chemically degraded cassette
|
| Somehow it never occurred to me. I wonder how all the C64
| games in the basement are doing...
| titusjohnson wrote:
| About 5 years ago or so I was able to collect my Dad's
| C64 collection from my Mom's house, buy some new cables
| and an official C64 monitor off of eBay, and gift him his
| old computer back for Christmas.
|
| I can't speak to cassettes, we had only cartridges and
| floppies. My Dad was a prolific pirate, so cases and
| cases of floppies. I'd say roughly 3 out of 5 worked, and
| we were able to boot the old game up. Karateka, 4th and
| Inches, Hat Trick, Bubble Bobble, Impossible Mission...
|
| I was surprised the C64 worked, honestly. It had been
| stored for nearly a decade in an old Barn next to
| decrepit plow/cattle equipment from the early 1900's, not
| protected from the environment at all, just an old
| cardboard box literally busting at the seams. At least it
| wasn't on the ground.
| Ringz wrote:
| I have sealed TDK MA-XG in mint condition. Stored in a dry,
| dark place. Do you say that they are degraded now?
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > It is unfortunate that cassettes are the lowest fidelity
| consumer medium
|
| So what? The quality of music and enjoyment of it isn't
| depending on fidelity. I have Adam A7X monitors I mostly use
| day-to-day, but when I listen to lo-fi, I change the output
| to the output of my monitor which are absolutely horrible,
| but fits the mood better.
| mrob wrote:
| >The quality of music and enjoyment of it isn't depending
| on fidelity
|
| It depends somewhat on personal preference, but also on
| genre. Classical music often has very high dynamic range,
| so analog recordings can have obnoxiously loud hiss in the
| quiet sections. This is probably a big reason why classical
| music labels were early adopters of digital recording, and
| why classical recordings often have a SPARS code [0]
| prominently displayed. Classical music was also much less
| affected by the loudness war, removing one incentive for
| buying on vinyl. You rarely see any preference for analog
| among classical listeners.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARS_code
| lb1lf wrote:
| Do keep in mind 96 dB is only the theoretical dynamic range
| of the CD medium, 99% of recordings utilize way less.
| (Besides, you'd be in pain if you cranked up the volume until
| you had 96dB of range above your hearing threshold, anyway)
|
| CDs also eliminate wow & flutter (which ought to be pretty
| much inaudible on a decent deck, probably less so on an el
| cheapo grande walkman), which probably does more for
| (experienced) audio quality than high dynamic range.
|
| Oh, and better high frequency response, for the young ones.
| :D
| Aldipower wrote:
| I just produced an album release on Type I cassette. High
| quality Type I (ferro oxid) is almost comparable to Type II,
| but you need the correct bias settings while recording.
| Practically the 8bits/50db is non-sense. Really. Maybe on a
| very bad tape deck you have a signal-noise-ratio of 8bit from
| silence to the first noticeable noise? But the actual music
| you are playing has much more dynamic range possibilities.
| Tbh my recordings on tape sound more dynamic then on Spotify.
| ares623 wrote:
| The GTA games (yes, those ones) have pre-recorded radio
| stations that I found to be perfect for cassettes. You play
| songs with no way to skip them with funny commentary in between
| so it feels like one long take (like Pink Floyd's DSOTM)
| Mashimo wrote:
| Are you tired of dad?
|
| Dad, no one wants to hear your stupid Vietnam stories.
|
| Are you tired of mom?
|
| Hi angel, do you want to read a book or go outside?
|
| No.
|
| Degenatron!The arcade comes to your living room, only without
| the creepy guys offering to show you puppies.
| wpm wrote:
| How do you like to enjoy a Rusty Brown's Ring Donut?
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| > Now I have to wait, first XYZ might not be on the cassette I
| have with me,
|
| > There has to be some minimal amount of effort for a `thing`,
| when you go below it, it just becomes nothing.
|
| I had this conversation with someone at the weekend. It's hard
| to find new music on Spotify because it's too easy to find
| stuff you already like.
|
| I'm in my early 50s. I grew up in the 80s, in a fairly rural
| part of the UK with basically one music shop nearby and the
| next nearest a good four hours each way on the bus.
|
| In 1988 when I was 15, a load of awesome albums came out that I
| really wanted and mostly couldn't afford. I bought Public Enemy
| - Fear of a Black Planet, Iron Maiden - Seventh Son, 808 State
| - Newbuild, and probably a couple of others. I'm sure I got
| into FLA and and The Pixies round about then too.
