While I don't think it'll be as impressive as the vinyl resurgence, I totally get this trend and I might hop onto it myself. I like supporting indie acts from time to time, but buying digitally...
While I don't think it'll be as impressive as the vinyl resurgence, I totally get this trend and I might hop onto it myself. I like supporting indie acts from time to time, but buying digitally essentially gives me nothing over how I'm already listening, records are expensive and less likely to be released by some nerds on Bandcamp so I want to save that for things I really love...CDs are a decent compromise but the cheapness (especially on the artist's end) of tapes can't be beat, really. There was also something to be said for high quality cassettes on high end tape decks but that ship has sailed and that definitely isn't the target now.
For certain genres it also just fits their look and feel. If you're making ambient vaporwave music, tapes are a no brainer.
Aren't tapes far more fragile compared to CDs? I'd be worried about potentially losing the object to the point of almost never actually using it (and even then time will most likely degrade it)...
Aren't tapes far more fragile compared to CDs? I'd be worried about potentially losing the object to the point of almost never actually using it (and even then time will most likely degrade it)
Also how are tapes cheaper then CDs? Genuine technical question, CDs seem very cheap to buy in bulk and CD-RW systems were omnipresent for years, it feels almost counter-intuitive that yesteryear's standard would somehow be beat in price by an even older one.
Right? I can get 100 cr-rs for like $50 but I wouldn't even know where to go buy blank cassettes. This all just seems like silliness. People like vinyl because of the audio quality. Tapes have...
Also how are tapes cheaper then CDs?
Right? I can get 100 cr-rs for like $50 but I wouldn't even know where to go buy blank cassettes.
This all just seems like silliness. People like vinyl because of the audio quality. Tapes have always been terrible. Poor quality audio, they break A LOT, you can't easily copy them to computer, etc. The only thing tapes have going for them is nostalgia.
It's a trend. So is vinyl to be honest, but that has a lot more rich audiophiles with more money than sense behind it. Lately, the idea that "the old way = better" seems to have taken hold more...
It's a trend. So is vinyl to be honest, but that has a lot more rich audiophiles with more money than sense behind it.
Lately, the idea that "the old way = better" seems to have taken hold more and more. There's a perception that everything new has been corrupted by corporations and governments, intentionally manufactured and designed poorly. I'm sure that's the case in some areas, but it's certainly not widespread. Definitely not in the case of audio cassette tapes. Possibly the worst modern format you could choose to listen to music in.
Partly the resurgence in Vinyl has been due to it being a convenient vehicle for fans to support their favorite artists. One can pay for a $7 download or fork over $15 and get a gorgeous...
Partly the resurgence in Vinyl has been due to it being a convenient vehicle for fans to support their favorite artists. One can pay for a $7 download or fork over $15 and get a gorgeous collectible along with the digital version, which is more attractive if you really dig their music. Single bands aren't making millions of copies on vinyl any longer. Most artists do limited runs between 50-5000, there's just so many artists now that all of those bands together add up to a lot of vinyl being produced.
There's also the appeal of listening to an album as a theme. Some artists used to assemble an album with a cohesive order (think The Wall or Dark Side of the Moon; The Who's Tommy, etc.), and for...
There's also the appeal of listening to an album as a theme. Some artists used to assemble an album with a cohesive order (think The Wall or Dark Side of the Moon; The Who's Tommy, etc.), and for others it would just be interesting to hear the order they chose for the tracks, and to listen to the entire album. Now it's buy one track because it's popular, or just stream more from that artist, but not necessarily as a cohesive unit, but split across releases.
I grew up with albums, then 8-tracks, then cassettes. 8-tracks were by far the worst, followed pretty closely by cassettes. When CDs were introduced, it was like 4K was suddenly available. But we still always got either an EP (pretty rare) or a full album. Much different way to consume music.
A lot of artists still pay attention to ordering their albums with as much construction, but digitally. That never really stopped, concept albums are still around.
A lot of artists still pay attention to ordering their albums with as much construction, but digitally. That never really stopped, concept albums are still around.
I guess this is postmodernism firmly cementing itself in the mainstream - it's almost the dictionary definition of the word:
I guess this is postmodernism firmly cementing itself in the mainstream - it's almost the dictionary definition of the word:
a late 20th-century style and concept in the arts, architecture, and criticism, which represents a departure from modernism and is characterized by the self-conscious use of earlier styles and conventions, a mixing of different artistic styles and media, and a general distrust of theories.
