I was a hi-fi salesman between 1976 and 1983. At the time, we "audiophiles" haled the invention of the CD because of the limited dynamic range of Vinyl and the lousy noise floor that drove us crazy (which is why I owned a Phase Linear 1000). Not to mention the pops and clicks. In fact, there were record players in the late 70's that touted the ability to hear and remove the sound of pops and clicks. Direct to disk recordings and digitally mastered recordings were also becoming a thing. And i still have 16 DBX LP's and a DBX decoder. But they were all seen as stop-gap. When the CD came out, we were done with vinyl. But here was the problem. We ended up having a similar experience with CD's to what I had with the 96 khz MP3 recordings. That is, I rated format quality by the lack of noise/hiss and frequency response. And the latter always meant high frequencies. So I first thought they sounded amazing. But after a while I noticed a sort of "swirling" sound in ride cymbals, etc. I honestly thought my player was defective. But I learned I was hearing a completely new type of bad quality artifact - the lossy recording. And they also cut out the deep bass. This mattered to me with my love of the band, Genesis and my "audiophile" system that could shake the house. And early CD's really did have a harshness and, of course, though they could sound a lot better than vinyl, they got into the compression of the loudness wars, which negated that advantage. Cassette was always a secondary format for me. I had good cassette decks (a couple of Nak's and an amazing Denon deck). I would record my records immediately to cassette and then just play the cassettes. Back then, that was "good enough". We weren't looking for the "vinyl experience" really. We just wanted the music. BTW, I only bought one pre-recorded cassette and it ended up on the side of the highway somewhere. But the above is all preface. I resurrected my TT about 15 years ago and started buying records in bulk at estate sales, mainly because they were dirt cheap. After dumping the garbage at goodwill, I still ended up with about 3,500 LP's. And a funny thing happened. I started VERY much appreciating the LP experience. And what just recently really added to it was finally finishing my music listening/rehearsal/practice room. I can critically listen to my music sources again for the first time in over a decade, with high quality equipment and well tuned room acoustics. What I found was the streamed stuff is found seriously lacking similarly to how 96k MP3's were found lacking. Frankly, listening to the streamed stuff compared to vinyl is a bit like, back in the day, comparing FM radio to vinyl. It lacks any sort of "real" dynamics and just sounds flat. My records, though some have surface noise and sometimes it is significant, still tend to sound noticeably better than the streamed stuff. And this includes many of my jazz titles from the 50's. On a side note, engineers had it down solid back then, and some of the "tube equipment" they used is the stuff people drool over today. When I play some of that jazz trio and quartet stuff it LITERALLY sounds like the group is in my listening room. And my entire system is only "upper middle quality" stuff from the 70's (except the subwoofer). i.e. no McIntosh, etc. I think us old timers are valuing the tactile experience of playing vinyl in a way we never even thought about back in the day. It really is a nostalgia thing. But I think it is along those same lines with the young people today as well. Not the nostalgia part, but the tactile part. As one guy said, Nobody ever said, "hey, you wanna see my mp3 collection?" Vinyl is a bit of a cultural experience, as you pointed out in your video. And that really matters. It's more than just about the music now. It's the whole experience of OWNING SOMETHING TANGIBLE and watching it spin, etc. And listening to shockingly good sound come from it. I used to think the vinyl resurgence would die with us boomers. But I'm beginning to realize that it might not. It's as if western civilization has OD'd on technology and is looking to pull it back in ways that are not "too" inconvenient - riding a horse to work will probably not come back. And I think CD's will do the same thing to a point. Cassettes are like 8-tracks or shellac 78's (or wax cylinders). They just don't sound good enough for any kind of serious resurgence. Then again, I purchased a 78 needle to play my limited supply of 78's and was shocked at what I heard...🤣
I believe the vinyl resurgence will continue on as well. I’m 39, so my introduction to music collection was at the tail end of cassette into CD’s, yet in the last few years I’ve accumulated almost 300 vinyl and I keep going. Everything mentioned in the video is why I collect and listen to it and i haven’t bought a CD in a decade. I’m seeing teens and young adults getting into vinyl too, and i think it’s an instinctual rebuke to the transient, disposable nature of streaming services. People hunger for community and identity which music provides when it’s given the reverence that only comes from physical media
@bennetttheissen700 I had that experience a few years ago - I bought an old Denon cassette deck from eBay for £50, cleaned it up, and the first thing I played in it was Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds. Honestly I couldn't really tell the difference from a CD. It shocked me! Those Denon decks were damn good.
I think what limits vinyl comeback in the long run, is that they require quite a lot of space. Cassettes are compact. And what is very much driving these comebacks is the need for somethings physical and tactile which cassettes provide. And, as you said, digital faults sound different than analogue, and I think lot of people are actually looking for the sound of those faults. They try to add them to digital music because it is some people seem to like, even if they aren't conscious of it. I think perfection makes us nervous and we start looking for faults, while rougher reproduction (of image or sound) lets us accept it as what it is.
With vinyl and cassetes all the noises give them the 'organic' feel we are sometimes like from nature. Like a walk in the forest, the wind, the leaves, the sun... is not a high quality picture but sensing it fills you.
I agree about mix tape culture, and the impact that makes. I was recently backing up all my old 4 track recordings before selling my porta studio, and I came across a tape that I thought I had lost. It was a mix tape my mother made for me when I was very young. She died about 5 years ago and I will be honest, I popped it in and immediately realized it was the tape she made me and it was a very emotional moment. I stopped my backup process and listened to it front to back. I get my audio skills from her and the tape sounded surprisingly good. I still have all her old gear and it doesn't surprise me she had top of the line decks, a 32 band eq, and her decks had some supremely amazing noise reduction and she was using very good tapes so despite being over 25 years old, it still sounded better than the radio, but maybe just shy of cd quality. Thanks for the music mom.
I had so many problems with both cassettes and vinyl records I literally sighed with relief when CDs became available. The artwork on the sleeve might be small but it’s better than streaming with no artwork at all. 🧐🙂🙃😎
It's always weird for me to hear people saying that CD is dead, when from my point of view it's really the only older audio format that is NOT dead. I've continued to buy music on CD ever since streaming began to take over. Maybe it's related to the genres I like, but usually I can find music I want on CD without any trouble. I rip it to my hard disc and then sync to my phone, and access it from other devices in the house, so I don't really play the CDs physically. I just don't get on with streaming; there's something about it that feels too ephemeral, like I'm not really present with the music. I'm the same with movies, by the way. I gave up TV in 2004 (largely from disgust over the advertising levels), and since then I've never used Netflix or Prime and I mostly either watch UA-cam or ripped DVDs. I'm happy this way! I don't like being spoon-fed content: I'd rather have a limited choice that's MY choice.