|
| These tapes were about a tenner each and I had to repair quite
| a lot of Amstrad satellite receiver power supplies in my
| weekend job, and if I spent it all on tapes I'd have no money
| left for beer.
|
| An awful lot of my tapes were pirate copies from friends, which
| we swapped at school. To this day I'm convinced that Appetite
| For Destruction was mixed to sound "right" when copied onto a
| battered old TDK D90 that's been rattling around in your
| schoolbag for a month by your mate's big brother who bought the
| CD because he's got a good job earning nearly PS5/hr working on
| a fishing boat and has a really nice stereo.
|
| The upshot of this is that I listened to a lot of things that I
| simply did not like very much, because it was new and I hadn't
| listened to it a million times. That being said, I don't think
| there was much I heard and thought "yeah I don't care for this
| at all", but there were definitely tapes I listened to that I
| wouldn't have picked out by myself.
|
| I wouldn't have listened to 10,000 Maniacs if someone my dad
| worked with hadn't put it on in the car, and gave me his copy
| of the tape. I might not have listened to Dire Straits so much
| if another of my dad's friends hadn't given me a handful of
| bootlegs of their concerts and a copy of Making Movies, and one
| of the bigger kids in high school (hi Aaron, hope you're doing
| well) hadn't given me a pirate copy of Brothers in Arms.
|
| I've since bought all of these on at least one other format.
|
| I wouldn't have listened to Suzanne Vega I don't think, if my
| aunt hadn't given me a copy of her eponymous first album for
| Christmas when I was about 12 or 13 (it hadn't been out long in
| the UK), and I absolutely love Suzanne Vega. Loved her stuff
| from the first note of "Cracking". Have you ever listened to or
| watched something that you wanted to play at ten times speed
| just so you could put it into your head faster, then play it
| again at one tenth speed so you could pick up all the details?
|
| This doesn't even touch on mixtapes, where someone else puts
| the effort in to curate a collection of things they think you
| will like, that represents who you are to them. Mixtapes were
| beautiful.
|
| Now, with any luck, people will get into media they can hold in
| their hand. Even just things like MP3s on an SD card in some
| homebrew Arduino blob of a player.
|
| There's more to music than just the noise it makes.
| gilleain wrote:
| Also, if you bought an album, that meant getting some tracks
| you liked, and some you did not. Oddly enough I bought
| Suzanne Vega's self-titled album with 'Cracked' on it (off a
| guy in a stall off Brick Lane, only a fiver), and some of
| them are fantastic some slightly less so. Some albums I own I
| turn off one or two of the tracks as they are rubbish, but
| that was slightly more difficult if you had to fast-forward
| past them on a tape.
|
| That said I listen to a lot of music on youtube, and it's a
| rare case where the dreaded 'algorithm' actually works to
| recommend things I had not heard before. I'm pretty sure
| that's where I learned of Unkle (UNKLE?) - who I _should_
| have heard back in the day, but somehow never did.
|
| (Incidentally, I found 'Daughter' recently, a UK band that is
| similar in tone to Suzanne Vega. Possibly also Heather Nova,
| although a bit more dreamy.)
| echelon_musk wrote:
| > _UNKLE_
|
| I was a huge DJ Shadow fan as a teen, getting as many
| albums, mixes and singles as I could find online.
|
| DJ Shadow was involved in the production of UNKLE's first
| album Psyence Fiction. I recently discovered that there was
| an intro mix that wasn't on most CD copies of the album
| that has DJ Shadow mashing ~70 tracks together in just over
| 2 minutes.
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=oRwnUM10mf4
| officeplant wrote:
| >Psyence Fiction
|
| Its kinda crazy, I loved that album in the 2000's, but
| hadn't really listened to it in about a decade until
| youtube brought it up again recently.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Instant, infinite choice = permanent anxiety. The most relaxed
| I've been in decades was being stuck in an airport overnight,
| with a broken phone, and a book that was not as good as the
| show. No where to go, no one expecting anything from me, no
| notifications, no choice, no anxiety. Finite is fine by me.
| j45 wrote:
| There appear to be much higher quality sounding cassettes as
| well, made by companies like Sony.