Low quality ones are, but on a good tape deck, type...II? (tbh I don't remember which were the good ones) tapes can actually be a very good way to get a good and affordable analogue system going,...
Low quality ones are, but on a good tape deck, type...II? (tbh I don't remember which were the good ones) tapes can actually be a very good way to get a good and affordable analogue system going, if you really do care about that. Now, this isn't the point with these and most people aren't doing it, but it's a small cheap collectible that still have the satisfaction of physical stuff, are analogue (even if people are buying things made from digital masters), and still support the artist just as much. There certainly are people into vinyl for the audio quality and it helps the sell, but it isn't the primary reason and that's easy to see by the fact that most people entering the hobby are going for low-mid range stuff that could easily be topped by much cheaper digital equipment. What moves records is the feeling that your music is real and engaging with it is a ritual, which tapes do maintain.
Of course, supporting artists cheaply is the other big factor here. For the most part, if you look to get your record released, cassettes and CDs will be around each other to get them professionally released with album art and all that. But when buying music is done to show good will toward the artist or to collect something, coolness wins out and something analogue and overwhelmingly indie beats the same audio files put on a CD. I already have the FLAC, thank you very much.
Fair enough. My experience is definitely with normal consumer models. And you are certainly correct that nostalgia plays into the vinyl market (probably more so than audio quality). Cheers!
Low quality ones are, but on a good tape deck, type...II?
Fair enough. My experience is definitely with normal consumer models. And you are certainly correct that nostalgia plays into the vinyl market (probably more so than audio quality). Cheers!
I would argue Tapes probably don't break audio any more than overeager editors or compression does. So maybe for some genres tape isn't that much of a hurdle.
Tapes have always been terrible. Poor quality audio
I would argue Tapes probably don't break audio any more than overeager editors or compression does. So maybe for some genres tape isn't that much of a hurdle.
Good point, and the hiss might even be something they're listening for. Mass production of recorded cassettes was used as an early way to play audio in a car, but 8Tracks turned out to be cheaper,...
Good point, and the hiss might even be something they're listening for. Mass production of recorded cassettes was used as an early way to play audio in a car, but 8Tracks turned out to be cheaper, with even lower standards. Very early cassettes were used music similar to the way floppy disks were used, as a cheap and portable way to record something, whether data or music. Even when CDs first came out, the digital format was seen by audiophiles as inferior to vinyl. But again, they were more portable than albums and didn't develop scratches.
They're more fragile, for sure, but people aren't typically buying non-vinyl physical formats for it to be their primary way to listen. They'll degrade, but playing a record wears it down and disc...
They're more fragile, for sure, but people aren't typically buying non-vinyl physical formats for it to be their primary way to listen. They'll degrade, but playing a record wears it down and disc rot is a thing as well...just kinda how physical media goes.
If you look at distributor websites, they'll often be around the same price. I've happened to see cassettes be cheaper most of the time, but that might not be true across the board. For the most part it's not DIY with recordables and burned CDs, btw, it'll be small runs from these places and put on Bandcamp or something. I have no idea what's cheaper when going completely DIY.
If you're wondering why they're still made at all, a lot of sensitive recording uses still need a cheap tape based format, like recording police interviews in a lot of places and I think I read something about them also being used in prisons to this day.
Honestly, minidiscs seem like they’d have been a lot more useful and versatile than cassettes. They were always popular in Asia, I’m surprised they haven’t taken off for this use case.
Honestly, minidiscs seem like they’d have been a lot more useful and versatile than cassettes. They were always popular in Asia, I’m surprised they haven’t taken off for this use case.
Those things are super cool, it would be fun if that became a thing. Kinda a barrier when a lot of regions have close to 0 people who already have equipment for it.
Those things are super cool, it would be fun if that became a thing. Kinda a barrier when a lot of regions have close to 0 people who already have equipment for it.
Cassettes are so much more down to earth comparing to vinyl. Sure they usually don't go all the way up to 22 kHz but they somehow feel ...normal to me. They are also portable media. And there's a...
Cassettes are so much more down to earth comparing to vinyl. Sure they usually don't go all the way up to 22 kHz but they somehow feel ...normal to me. They are also portable media. And there's a charm of pencil rewind.
I used to have a huge selection of audiotapes. Both factory made and personally recorded. I still have my Sony TC-RX311 Tape deck (c1993). I recorded on a couple hundred TDK CrO2 tapes, from other...