The worst part of streaming for me is... well everything that comes with it's nature really. If I'm to pay for a rental, may as well just pay for the ownership, they sure as heck ain't blocking my CD player from running my CDs if I don't have Internet, nor stop paying for it. Doesn't mean I can't rip it to run the files on my phone as well like you said. I just don't like the "you'll not own anything" model we're moving to, with even goddang subscriptions for shoes and heated seats on cars. It's going stupid, and if just sticking to that 80s format that still kicks the ass of most modern options is a form of rebellion, then I'm all in.
Another benefit of cassettes -- you are more likely to listen to an entire album "as the artist intended", as it was a pain in the butt to skip tracks! Like I said on your cassette video, part of the joy of cassettes are their handling durability, very tactile nature, size, the rattling sound they make when moving them in and out of their case, finding good pre-recorded ones (Cinram!), mix tapes, and the act of creating them. But I'll never go back to a Walkman and a bag of tapes!
*Almost* as the artist intended. If my memory works correctly after all these years, it was common practice to reorder the tracks if necessary so that Side 1 had a longer duration than Side 2, so that when Side 1 finished, Side 2 was ready to play immediately. DM
I remember watching an interview with the frontman of my favorite band and he mentioned that the cassette release of one of their albums had all the tracks reordered so that it actually started with the album closer and he was so displeased with it.
Many people prefer the sound of vinyl. We all know digital is superior but at the end of the day it is what your ears prefer. The physical product aspect is massive. Those of us of a certain age just can't read the bloody writing on CDs anymore but the excitement of browsing through piles of second-hand records is heaven.... :)..Thanks for the videos. Enjoyed them.
Thanks for your very precise explanations about the subject, finally someone that understand the plus ands minus of analog medium. Always been a fan of compact casette, mainly portable stereo casette player/recorder. Around 1978 I bought a Superpscope CD-330 tape deck, not perfect but highly versatile. I recorded ny precious ECM albums and later CD, compiled terrific playlist of new wave music, record set from the jazz band I was working for, play music before the set, play music after the set, in my car, in my country house... Sadly the CD-330 fade away...But I keep all my Compact Casette. 1 month ago I found a beautiful JVC CD-1636 Casette Deck Player...in totally perfect order with his black fetish lather case! for 60$ box canadian... I'm now recording playlist from my music server, got the exact timing, volume (using replay gain) and even cross-mixed... The look of the VU meter moving in darkness is totally georgeous until the tape stock and bang a awful sound of mecahnic clunk from the auto-stop mechanisim :-)
I discovered your videos very recently and I have been enjoying them as I am as vintage as you are and I still love all my media from 78 rpm to nowadays cloudy invisible digital streaming formats ! 😊
I gotta mention one thing about tapes that's often overlooked by fans of more mainstream music. Tapes never fully went away in underground scenes of music. I have Punk and Metal Albums that were put out by various artists in splits and demos that are less than 5 years old.
I have a few hundred cassettes and made the mistake of storing one box of about 50 in my barn (hot/cold/humid Kentucky). The tape spools inside are furry with mold and have the same problem open reel has with shedding tapes. The heads gum up after only a few seconds. Meanwhile, my friend had a hundred or so records completely soaked when the basement flooded and, 15 years later, I pulled apart the "brick" of records and with very little effort, brought them to their original sound. They had "merged" with their jackets and the whole group was lightly "glued" together. Of course, the labels were unreadable so I had to use Shazam to find out which record each one was. I bought some 4" white round labels and relabeled the ones that were worth it. Audibly they are as good as the day the basement flooded. Some are dead quiet and sound brand new. And they are the flattest group of records I've ever played. 😆
There is one advantage that cassettes have over every other physical medium that I can think of (I include 8-track here as it is a cassetted-tape medium) and that is their ability to stop listening to something in one place on one machine, take the thing out of the machine, and then take it somewhere else, put it into a completely different machine in a different location, and carry on listening FROM THE PLACE YOU LEFT OFF. I have listened to audio books since they were on cassette tapes and it was great to be able to stop listening in the house, take the tape to the car and put it in the car stereo and carry on where you left off as you drive away. This also applies to the visually impaired community with their talking newspapers and talking magazines. They now have "gone digital" and commonly use USB flash drives as the distribution medium, and this "carry of from where you left off" only works if the players used are from the same manufacturer/type, and have software to save the current listening position on each stick before removal. Its a software kluge. It often doesn't work, or is not implimented. In other digital devices, they make a big thing of being able to watch or listen across several devices (Netflix et al;) and thats fine as long as the streaming connection is there. May or may not be in a car, depending where you are. Cassettes and their other tape-cassette cousins can manage it every time, in any player, anywhere. Not bad, and very convenient!
Here's a revival you may not have thought of: The stacked stereo component revival. A couple years ago, I got back into vinyl, and hooked a player up to my modern Dolby Atmos system. It sounds warm and delightful through 7 or more speakers. Just recently, however, I got to thinking about the old Kenwood Hifi system I had as a teenager. All of a sudden, I had the desire to relive my youth and went out and sought a rack system. I got myself matching Technics components, complete with cassette, tuner, equalizer, and an all mighty 110 CD changer. Not only does it look amazing with all the pieces lit up and flashing to the beat, but I can now play all the retro formats. I am slowly starting to rebuild my CD collection, and mark my words, the CD revival is nigh.
Vinyl revival 2022: 41M vinyl records sold vs 30M CDs. CDs are pretty much dead, as you said. I have been collecting vinyl since the mid 70s. It is superior.
Since I stumbled upon your channel when bored and you asked , I'm going to throw in a thought. I watched your revival videos as I came upon them and honestly at first I wondered if you were a little.. well.. crazy? But then I kept watching and you bring up a bunch of objective reasoning to your case so, no, I don't think you are crazy anymore. That being said; I just really seem to like obscure media and the experience of finding something in a physical format, the ceremony of playing said media, is just as much a part of it as actually listening to the music. So I don't really care if there are pops or distortions.
Enjoyed these videos! I listen to all the formats. One thing I don't think I heard you mention is different mastering. Sometimes mastering on one format can absolutely horrible on one format and sublime on another.