|
| Also, the phrase demotape for an up and coming musician to my
| recollection was often with a cassette tape due to it's
| accessibility.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| I still have a Nakamichi in storage
|
| Another consumer deck I loved was made by Philips, who I once
| read "invented the tape deck"
|
| I still have a Sony portable line level deck and powered stealth
| mics, too, for live taping. Concerts are way too expensive these
| days, though
|
| Heck I still have a HHB CDR850 for converting from analog to
| digital
|
| I gave away my Digi001
|
| I still have 100 or so tapes, I gave away the rest
|
| I remember buying 100s of Maxell XLIIs, Tower Records became the
| goto source
|
| I'm not sure I have the ears anymore to notice the improvements,
| if any, of modern equipment over "vintage"
|
| But most music produced today sounds like crap to me anyway. Too
| loud
| AngryData wrote:
| Not for me, analog audio is bulky and expensive compared to whats
| available today. The choices I see are, pirate a decent
| collection to manage and store on my computer that I can load
| onto a phone or "dedicated mp3 player", pay money for a subpar
| streaming service, listen to free radio streams, or just pick one
| of the billion playlists off youtube. I keep 2 MP3 CDs in my car
| for the rare times im in deep BFE and don't have reliable
| service, but I doubt 99% of people experience even that these
| days.
| kakacik wrote:
| Its the same hipstery thingie like LPs are with similar talk
| about quality, experience and whatnot. People still do it, heck
| people do a lot of seemingly weird stuff that is far from
| optimal behavior.
|
| Who cares at the end, somebody likes gardening and somebody
| likes analog music thingies (that they usually didn't grow up
| with before - this seems to remove most of the lure of these
| gizmos).
|
| There is that fact of another plastic stuff playing more
| (rather fragile) plastic stuff polluting the planet at the end,
| but since this will be fringe activity and many folks reuse
| their old collections its not the worst offender.
| karlkloss wrote:
| As soon as recordable CDs were affordable, I switched completely,
| and never looked back.
|
| Cassette tapes were nice when we didn't have anything better, but
| they were always a big pain in the back. Noisy, wearing out,
| skipping took a long time, making compilations took hours. I
| don't miss those times.
|
| Nowadays, I can play mp3's on a $3 microcontroller, at excellent
| quality, and I love it.
|
| Do you still use a kerosene lamp when you go into your barn at
| night?
| kevin061 wrote:
| While I agree with the overall sentiment, streaming services
| have also degraded our behaviours by prioritising instant
| rewards and locking us into a platform you cannot escape easily
| from, and that once you escape, you lose literally everything,
| for you never owned those songs. Then you have social media
| notifications interrupting your songs, no headphone jack, and
| no physical button feedback when playing music on your
| smartphone.
|
| I also don't really see the appeal of cassette tapes,
| personally, and the quality of digital media like CDs and even
| MP3 files is arguably superior.
|
| I guess a good middle ground is one of those modern audio
| players that don't have smartphone functionality and take an SD
| card or so. FiiO I think is quite popular. Might give it a try
| some day.
| Mashimo wrote:
| > Do you still use a kerosene lamp when you go into your barn
| at night?
|
| No, but people still use candles or LEDs that resemble candles,
| including the flickering.
|
| People also read paperback books. It's not always about
| practicality.
| 2000UltraDeluxe wrote:
| It's perfecly legitimate to do stuff simply because you want
| to. This is a site for tinkering people, so it's kind of
| expected people tinker with stuff. Quite often that includes
| old stuff. :)
|
| Waiting for the writeup about the steel wire recorder
| resurgence now.
| a5c11 wrote:
| I used to code at night with a kerosene lamp sitting on my
| desk. I love the light spectrum of a live fire.
|
| "Portable" (they couldn't even fit in a pocket) CD players were
| the worst thing imho. Too sensitive to even small shocks, which
| was particularly annoying while taking longer walks, and
| draining batteries like crazy. I switched from cassette players
| to MP3 players, almost completely skipping the era of CD
| players. I've tried it once or twice because my sister had it,
| and never again.
| FieryMechanic wrote:
| > As soon as recordable CDs were affordable, I switched
| completely, and never looked back.
|
| Cassettes were good for mix tapes, but once their were CDs and
| MP3s I never really looked back.
|
| > Do you still use a kerosene lamp when you go into your barn
| at night?
|
| It not quite the same comparison. Not sure about a kerosene
| lamp, however a kerosene/paraffin stove does have it uses.