I used to have a huge selection of audiotapes. Both factory made and personally recorded. I still have my Sony TC-RX311 Tape deck (c1993). I recorded on a couple hundred TDK CrO2 tapes, from other tapes, from albums (off an Audio Tecnics turntable) and CDs from a Sony 1-bit D/A player (I can't remember the model but I paid like $600 for it. But I sold it in 2006 for $200 so I no longer have it). So better than average equipment. I only used tapes at that point because of my cars.
Well, after switching out my car headunits in 1998 for CD units, I shelved the tapes in boxes in the basement. There they sat till last year alongside the almost two-thousand 5.25" and hundreds of 3.5" floppies I have collected over the past 40 years. I've yet to find a bad floppy disk... I pulled them out and hooked things up, cleaned the tape deck heads and started playing tapes. I was greatly disappointed.
Pretty much ALL my tapes were horrible. Static, sometimes clicky, most of them had faded out audio. So just for a control, I unwrapped some TDK tapes and copied a couple CDs using my Toshiba SD-6109C DVD/AVR. Night and day difference in the sound. Really took me back to when I got the equipment.
Knowing it couldn't just be the player, I also used some "cheap" ($50-$80) DVD players. 2 from Philips and one Apex brand. Honestly, I really couldn't tell a difference between them and the Toshiba.
So my point is, long term storage of recorded audio tapes sucks. Even in great conditions. I expected some degradation, but not as much as I found. I was afraid to record over any of the used TDKs. I wasn't willing to chance damaging my deck. Those tapes were bad enough that I took them to a recycler to get them out of my house.
While I don't think it'll be as impressive as the vinyl resurgence, I totally get this trend and I might hop onto it myself. I like supporting indie acts from time to time, but buying digitally essentially gives me nothing over how I'm already listening, records are expensive and less likely to be released by some nerds on Bandcamp so I want to save that for things I really love...CDs are a decent compromise but the cheapness (especially on the artist's end) of tapes can't be beat, really. There was also something to be said for high quality cassettes on high end tape decks but that ship has sailed and that definitely isn't the target now.
For certain genres it also just fits their look and feel. If you're making ambient vaporwave music, tapes are a no brainer.
Aren't tapes far more fragile compared to CDs? I'd be worried about potentially losing the object to the point of almost never actually using it (and even then time will most likely degrade it)
Also how are tapes cheaper then CDs? Genuine technical question, CDs seem very cheap to buy in bulk and CD-RW systems were omnipresent for years, it feels almost counter-intuitive that yesteryear's standard would somehow be beat in price by an even older one.
Right? I can get 100 cr-rs for like $50 but I wouldn't even know where to go buy blank cassettes.
This all just seems like silliness. People like vinyl because of the audio quality. Tapes have always been terrible. Poor quality audio, they break A LOT, you can't easily copy them to computer, etc. The only thing tapes have going for them is nostalgia.
It's a trend. So is vinyl to be honest, but that has a lot more rich audiophiles with more money than sense behind it.
Lately, the idea that "the old way = better" seems to have taken hold more and more. There's a perception that everything new has been corrupted by corporations and governments, intentionally manufactured and designed poorly. I'm sure that's the case in some areas, but it's certainly not widespread. Definitely not in the case of audio cassette tapes. Possibly the worst modern format you could choose to listen to music in.
Partly the resurgence in Vinyl has been due to it being a convenient vehicle for fans to support their favorite artists. One can pay for a $7 download or fork over $15 and get a gorgeous collectible along with the digital version, which is more attractive if you really dig their music. Single bands aren't making millions of copies on vinyl any longer. Most artists do limited runs between 50-5000, there's just so many artists now that all of those bands together add up to a lot of vinyl being produced.
There's also the appeal of listening to an album as a theme. Some artists used to assemble an album with a cohesive order (think The Wall or Dark Side of the Moon; The Who's Tommy, etc.), and for others it would just be interesting to hear the order they chose for the tracks, and to listen to the entire album. Now it's buy one track because it's popular, or just stream more from that artist, but not necessarily as a cohesive unit, but split across releases.
I grew up with albums, then 8-tracks, then cassettes. 8-tracks were by far the worst, followed pretty closely by cassettes. When CDs were introduced, it was like 4K was suddenly available. But we still always got either an EP (pretty rare) or a full album. Much different way to consume music.
A lot of artists still pay attention to ordering their albums with as much construction, but digitally. That never really stopped, concept albums are still around.
I guess this is postmodernism firmly cementing itself in the mainstream - it's almost the dictionary definition of the word:
I distrust this theory.
Given that I don't actually know that much about the topic, I'd say this is fair.
I was just being jovial, given the definition you cited. Please don’t upvote that comment as I am not adding anything to the conversation!