This is a good point, mastering is a huge topic but my quick comment is that CD will accept any extreme of mastering but vinyl will not. 'Californication' by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers is a good comparison in vinyl and CD formats. The vinyl version is much less heavily mastered and in my opinion sounds better for it. DM
It would be nice if they could release a two CD box-set, with the vinyl master recorded to CD as a bonus disc. Like the Star Wars box-set with the special edition that had the theatrical release as bonus discs.
That was true for some 80s metal & rock albums, the cassette often sounded better than the vinyl. Sometimes like: Testament - The Legacy, and The Mission - First Chapter, the cassette sounded better than the CD.
Song selection and queuing is the main problem with cassettes. The ones I am recording now sound great on my deck and system. But you just have to listen in it’s entirety. No skipping around! 👍👍👍
Wow! Interesting, full of kniwledge, experience. It is pleasure and fun to watch your episodes (although I'm more nostalgic to dead formats than you are 😊) Thank you!
I have so many, Vinyl, Cassettes, CDs, Lossless files, and Hi-Res Files..... I will always enjoy the sound quality, of my CDs, and files way more than the others.
Back in the 80s, there was a radio program called "The Seventh Day", not sure what station here in California...but my father would buy metal tapes and record the full, uninterrupted albums they'd present. He was a huge Beatles/Beach Boys fan, but he was also a music lover in general, and when I'd bring cassettes of Rush, Van Halen, The Police, Michael Jackson, ZZTop, and more to school to listen to on my Walkman, my friends would ask how I could afford to buy them all, and I'd tell them that they were my dad's, and he recorded them off of the radio. Most of their fathers didn't like modern music. I was lucky my father had an open mind with regard to music genres.
vinyl sounds perfectly fine if you have a good stylus and set it up properly. Most people do not. I've done many side by side comparisons with cd and I can't argue with what sounds better to my ears. For a lot of music I find the mastering of vinyl to be preferable.
I enjoy all media as I do not compare them. When I try, I realize that it is unfair. I enjoy them all in their own contexts. If I need a Cassette, it is great for background music. CD's are great for places that do not have WiFi. LP's are nostalgic as are my Reel to Reel collection. Love your videos!!!! Keep em coming.
Have loved your revival videos. Really funny “get off of my lawn!” stuff haha. We just finished another full length album recorded live as a band to 2” tape. We simply like the way rock and roll music sounded recorded this way in the past and tend to dislike rock and roll tracked to Protools to a click track and then edited to hell and back. Why? All of the soul gets completely sucked out of it. “Perfect” sound/time/performances are boring and who wants boring rock and roll records? I like hearing John Bonham’s kick pedal squeaking and his time fluctuations, the Wrecking Crew’s energy, or The Beatles anything. Nothing wrong with a little (or a lot depending on the style) harmonic distortion. I like hearing human performances, not humans made into perfect robots in Protools when it comes to rock. EDM? Sure, use Protools, Ableton Live, or whatnot. But I’ll take my rock dirty, fuzzy, and real every time.
Thank you for your comment, with which I largely agree. If there were such a thing as a tape recorder that didn't have the 20-odd problems I covered in this series I would be happy to own it and use it. DM
The best thing about cassettes is that I was able to erase "Stairway to Heaven" and "My Ding-a-Ling" from their respective albums, before listening to them.
I love streaming for exploring new music but I do want to own a physical copy of stuff that I really like. Cassette was great for making tapes for the car but I wouldn’t have any use for it now. Personally I stream, still buy CDs and intend to buy a turntable just to play some of my existing vinyl, some of which is about 40 years old. The most important thing for me is access to music, preferably well reproduced.
I agree. If there’s something you really, really like then having it on a physical medium, or buying a download, protects you from any future untoward remastering.
I use them all been converting music to digital before there was MP3s, as a matter of fact I beta tested apps on that dat back in the 90's, however correct on all points, this is memories, i get joy from all formats, as horrible as my tapes sound, but what I found fun is Recordings off the Radio, old ads and cool radio anthems that no longer exist, this is what it is about for most people I know...
I've never understood the revival of tape and vinyl - back in 1987 I was able to afford my first CD player and then ditched all my tapes. My music collection exploded after that, and where I can, still buy CDs today. Packaging has improved a lot in the last few years, perhaps as CDs become collectable items as well as music media with booklets, fold out artwork and even mini posters. I've never seen CDs go bad in all that time and sometimes wonder if it's more of an urban myth, or just wrongly attributed to poor handling.
Jazz _kissa_ are niche Japanese cafes stacked with whisky, *vinyl* and high-end audio systems. Well, the atmosphere of these places wouldn't be the same if it was digital! The Guardian has a short photo gallery, the title; One kissa is all it takes: Tokyo’s finest jazz haunts - in pictures "In the kissa, you can sip coffee or alcohol while listening to vast collections of vinyl records. They are an integral part of jazz culture in Japan." Edit; CD's are also played.
I sell cds. The thing about cds and records being an expression of your character is correct. A little deeper though. It is often an expression of the personality you wish to project. I often get really "cool" indie recordings from people. The thing is, they are all in mint condition. Definitely not play more than a couple of times if at all. You can tell from the wear and how tight the holder is. But they have Madonna and ABBA cds that have been thrashed to death. I think about these things while I am cleaning up their collection.
I have tracks by the band "Foreigner" on CD and vinyl. Maybe it is the manner in which each was recorded. I prefer the vinyl copy for the richness of sound. The CD seems sterile and compressed. Then again, one of my first CDs was "Chicago XI." I think that CD still sounds amazing. Just because music is published on CD does not mean it will always sound great. My newest LP features John Coltrane. "Kinda Blue," is remastered from the original studio tapes and is stamped on 180 gram vinyl. Yes, I have to keep it clean, but it sounds amazing!
I just personally prefer the sound of vinyl. I don't mind a few scratches and surface noise. I think part of it is because I understand how it works on a very basic level whereas with digital formats it's all 1s and 0s. I've never really gotten into streaming music as it doesn't interest me in the same way as going into a record store and looking through crates trying to find what I'm after. I think "the hunt" is a big part of the appeal. You have to search for it so you feel like you've earned it in some weird way. But to me, and perhaps it's all in the mind, vinyl just sounds better. Maybe not from any technical perspective, but to me, vinyl sounds more "real" if that makes sense. Possibly because the stylus is vibrating in the grooves to create the sound...or it could just be all mental. I think another factor in my love of vinyl came from early negative experiences with CDs. My uncle Les was the first in our family with a CD player and we all went around to check it out, but the 1 CD he had somehow wouldn't play anymore. Apparently it'd been working fine the day before but suddenly appeared to have been wiped. It turned out that he'd managed tp scratch it somehow and now the laser couldn't access the information. If a record gets scratched, you'll hear a click, with CDs it might mean nothing or it'll completely ruin the disc. With streaming, that can't happen but they can take away whatever song it was you liked whenever they feel like it. I like having my own archive.