|
| You would be surprised what people are using. I spend a lot of
| time walking/cycling up canals and people are using wood
| hearths and similar to keep the boats warm in the winter. Wood
| is literally everywhere along the side of the canals and so it
| is literally free energy.
|
| Some of the boats have solar panels, generators, full internet
| but quite a few of the boats only have relatively basic
| amenities by today's standards.
| Aldipower wrote:
| Man I love tape saturation and the sound of high quality
| cassettes played with a nice tape deck. Sure, there are many
| bad ones.. Luckily, we have more possibilities then ever (given
| you have enough hipster money to spend). Tape is a little bit
| like slow food and very enjoyable to me. To each his own.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| Yes, I actually do use my kerosene lamp when I go into my
| (shed) at night.
|
| It also helps heat the shed in the winter, which is when it's
| mostly likely to be dark when I want to do some work in my
| shed.
|
| Here's a nice resource where you can read more about kerosene
| lamps! https://www.sevarg.net/2022/10/09/keropunk-
| part-1-kerosene-l... (not my website, but great for learning
| about kerosene lamps)
| amelius wrote:
| You can also just use your iPhone's torch and install the
| heating app. Drains your battery quickly though.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/iOSProgramming/comments/7tew81/hand.
| ..
| georgefrowny wrote:
| > Do you still use a kerosene lamp when you go into your barn
| at night?
|
| To be fair, there really is nothing like the gentle hiss of a
| tilley lamp while there's a storm blowing outside.
| tech_ken wrote:
| It's got that analog warmth
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| Cassettes were never the best for audio fidelity but I always
| really liked the physicality of pushing the play button to move
| the heads into position. In some ways the inability to easily
| skip around a recording made listening a different experience
| than a CD or streaming.
|
| Which is why I wrote a web component[0] that wraps an html audio
| element in an interface that mimics a (cheap) tape player.
|
| [0]
| https://sheep.horse/2025/3/a_cassette_audio_control_for_the_...
| kh_hk wrote:
| My car radio has stopped playing cassettes for a while, I
| inherited this car with a full library on the glove compartment
| that I enjoyed playing from time to time. Guess it can be fixed?
| yourusername wrote:
| A common point of failure is the belt that drives the
| mechanism, it will deteriorate with time. You can buy the belts
| off aliexpress for a few cents.
| kh_hk wrote:
| I will start there, thanks!
| nottorp wrote:
| The player can be fixed, but tapes forgotten in the glove
| compartment tend to all turn into Queen's Greatest Hits.
| ab71e5 wrote:
| I have recently learned that in a pinch the band of a condom
| will do as well.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I understand the return to vinyl records, cd and dvd.
|
| I do not miss audio or video tapes.
| chakintosh wrote:
| From today : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46201381
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Tapes stretch. Tone and tempo changes. You can't easily play
| along the track anymore. Tapes also break. Some players mess up
| the tape too, destroying precious cassettes. These were actual
| practical problems way back.
| jjav wrote:
| Just a couple months ago I converted to mp3 some cassettes I
| recorded in the very early 80s of a local band. Not perfect
| audio, but sounded quite good still. Not bad for a ~45 year old
| tape.
| hmng wrote:
| If cassettes are still around, then the standard icons for
| 'play', 'rewind', etc will still make sense for a younger
| generation :-)
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Cassettes suck hard. Sorry, but apart from being smaller and
| failing in a different way to CDs, they suck hard.
|
| Yes they were portable, and if you want a "pure" sound experience
| (you're not going to get that from cassette, you're going to get
| tape hiss and pitch wobbling) I can sorta understand. But DAT is
| where its at if you want that.
|
| Cassettes have terrible dynamic range, and hiss like a mother
| fucker. Sure it evokes a sound of your parent's youth, in the
| same way that those tedious fuckers talk about vinyls "warmth"
| but objectively they both suck bollocks.
|
| The casing though, thats great. I do like the album art. thats
| nice.
| thw_9a83c wrote:
| > Cassettes suck hard.
|
| Exactly. We need DAT Walkman back [1] [2].
|
| [1]:
| https://www.dcaudiovisuel.com/product_info.php/products_id/1...
|
| [2]: https://www.just-cassette.com/post/digital-audio-cassette-
| da...