I... am not quick on the uptake today!
Low quality ones are, but on a good tape deck, type...II? (tbh I don't remember which were the good ones) tapes can actually be a very good way to get a good and affordable analogue system going, if you really do care about that. Now, this isn't the point with these and most people aren't doing it, but it's a small cheap collectible that still have the satisfaction of physical stuff, are analogue (even if people are buying things made from digital masters), and still support the artist just as much. There certainly are people into vinyl for the audio quality and it helps the sell, but it isn't the primary reason and that's easy to see by the fact that most people entering the hobby are going for low-mid range stuff that could easily be topped by much cheaper digital equipment. What moves records is the feeling that your music is real and engaging with it is a ritual, which tapes do maintain.
Of course, supporting artists cheaply is the other big factor here. For the most part, if you look to get your record released, cassettes and CDs will be around each other to get them professionally released with album art and all that. But when buying music is done to show good will toward the artist or to collect something, coolness wins out and something analogue and overwhelmingly indie beats the same audio files put on a CD. I already have the FLAC, thank you very much.
Fair enough. My experience is definitely with normal consumer models. And you are certainly correct that nostalgia plays into the vinyl market (probably more so than audio quality). Cheers!
I would argue Tapes probably don't break audio any more than overeager editors or compression does. So maybe for some genres tape isn't that much of a hurdle.
Good point, and the hiss might even be something they're listening for. Mass production of recorded cassettes was used as an early way to play audio in a car, but 8Tracks turned out to be cheaper, with even lower standards. Very early cassettes were used music similar to the way floppy disks were used, as a cheap and portable way to record something, whether data or music. Even when CDs first came out, the digital format was seen by audiophiles as inferior to vinyl. But again, they were more portable than albums and didn't develop scratches.
They're more fragile, for sure, but people aren't typically buying non-vinyl physical formats for it to be their primary way to listen. They'll degrade, but playing a record wears it down and disc rot is a thing as well...just kinda how physical media goes.
If you look at distributor websites, they'll often be around the same price. I've happened to see cassettes be cheaper most of the time, but that might not be true across the board. For the most part it's not DIY with recordables and burned CDs, btw, it'll be small runs from these places and put on Bandcamp or something. I have no idea what's cheaper when going completely DIY.
If you're wondering why they're still made at all, a lot of sensitive recording uses still need a cheap tape based format, like recording police interviews in a lot of places and I think I read something about them also being used in prisons to this day.
Honestly, minidiscs seem like they’d have been a lot more useful and versatile than cassettes. They were always popular in Asia, I’m surprised they haven’t taken off for this use case.
Those things are super cool, it would be fun if that became a thing. Kinda a barrier when a lot of regions have close to 0 people who already have equipment for it.
Cassettes are so much more down to earth comparing to vinyl. Sure they usually don't go all the way up to 22 kHz but they somehow feel ...normal to me. They are also portable media. And there's a charm of pencil rewind.
I used to have a huge selection of audiotapes. Both factory made and personally recorded. I still have my Sony TC-RX311 Tape deck (c1993). I recorded on a couple hundred TDK CrO2 tapes, from other tapes, from albums (off an Audio Tecnics turntable) and CDs from a Sony 1-bit D/A player (I can't remember the model but I paid like $600 for it. But I sold it in 2006 for $200 so I no longer have it). So better than average equipment. I only used tapes at that point because of my cars.
Well, after switching out my car headunits in 1998 for CD units, I shelved the tapes in boxes in the basement. There they sat till last year alongside the almost two-thousand 5.25" and hundreds of 3.5" floppies I have collected over the past 40 years. I've yet to find a bad floppy disk... I pulled them out and hooked things up, cleaned the tape deck heads and started playing tapes. I was greatly disappointed.
Pretty much ALL my tapes were horrible. Static, sometimes clicky, most of them had faded out audio. So just for a control, I unwrapped some TDK tapes and copied a couple CDs using my Toshiba SD-6109C DVD/AVR. Night and day difference in the sound. Really took me back to when I got the equipment.
Knowing it couldn't just be the player, I also used some "cheap" ($50-$80) DVD players. 2 from Philips and one Apex brand. Honestly, I really couldn't tell a difference between them and the Toshiba.
So my point is, long term storage of recorded audio tapes sucks. Even in great conditions. I expected some degradation, but not as much as I found. I was afraid to record over any of the used TDKs. I wasn't willing to chance damaging my deck. Those tapes were bad enough that I took them to a recycler to get them out of my house.