Vinyl has something in common with a steam engine or locomotive - you can look at it and see how it works. There's a certain value in that and it's not entirely nostalgia. M
They could have kept the bigger size of vinyl sleeves for enjoying the artwork, it was a great part of getting into the music of the band/artist, but still make CD's since vinyl is a format belonging to the past. But it doesnt matter today, the concept of making an album is gone too! Its all about releasing hit songs on Spotify, etc. Wich is very sad imo! The music industry is so different from when I grew up and enjoyed rock music all between 70s-90s I guess. I never really liked cassettes, it was worse than vinyl in quality imo. I sold my vinyls in the 90's I think and bought everything on CD again, same albums. I still buy CD's today though.
🤔You always have such well thought out videos. I have to say that, as someone with good equipment and a vinyl collection from yesteryear, I recently purchased a handful of some of the recent “quality 180 gram” vinyl records. What I found was that, although the S/N ratio seemed improved, and sonically were acceptable, the records themselves STILL suffer from problems of not being perfectly flat, and not even always a perfectly round groove for the stylus to track. This will probably exacerbate distortions down the road with repeated listening. As much as I like artwork, information, and marveling at the record player in action, I have to agree that there are enough negatives to turn one off. I don’t feel that the industry really learned what is important to the audiophile experience in that medium.👨🏻 PS) Don’t get me started on CD “issues,” let alone cassettes!🤬
For a professional, classical musician like me 'swingers' were the worst. Piano recordings particularly and the inevitability that it would get even worse towards the centre.@@AudioMasterclass
I still use my IPOD classic. Its still such a good machine, accepts file all the way up to 320 kbps which is perfectly adequate for listening to stuff while commuting or taking walks
I wet clean my vinyl records and don't have any clicks or pops. Sure there are a few scratched records in my collection and that scratch/skip is annoying but most of my vinyl records sound wonderful. I have 80 year old records that still sound great and I can enjoy the music but several 30 year old CDs that won't play at all. A small vinyl skip is better than loosing the entire CD because it can't read the table of contents. The main reason I love my vinyl collection is access to old recordings that will unlikely make it into digital streaming catalogs. I also love the whole experience of going to a record shop and flipping through the collections looking for something special. Vinyl records are surprisingly robust if well cared for. I won't get rid on my CDs but I really find it hard to buy new CDs especially when they are on my streaming service. But I have no problem buying an old Blue Note recording of Freddie Hubbard on vinyl.
I rotate my artist artwork on my wallpaper on my computer! Looks fucking awesome on my MacBook especially! Apple animated it nice! Most people have pics of their family but not me!😁 Rotates while I’m jamming on Spotify out my Xbox with a beautiful visualizer! Wish I could show you all a picture of it!
Levels 1 & 2 - In my high school / college years, I was a Voracious fan of music - all sorts - I ALWAYS wanted to hear new/different stuff, rather than the same music over & over, as most everyone else I knew did (that drove me NUTS & made me HATE a lot of Classic Rock to this day). In Jr High/early High School, had a crappy Sears mono cassette recorder - it was my Dad's, but he never used it - I used to tape albums I didn't have off the radio or from friends, but it was terrible quality, but I GOT TO HEAR MUSIC I DIDN'T KNOW!!!!!! - I also recorded all sorts of live broadcasts, the infamous King Biscuit Flour Hour, The Midnight Special, PBS (USA public TV) broadcasts like the 1975 Bob Dylan Rolling Thunder special. Keep in mind, lp's were EXPENSIVE, $2.99 at 1st, Jr High era (1973), then as the OPEC boycott & petroleum shortages got worse, rose quickly - $3.99, $4.99, $5.99, $6.99, $7.99 by the time I went off to college (1978). So, freshman year of college, I bought myself a Sanyo "pro" stereo cassette deck, $160, ostensibly to record the Grateful Dead's 11/24/78 & 12/31/78 fm broadcasts, but I was now ARMED with a cassette deck that could actually make me as good a copy of a record from friend's collections as if I'd bought the actual album for $7.99, except I was using a good quality (Maxell UDXL-II) 90 min cassette blank bought for less than $4. Often times, if the friend was wealthy, or had savvy parents who owned a really good stereo, the recording would actually sound better than if I had the record on my own low fi system, as I'd plugged my good cassette deck into their Hi Fi system to make the recording, their turntable, stylus, & cartridge quality was good enough to over compensate for any "loss" imposed by the cassette medium. So sure, I was "Ripping Off" the record companies & the artists, but I was a Voracious music fan, & would still buy albums if I couldn't get them from any friends. It just broadened my horizons. In fact, I considered myself a 'better" consumer, as I'd be buying lp's of obscure bands, instead of the latest Eagles / Fleetwood Mac lp as everyone else was (I could tape these). Another thought: I would Owe all the Hullaballoo / Bro Ha Ha / Hoopla over such Hallowed Events as the 50th Anniversary of the release of Dark Side of the Moon to the existence of Vinyl (OK technically 33-1/3, yes, there are Hipster Idiots who now Venerate the 45, but I'm gonna Ignore them), cassette, & CD - otherwise, we wouldn't give a rat's ass about the 50th anniversary of Money (& maybe Time - did that chart?) - we'd be celebrating some crappy 1 hit wonder - well OK "Troglodyte" was a cool song, by a real band, & the live version is not much different than the studio version - Jimmy Castor is even more Nuts watching him perform that song live (search on You Tube, it's Great! ("I gotta thank you all - 'cause we really needed it!!!"). We used to freak out our Jr High teachers running up & down the halls in our pre-pubescent un-cracked voices yelling "I'LL SOCK IT TO YA, DADDAY!!!!" in between classes. Fun times!!!!!
I've never understood why digitally released albums don't come with a digital version of the booklet with artworks, photos, credits, lyrics etc. Even artists I speak with can't answer why. I seems so simple to me, just add a PDF copy of the booklet file with the music files. Any insights into this?