| K0balt wrote:
| Based on the assumption that the appeal here is the experience,
| not the actual legacy media, it seems like it would be trivial to
| implement a digital stream standard so that audio cassette
| players could record and play a digital stream for higher
| fidelity with an identical experience? Or would that not be
| possible on legacy media because of bitrate limitations?
|
| I can easily imagine the DAC/ADC and amplifier tuning/stream
| processing being an optional step so that legacy compatibility
| would be perfect, and even dual head setups that could do on the
| fly conversion. But perhaps the data density of the tape just
| isn't there? Though it seems like with the type of data stuffing
| tech we use it flash memory and hdd these days to quadruple up on
| bits per domain, that it should be possible.
| stinos wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Tape
| K0balt wrote:
| I think this used a spinning head, similar to video? The
| trick would be to use a static head and still record 4 or
| More digital tracks on a 4mm tape, with enough headroom for
| robust ECC. I'm pretty sure it could be done at ~kbps with
| contemporary recording head litho at 8 tracks per mm. That
| makes 16 tracks per side, 32 for the full 4mm (both sides).
| It would even be possible to convert existing tapes to
| digital in one play/pass using a 2 head system, or a read-
| store-record setup.
| zeristor wrote:
| I'm waiting for the revival of computer games on cassettes.
| ldite wrote:
| Wait no longer; https://www.polyplay.xyz/CPC_1
| Cosi1125 wrote:
| https://turgen.sourceforge.io/ :-)
| kgwxd wrote:
| Simple "mp3" player with terrible screen/interface, low-capacity
| SD cards with some wav files, decorated like a mix-tape, curated
| for straight-through listening. Perfectly scratches the
| retro/disconnected itch for me.
| Anthony-G wrote:
| A friend's daughter (young adult) told me about five years ago
| that cassette tapes are "cool" again. I was surprised because I
| always considered them to be the worst physical medium for music.
| I still have the cassette deck that I bought in the 90s for my
| hi-fi separate system but I haven't listened to it in years. In
| the mid-2000s, I gave away most of my cassettes to a friend who
| had bought an old car that only had a tape deck. I only held on
| to recordings that were only released on cassette: demo tapes,
| bootlegs of live concerts that I had attended and some DIY
| releases from 90s' punk bands that didn't have (nor want) a
| record label.
| tclancy wrote:
| Yeah, it's wild to me too, but I then remember purposely
| obtaining an eight track player in the 90s. My daughter has
| taken to vinyl for a time and now has a discman and it seems
| like a push back against the Illusion of Choice that music
| streaming "provides".
|
| That and she's clearly genetically predisposed to hipsterism.
| Aldipower wrote:
| Good cassettes played with a good tape deck are actually really
| good for music. It naturally saturates and compresses the audio
| material which often leads to much more homogeneous musical
| experience. Also the frequency spectrum tends to soften too
| harsh recordings, which is also cool. It all depends on the
| genre of course. The typical high resolution classic concert is
| probably better to be listened from HQ flac or whatever.
|
| Back in the days the only way poor bands could achieve some
| sort of release was on cassette, paired with car radios and
| kitchen players this for sure wasn't the best experience to
| listen to music. And unfortunately many professional tape
| productions weren't that great either. But this was a
| management and production problem.
| bigmealbigmeal wrote:
| > I was surprised because I always considered them to be the
| worst physical medium for music.
|
| That's a big part of _why_ they 're cool.
|
| Imperfection is beautiful. We feel this intuitively when it
| comes to loving someone, or when it comes to impressionistic
| art. It really is the same thing with music.
|
| I believe the typical response is that you can simulate that
| imperfection on digital media... but cassette lovers would
| argue this is tantamount to putting a photograph through a 'Da
| Vinci' filter in Photoshop. It's missing the point. There's
| more to music than what it sounds like. Where it came from,
| what you did to play it, these are all part of the experience.
| The context of a piece of a media, the means by which you
| listen to it, where it came from -- these change how the music
| _feels_ , even if there is no difference in how it _sounds_.
|
| Back when vinyl or cassettes were the only option, sure, the
| response is "screw your romanticism". But now that we have
| perfect digital media always available, there is romance in
| getting to choose something fragile and imperfect and
| _precious_. People like that feeling.