One thing that may not change is the factor that the production of the original song has a lot to do with audio play back quality despite the source whether it be cassettes, cds, or vinyl but usually more so in former days. However on the whole there will always be a bias between the 2 groups- those who prefer digital recordings oppose to those those that favor stereo recordings esp old school production on Capitol, MGM, and RCA.😊
I love vinyl I have record's which I purchased in he 70s which I still play without the cracking and starches you talk about, If you play vinyl you nead a good turntable if you buy a £300 one a expect good results you will be disappointed it is true that records nead to be stored and looked after correctly unlike a CD ( which I also play) but if all right vinyl is a great experience
Casettes. I totally see why i don't have nostalgia for them. They always sounded like utter crap to me. The vinyl, the minor mechanical miracle that sound of any kind comes off of it is part of my enjoyment of it.
I think we miss the point that everything we hear is our interpretation. We really have no idea what someone else is hearing. I have a good turntable a good dac and cd player. In playing the same track on CD, streaming or record (I hate the word vinyl) most people say leave the record on. When asked they say the record just sounds more real. Music is an art and the connection we feel to it is not something that can be quantified just by measurements our brains alter and change what we perceive on an individual basis.
well, here's to point out that most buyers of new "vinyl" today do not even own a turntable. They listen to the sound on streaming services but still have the artwork that they can touch physically. And if streaming services end up with the same habit as game publishers, there is still a physical copy that buyers OWN and no beff jezos, no gill bates and no bitten fruit company could stop them from listening (btw this is why i doubt that ippods will ever revive)
One of the original benefits of vinyl was the theoretical frequency extension out to 30k or more...when the recordings were made on analogue tape (where CDs cut off sharply at 22.5k). But what is the benefit of vinyl releases in a digital recording age? I presume just a tactile experience...which I'd had a gut-full of by 1988 😁
Metal tapes were great for recording albums! But the commercial prerecorded tapes. E.G. Let's Dance -- David Bowie. The album and 12" singles sounded great for the time. Any of the three remasterings...excellent. The prerecorded music tapes. Blech!
I'll keep my Vinyl and CDs. I like listening to music on the format of the time it was released. 90% of my collection are 1st pressings. All this "Remastered from the Original Tapes, blah, blah" is 85% of the time, just a marketing cash grab. Flogging a dead horse, if you will ). Streaming isn't all that, especially since the Loudness War kicked in, post 1994. One reason to keep buying vinyl, they can't use dynamic range (Brickwall) Compression as much or the stylus will exit the groove wall. On top of that, a well known hi-res download site was caught out when some one threw a 24/96 download into a DAW and looked at the spectrals. Surprise, surprise, it was 24/96, upsampled from 44kHz. Hard brickwall cutoff / lowpass at 22kHz can't lie, another good reason to keep your Vinyl and CD. SACD was similar, a lot of content was just CD quality upsampled wav's then coverterted to DSD. When I rip SACD, from my collection, I always either encode to flac at 24bit / 88kHz (If Digital Source) or do my own 30kHz cutoff (If Analog Sourced), just to get rid of the DSD noise that resides in the upper frequencies, when you convert back to PCM / Flac. I do tend to enjoy a lot of recent reissues on Bluray though. DTS-HD MA is lossless and some of the material being released at 24/192 is just superb listening.
With how cheap digital storage has become (there are 32BG SD cards sold directly by Amazon for $7 and 64GB cards from Best Buy for $11.), I would love to see a new chip-based physical audio format. It needs to play without an internet connection or DRM, needs to be at least as durable as an SD card (preferable more so), likely without moving parts for playback. It would ideally be small enough to be space efficient compared to CDs or Cassettes, but needs to be large enough to still feel like a "tea ceremony" like physical formats of the past, maybe about the size of a GameBoy Advance cartridge. It needs to cost the same or less than CDs, but have 24 bit .flac or .wav files that can be easily copy/pasted to any computer with a simple USB cable, no DRM. All it really needs to do to succeed is to market itself as a better way to support artists than streaming while actually owning your library. People want ownership again.
Laserdisc is the longest-lived and most faithful way to archive music, film, data. Ironically it’s the least accessible. Laserdisc just for music sounds swell.
Oddly enough, sales figures have reached me www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/ CD not reviving yet it seems. As for the iPod, there's one inside my phone.
@@AudioMasterclass I mean in the niche sense of people talking about the pros etc online. Maybe not a total renaissance, but there have been groups for CD collectors on Reddit and UA-camrs modding and upgrading iPod classics. Perhaps it's less of a 'revival' and more of a 'there's a niche for everything now'.
Meh, let's revive Mini Disc optical format.... And call it there.😉 Honestly, I personally don't want to deal with any form of tape anymore. (haha, you too ADAT tape 😐) The first pass was enough tape fiddling for me. Vinyl has its ups and downs, and isn't an ideal choice by any stretch.....but no tangling, rewinding or roller maintenance ... Mini Disc was a great, bombproof format that didn't tend to degrade much with the passage of time. I miss it frequently.
CDs do degrade over time. Not with number of plays, necessarily, but disc rot will mean that virtually all the music you have stored on cds will be lost after only two or three decades. For cds from the 80s and 90s, it’s already very dicey whether any of them are still going to be good when you get them at say a thrift store or a garage sale, which the same can’t really be said for vinyl or even cassette.
So what happened to all those not-worth-fixing ipods? I still have my Sandisk players from the same era. If the battery goes bad, I pay 50 cents and put in a new one.
@@drkastenbrot to my experience i do find that digital recordings - and maybe it' by mistake or bad equipment, don't rly know - they often have some strange mid-high frequency distortion thing...rly awful and impossible to get rid off, keeps me wondering if tape is actually free of it and more clean
What "Tape"? He's talking about Cassette Tapes, as final retail duplications for consumers. Recording to tape is an entirely different thing. (Though consumers could actually record to Cassette tapes, but not professionally. And there were Portastudios....) Tracking to Multitrack Tape, such as 2-inch 24-track that became "standard" for a good period, varied significantly depending upon what Machine, what Brand/Model of Tape, what Speed, Bias, Noise Reduction, Levels and a dozen other factors. However, the industry pretty much mastered the art of squeezing the most quality out of that tape. When Digital recording first arrived, I don't think anyone was impressed with the results Sonically at first. But over time, a tipping point was reached, and today there are very few who claim that Tape is inherently superior to Digital Recording any more. (Well, very few who are actually recording rather than posting on Gearsluts and UA-cam) That said, Analog Tape is absolutely still used for it's artistic qualities. It is a non-linear process converting electons into magnetism and back. What you record to tape, is not what you get when you play back that recording. Now today, we have TONS of Tape-Emulation plugins that promise to provide all of the bonus qualities of actual tape to your digital recordings. And, last thought: the Multitrack Tape Machines were the first things to go from those "million dollar studios" of our dreams. Digital recording provided so many benefits over tape, it became extremely difficult to justify at a certain point. You may still enjoy riding a horse and buggy in Central Park, but as your main means of transportation, not so much.
@@4low395 "Distortion" is a perfectly measurable and quantifiable term, and digital recordings can easily have an order of magnitude lower distortion than the fanciest tape.
OK can you tell one medium (other than FM radio) that is more practical than a cassette , in a Car? Music that you can reach with one hand. Take it, push it in, and it starts playing and plays round and round. Do you need CD perfection there? Would you hear it? Do you need dolby ? (You need a dolby that can silence 1.6 liters of gasoline aerosol exploding 30 times a second) you can touch it, you can drop it, Works in dust, works in hot weather .. My car has a CD changer, never used it once .. USB, Bluetooth.. never .. I dont have time for them Even if I had steaming audio in my car, I wouldnt use it.. (Why should I sit down and browse menus, for music that is just meant for little entertainment, masking the engine noise and keeping me awake) Cassettes were good. (Push and drive technology)
I think you're missing a pretty important aspect of formats: tinkering! And that is where vinyl, in my opinion wins. Nearly everything in vinyl players that contribute to their sound quality, or lack thereof, is essentially down to resonances! A quiet hum from a motor, or a click from some surface noise, happens to hit some resonance of the player and gets amplified dozens, or hundreds of times. And most vinyl noise is broadband and will therefore hit a lot of resonances at different frequency. Or it just sounds unnatural because the actual music gets amplified by some resonance. And controlling resonance is anyway part science, part voodoo. You need no degree in electronics, or anything else, to give it ago. Place the player on a different surface and it will sound drastically different! Change the mat on the platter, or remove it, and you can hear the difference. Wonder if some protruding thing on your player (say, the tonearm lift) creates a resonance? Just file it off and see if it makes a difference. The possibilities are a endless, and a guy who never did well at school can be just as good as some physics professor. And for sure, resonance may play some part on the sound of a cassette or cd player, but nowhere near vinyl. And sure, you can substitute a better clock chip, d/a converter, output amplifier, or whatever, on a cd player, but you need a whole other level of competence to pull it off, compared to putting your vinyl player on different rubber feet.
The first thing you must do is go see an ear specialist, get your ears pumped of all the years of gunk and get some hearing aids if you think digital is better than analogue. By the way, digital is just the processing side, using binary digits, computer algorhyms, electronic clocking and jitter corrections and sampljng rates to process the signals which are then converted back to analogue for the human ear to hear the music.
Of course the real value of vinyl and cassette doesn't rely on the sound quality. It's very easy to say with today's perspective that those formats were worst on a technical level. It's not just the nostalgia or the experience (and yet the nostalgia is what makes those revivals possible). What really makes those formats important is that they shaped the musical culture of several generations. They brought music to us. They allowed an entire music industry to thrive around them, and music today would not be the same if it wasn't for those formats. And although we can now listen to music with much better quality, although we can listen to whatever music we want, the experience is now "worst" than it was before. We don't find so much time to just listen to music, we tend to do other things simultaneously. The joy of buying a new record is lost, the value of music has dropped, because now you can listen to whatever music you like just by tapping a button. The music that new artists are producing in many cases is more basic, less sophisticated, or just worst, because the music that they make is much more consumed than it is enjoyed. I really believe that we have lost something important. This era of the internet is great but also worst in so many levels
"The music that new artists are producing in many cases is more basic, less sophisticated, or just worst, because the music that they make is much more consumed than it is enjoyed." It's unfortunate that I read so many comments like this on music videos on UA-cam. So many older or invested music lovers fail to look beyond the Spotify playlists and top 40 radio play, to the tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of worldwide musicians that self-publish online, musicians that are talented, dedicated, and toil in obscurity because they don't help the bottom line of some corporation. Sorry, life goes on and evolves, beyond what any of us grows up with in our youth. Time waits for no one. If you want to respect that which came before, you can do that...but you can't force others to experience what you experienced, so they can fully understand and embrace it. Just think of the countless generations before yours that felt the same about some artistic endeavor that by your time was ignored. In this, different generations are more similar than they think.
@@rikk319 I'm sorry because maybe i failed to choose the right words. I don't think this is a generational rant. It's not me saying the past was always better. Society is changing rapidly, and we're losing important things in the way, and this trend is not exclusive to music. I know there are thousands of musicians producing incredible music, maybe more and better than ever, and i don't mean to diminish their importance, but the problem is that their music is not popular, therefore less relevant in the big scheme of today's musical culture. This is today's music industry and social media overlords feeding the people with cultural fast food. They democratize music to musicians and people by diminishing the value of music. I have the feeling that popular music in the past was generally more diverse, more sophisticated (musically). Music was a richer language than it is today.
@@SnarkyRC I found my system can be very revealing especially the limitations with streaming I.e being very bright in the treble and light in the bass depth even with a good dac when I use my turntable cd and cassette the treble is smoother and bass is more punchier
People who preach about audio and music are very arrogant and wrong. Audio sound, audio mediums and music are all subjective and as such is based on people's taste and preferences.
Oh no, that's not going to happen. I never used 8-track myself but I did use NAB carts (also known as Fidelipac) professionally which work in a similar way. They were extremely convenient but the sound quality was dreadful. DM
@@AudioMasterclass you'd be surprised how many 8-track collectors there are. I got into it a little bit out of curiosity after a techmoan video about them. Never heard of the format before but the awkwardness of the format (fading songs out and in during the switches, really??), the clever yet strange mechanics (a moving head) and the high maintenance properties (replacing the pads etc) appealed to me. I think I got 20-odd tapes and two players, which is enough for my purpose. But there are whole 8-track collector groups, there are some companies that transfer your CDs to 8-track cartridges including artwork and the like, and the enthusiasts constantly speak about how they long for a revival of the format. I agree with you though that the chances of that are slim to nonexistent. They claim the tapes sound warm but they mean everything above 9k is missing 😆. And then the wow and flutter 😖. However, it does force you into listening to a whole album, which can be a good thing. If all of the album is good at least.