| Aldipower wrote:
| Shameless plug. I've produced an entire album and released it on
| cassette (as primarily medium in mind). You can listen to it here
| and watching my tape deck spinning. It is recorded from my tape
| deck, so you get the real tape sound! :-)
| https://tonleiter.net/reihenhaus/
|
| BTW this is the final audio chain then. Crazy. :-) Synths,
| instruments, etc. -> Analogue mixing console -> ADC -> DAC ->
| Professional tape production apparatus -> My tape deck -> ADC ->
| ACC Codec -> Your DAC
| sirfz wrote:
| Sounds great!
| Aldipower wrote:
| Thank you! :-)
| MisterTea wrote:
| > Synths, instruments, etc. -> Analogue mixing console -> ADC
| -> DAC -> Professional tape production apparatus -> My tape
| deck -> ADC -> ACC Codec -> Your DAC
|
| Reminds me of the early music CD's which had AAA, AAD, ADD, DDD
| printed on them to tell you how the material was recorded,
| mixed, and mastered. A stood for analog and D for digital.
| Looks like you went the DDA route :-)
| Aldipower wrote:
| Yeah, mostly DDA, and some songs are live mixed on the
| console, this is DAA then? Anyway.. :-)
|
| I think the real shift to digital was around 1994-95 when
| professional digital recording equipment became somewhat
| affordable even for smaller studios. My Roland DM-80 4-track
| digital hard disk recorder, you also find on the albums
| webpage, was more then 20.000$ back in 1991, so most studio
| easily stood with 16-tracks on analogue tape.
| miek wrote:
| Excellent work! Reminds me (though maybe inaccurately) of
| soundtracks from old CGI laser discs that were basically long
| demos.
| Aldipower wrote:
| Thank you! Ah cool CGI laser discs!! This is a great
| reminder.
| coldtea wrote:
| The answer is so obviously "no" for the general case (making even
| a tiny dent to streaming/digital) that the article's title
| amounts to clickbait.
|
| That's regardless of the fact that there has always been a
| vibrant extremely niche cassete scene, the same way there still
| are 8-bit home computer fans and clubs.
|
| At best, on top of the above, a tiny additional niche of more
| mainstream "hipster" artists and fans might release/get cassetes
| as a statement.
|
| Both numbers summed would still be so small compared to the
| overall music consumption market/methods that implying any sort
| of "comeback" is ludicrous.
| abanana wrote:
| Indeed, the title is the usual nonsense. Sales within a niche
| like this will always fluctuate. When someone spots a slight
| increase, they jump at the chance to wheel out this kind of
| headline. The article itself doesn't give hard numbers, just
| says UK sales "reached their highest level since 2003" -
| meaningless since cassette sales had died long before then. It
| links to an article that says there were "195,000 units sold
| last year" - so, next to nothing.
|
| I recall one point around 10-15 years ago, websites were
| simultaneously proclaiming the death of CDs because sales for
| the year had just dropped below 100 million, and the revival of
| vinyl because sales were approaching 1 million in the same
| timespan. Of course, the takeaway for many young people was
| that vinyl was outselling CDs.
|
| I'm pretty sure these articles are planted by PR firms working
| for the music publishers they talk about. There are plenty of
| people happy to be told what's currently "cool" and they'll
| obediently go out and buy them.
| Spivak wrote:
| The title is less nonsense than it first appears. Cassettes
| are riding the coattails of vinyl getting popular again as
| collectibles. Lots of medium sized bands added vinyl to their
| merch stands to great success with their fans but the total
| manufacturing capacity of vinyl is small and everyone was
| suddenly competing for it. Not to mention when Taylor Swift
| drops an album and buys it all. Enter cassettes, another
| piece of physical media that's easier for artists to get
| their hands on and has similar collectible properties.
|
| Neither vinyl nor cassettes are going to make a dent in terms
| of music distribution, but that's because they compete in the
| same market as band t shirts.
| amelius wrote:
| I want consumer digital tape drives to make a comeback, for my
| backup needs.
|
| The enterprise models are way too expensive.
| raumfisch wrote:
| I don't think so. I spent a huge amount of time in my youth
| recording, trading, buying, and selling audio tapes (all from the
| metal/hardcore/punk underground). It was a lot of fun, but
| everyone I know was glad when other ways of sharing and spreading
| music became available. As a niche, yes otherwise no.
| nemomarx wrote:
| Plenty of bands on Bandcamp selling tapes as merch in my
| experience. I think they're more of a physical collectable item
| instead of a genuine medium for most of the buyers though?