I was a hi-fi salesman between 1976 and 1983. At the time, we "audiophiles" haled the invention of the CD because of the limited dynamic range of Vinyl and the lousy noise floor that drove us crazy (which is why I owned a Phase Linear 1000). Not to mention the pops and clicks. In fact, there were record players in the late 70's that touted the ability to hear and remove the sound of pops and clicks. Direct to disk recordings and digitally mastered recordings were also becoming a thing. And i still have 16 DBX LP's and a DBX decoder. But they were all seen as stop-gap. When the CD came out, we were done with vinyl.
But here was the problem. We ended up having a similar experience with CD's to what I had with the 96 khz MP3 recordings. That is, I rated format quality by the lack of noise/hiss and frequency response. And the latter always meant high frequencies. So I first thought they sounded amazing. But after a while I noticed a sort of "swirling" sound in ride cymbals, etc. I honestly thought my player was defective. But I learned I was hearing a completely new type of bad quality artifact - the lossy recording. And they also cut out the deep bass. This mattered to me with my love of the band, Genesis and my "audiophile" system that could shake the house. And early CD's really did have a harshness and, of course, though they could sound a lot better than vinyl, they got into the compression of the loudness wars, which negated that advantage.
Cassette was always a secondary format for me. I had good cassette decks (a couple of Nak's and an amazing Denon deck). I would record my records immediately to cassette and then just play the cassettes. Back then, that was "good enough". We weren't looking for the "vinyl experience" really. We just wanted the music. BTW, I only bought one pre-recorded cassette and it ended up on the side of the highway somewhere.
But the above is all preface.
I resurrected my TT about 15 years ago and started buying records in bulk at estate sales, mainly because they were dirt cheap. After dumping the garbage at goodwill, I still ended up with about 3,500 LP's. And a funny thing happened. I started VERY much appreciating the LP experience. And what just recently really added to it was finally finishing my music listening/rehearsal/practice room. I can critically listen to my music sources again for the first time in over a decade, with high quality equipment and well tuned room acoustics. What I found was the streamed stuff is found seriously lacking similarly to how 96k MP3's were found lacking. Frankly, listening to the streamed stuff compared to vinyl is a bit like, back in the day, comparing FM radio to vinyl. It lacks any sort of "real" dynamics and just sounds flat. My records, though some have surface noise and sometimes it is significant, still tend to sound noticeably better than the streamed stuff. And this includes many of my jazz titles from the 50's. On a side note, engineers had it down solid back then, and some of the "tube equipment" they used is the stuff people drool over today. When I play some of that jazz trio and quartet stuff it LITERALLY sounds like the group is in my listening room. And my entire system is only "upper middle quality" stuff from the 70's (except the subwoofer). i.e. no McIntosh, etc.
I think us old timers are valuing the tactile experience of playing vinyl in a way we never even thought about back in the day. It really is a nostalgia thing. But I think it is along those same lines with the young people today as well. Not the nostalgia part, but the tactile part. As one guy said, Nobody ever said, "hey, you wanna see my mp3 collection?" Vinyl is a bit of a cultural experience, as you pointed out in your video.
And that really matters. It's more than just about the music now. It's the whole experience of OWNING SOMETHING TANGIBLE and watching it spin, etc. And listening to shockingly good sound come from it. I used to think the vinyl resurgence would die with us boomers. But I'm beginning to realize that it might not. It's as if western civilization has OD'd on technology and is looking to pull it back in ways that are not "too" inconvenient - riding a horse to work will probably not come back. And I think CD's will do the same thing to a point. Cassettes are like 8-tracks or shellac 78's (or wax cylinders). They just don't sound good enough for any kind of serious resurgence.
Then again, I purchased a 78 needle to play my limited supply of 78's and was shocked at what I heard...🤣
Thank you for your detailed post
I believe the vinyl resurgence will continue on as well. I’m 39, so my introduction to music collection was at the tail end of cassette into CD’s, yet in the last few years I’ve accumulated almost 300 vinyl and I keep going. Everything mentioned in the video is why I collect and listen to it and i haven’t bought a CD in a decade. I’m seeing teens and young adults getting into vinyl too, and i think it’s an instinctual rebuke to the transient, disposable nature of streaming services. People hunger for community and identity which music provides when it’s given the reverence that only comes from physical media
@bennetttheissen700 I had that experience a few years ago - I bought an old Denon cassette deck from eBay for £50, cleaned it up, and the first thing I played in it was Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds. Honestly I couldn't really tell the difference from a CD. It shocked me! Those Denon decks were damn good.
I think what limits vinyl comeback in the long run, is that they require quite a lot of space. Cassettes are compact. And what is very much driving these comebacks is the need for somethings physical and tactile which cassettes provide. And, as you said, digital faults sound different than analogue, and I think lot of people are actually looking for the sound of those faults. They try to add them to digital music because it is some people seem to like, even if they aren't conscious of it. I think perfection makes us nervous and we start looking for faults, while rougher reproduction (of image or sound) lets us accept it as what it is.
As a thought, I wonder when the CD 'Full Dynamic Range' Remasters will appear!
With vinyl and cassetes all the noises give them the 'organic' feel we are sometimes like from nature. Like a walk in the forest, the wind, the leaves, the sun... is not a high quality picture but sensing it fills you.
It's supposed to be the music that gives the organic feel. It does so in any medium if it is properly played and recorded.
I agree about mix tape culture, and the impact that makes. I was recently backing up all my old 4 track recordings before selling my porta studio, and I came across a tape that I thought I had lost. It was a mix tape my mother made for me when I was very young. She died about 5 years ago and I will be honest, I popped it in and immediately realized it was the tape she made me and it was a very emotional moment. I stopped my backup process and listened to it front to back. I get my audio skills from her and the tape sounded surprisingly good. I still have all her old gear and it doesn't surprise me she had top of the line decks, a 32 band eq, and her decks had some supremely amazing noise reduction and she was using very good tapes so despite being over 25 years old, it still sounded better than the radio, but maybe just shy of cd quality.
Thanks for the music mom.
Lovely story thank you. DM
Great comment
With physical media you get a sense of owning it. With streaming you're only limited to 'accesss' your music but you don't own it in any way.