| guizadillas wrote:
| Yeah on bandcamp they are collectables first and medium
| second
| zkmon wrote:
| Music sounded different when there were physically moving things
| that produced it. Live music, turn-table, cassette spindle that
| have a visible action. It's not fidelity. It's about connecting
| the sound to real world. We know tape is not producing the sound,
| but we know that it moves and movement causes sound.
|
| Sound without any visible action or movement is a bit weird for
| our animal instincts.
| geldedus wrote:
| They aren't. They remain a fringe hipster staple. Like the
| vinyls.
| bovermyer wrote:
| That's the conclusion the article came to, though without the
| potentially derogatory "hipster" label.
|
| I buy cassettes and vinyl because it's a more complete sensory
| experience than just Spotify or MP3s. Listening to music then
| involves tactile feeling, not just audio. And the ritual of
| setting up to play a song adds something to the experience,
| too, even if it's more work than just hitting "shuffle" on your
| streaming service.
| Xerox9213 wrote:
| The vinyls are a billion dollar industry. Small compared to
| streaming, but definitely non-negligible.
|
| https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/RIAA-2024Yea...
| forinti wrote:
| I understand the allure, but ultimately they just represent more
| plastic pollution (along with vinyl).
|
| Digital media is a great chance to not collect more plastic
| stuff.
| Aldipower wrote:
| OK, why not high res scan all those Picassos then and burn the
| original paintings? Should be sufficient to have this _piece of
| art_ in the digital domain.
| forinti wrote:
| I don't understand the analogy. Picassos are not mass
| produced artifacts.
| Aldipower wrote:
| You assume that cassettes are all mass-produced artifacts.
| But that's not true. Many of them have a limited edition of
| perhaps 50 copies. But what I wanted to say was something
| completely different. People like to own art in a physical
| way. But to implicitly tell someone whether or not they
| should own something made of plastic is, in my opinion,
| crossing a line.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| Question marks are becoming more difficult for native speakers to
| use?
| wkjagt wrote:
| Are you commenting on the title? If yes, I was about to do the
| same. I've seen this more often lately on HN and don't
| understand the reason. The actual title doesn't have a question
| mark, so the poster decided to add one and I have no idea why.
| Actual title: "Cassette tapes are making a comeback. Yes,
| really"
| pixelpoet wrote:
| A bunch of things are on their way out among native speakers,
| e.g. singular vs plural (there is / there are), much vs many
| (how much people / large amount of people), past vs present
| tense (build / built), ... as a German we have to pass
| English classes else we get held back a year, what's going on
| in English schools?
| neilv wrote:
| I recently had to look at a particular kind of marketing, as a
| techie.
|
| And suddenly I realized why Pinterest was so highly ranked on
| Google image searches.
|
| It's not so much about a useful tool for individual users;
| rather, it's a marketing venue for manufacturing a lifestyle
| image that lets you extract money from people.
|
| Like a fashion magazine with a greater illusion of participation.
|
| Of course someone was going to decide that vinyl -- started as
| fringe genuine/hipster, and turned into marketable lifestyle --
| had been milked or moated. The timing is right for you to extract
| more money for yourself with a new lifestyle twist to sell.
|
| The exact gimmick doesn't much matter. Fire up the memetic
| lifestyle machine: we've got consumers (producers of money) to
| milk.
| nephihaha wrote:
| Cassettes were fairly good for car radios and little else. They
| aren't large enough to lead in cover art like LPs or even CDs.
| They are terrible for snapping and getting chewed up.
|
| I still have some cassettes from years ago but definitely not the
| best format by a long shot.
| Libbum wrote:
| I predicted this back in 2004 as an angsty teenager:
| https://evilschemes.livejournal.com/3007.html
| themadturk wrote:
| I don't miss cassettes, but they were an important thing to me in
| the 1980s. When my wife and I got married we were as poor as
| could be. Our first stereo was a little radio/cassette deck with
| four inch speakers. We played a lot of cassettes on that thing.
|
| I moved to digital players as soon as I could afford them. The
| most memorable (before the iPod) was the Creative Nomad with its
| 5GB hard drive. It was too big to fit easily in my jacket pocket,
| but I shoved it in there anyway. I didn't have to choose the
| tapes I had on my long bus commute anymore. And when the second-
| gen iPod came along, it was like heaven.
|
| I'd never go back to cassette...but it was great when there was
| little else available.
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