And streamed movies and music disappear quickly as demands disappear
@@artyfhartie2269Yeah, there's whole albums missing from Spotify even though I own them on CD
I had so many problems with both cassettes and vinyl records I literally sighed with relief when CDs became available. The artwork on the sleeve might be small but it’s better than streaming with no artwork at all. 🧐🙂🙃😎
It's always weird for me to hear people saying that CD is dead, when from my point of view it's really the only older audio format that is NOT dead. I've continued to buy music on CD ever since streaming began to take over. Maybe it's related to the genres I like, but usually I can find music I want on CD without any trouble. I rip it to my hard disc and then sync to my phone, and access it from other devices in the house, so I don't really play the CDs physically. I just don't get on with streaming; there's something about it that feels too ephemeral, like I'm not really present with the music. I'm the same with movies, by the way. I gave up TV in 2004 (largely from disgust over the advertising levels), and since then I've never used Netflix or Prime and I mostly either watch UA-cam or ripped DVDs. I'm happy this way! I don't like being spoon-fed content: I'd rather have a limited choice that's MY choice.
The worst part of streaming for me is... well everything that comes with it's nature really. If I'm to pay for a rental, may as well just pay for the ownership, they sure as heck ain't blocking my CD player from running my CDs if I don't have Internet, nor stop paying for it. Doesn't mean I can't rip it to run the files on my phone as well like you said. I just don't like the "you'll not own anything" model we're moving to, with even goddang subscriptions for shoes and heated seats on cars. It's going stupid, and if just sticking to that 80s format that still kicks the ass of most modern options is a form of rebellion, then I'm all in.
Another benefit of cassettes -- you are more likely to listen to an entire album "as the artist intended", as it was a pain in the butt to skip tracks! Like I said on your cassette video, part of the joy of cassettes are their handling durability, very tactile nature, size, the rattling sound they make when moving them in and out of their case, finding good pre-recorded ones (Cinram!), mix tapes, and the act of creating them. But I'll never go back to a Walkman and a bag of tapes!
*Almost* as the artist intended. If my memory works correctly after all these years, it was common practice to reorder the tracks if necessary so that Side 1 had a longer duration than Side 2, so that when Side 1 finished, Side 2 was ready to play immediately. DM
@@AudioMasterclass Yes, that is true. I guess splitting the tracks was an issue in both vinyl and cassette.
And, of course, 8-track cartridges :)
I remember watching an interview with the frontman of my favorite band and he mentioned that the cassette release of one of their albums had all the tracks reordered so that it actually started with the album closer and he was so displeased with it.
@RTLetsplays that really sucks. A slightly longer tape would have solved that, but ugh.
Many people prefer the sound of vinyl. We all know digital is superior but at the end of the day it is what your ears prefer. The physical product aspect is massive. Those of us of a certain age just can't read the bloody writing on CDs anymore but the excitement of browsing through piles of second-hand records is heaven.... :)..Thanks for the videos. Enjoyed them.
Thanks for your very precise explanations about the subject, finally someone that understand the plus ands minus of analog medium.
Always been a fan of compact casette, mainly portable stereo casette player/recorder.
Around 1978 I bought a Superpscope CD-330 tape deck, not perfect but highly versatile.
I recorded ny precious ECM albums and later CD, compiled terrific playlist of new wave music, record set from the jazz band I was working for, play music before the set, play music after the set, in my car, in my country house...
Sadly the CD-330 fade away...But I keep all my Compact Casette.
1 month ago I found a beautiful JVC CD-1636 Casette Deck Player...in totally perfect order with his black fetish lather case! for 60$ box canadian...
I'm now recording playlist from my music server, got the exact timing, volume (using replay gain) and even cross-mixed...
The look of the VU meter moving in darkness is totally georgeous until the tape stock and bang a awful sound of mecahnic clunk from the auto-stop mechanisim :-)
These videos have been great and fun to watch. Thanks again David!!
You're welcome. DM
I discovered your videos very recently and I have been enjoying them as I am as vintage as you are and I still love all my media from 78 rpm to nowadays cloudy invisible digital streaming formats ! 😊
I gotta mention one thing about tapes that's often overlooked by fans of more mainstream music. Tapes never fully went away in underground scenes of music. I have Punk and Metal Albums that were put out by various artists in splits and demos that are less than 5 years old.
Vinyl too, especially 7 inch vinyl
I have a few hundred cassettes and made the mistake of storing one box of about 50 in my barn (hot/cold/humid Kentucky). The tape spools inside are furry with mold and have the same problem open reel has with shedding tapes. The heads gum up after only a few seconds. Meanwhile, my friend had a hundred or so records completely soaked when the basement flooded and, 15 years later, I pulled apart the "brick" of records and with very little effort, brought them to their original sound. They had "merged" with their jackets and the whole group was lightly "glued" together.
Of course, the labels were unreadable so I had to use Shazam to find out which record each one was. I bought some 4" white round labels and relabeled the ones that were worth it.
Audibly they are as good as the day the basement flooded. Some are dead quiet and sound brand new. And they are the flattest group of records I've ever played. 😆
Great idea! Recognition of what is being played streaming onto your system. This allows the experience of the LP cover and playback without issues.
Sony (and also AIWA) walkmans were good. Really good .. I think this needs mentioning.
When something is well made, we should honor it every time.
I can't wait for the rotary phone revival.
No worries about that - www.amazon.com/Telephones-Sangyn-Classic-Landline-Telephone/dp/B01I4SOFGO/?th=1
Absolutely love your presentation style David! This video put another big smile on my face and gave me a few genuine laughs. Good stuff!
There is one advantage that cassettes have over every other physical medium that I can think of (I include 8-track here as it is a cassetted-tape medium) and that is their ability to stop listening to something in one place on one machine, take the thing out of the machine, and then take it somewhere else, put it into a completely different machine in a different location, and carry on listening FROM THE PLACE YOU LEFT OFF.
I have listened to audio books since they were on cassette tapes and it was great to be able to stop listening in the house, take the tape to the car and put it in the car stereo and carry on where you left off as you drive away.
This also applies to the visually impaired community with their talking newspapers and talking magazines.
They now have "gone digital" and commonly use USB flash drives as the distribution medium, and this "carry of from where you left off" only works if the players used are from the same manufacturer/type, and have software to save the current listening position on each stick before removal. Its a software kluge. It often doesn't work, or is not implimented.
In other digital devices, they make a big thing of being able to watch or listen across several devices (Netflix et al;) and thats fine as long as the streaming connection is there. May or may not be in a car, depending where you are.
Cassettes and their other tape-cassette cousins can manage it every time, in any player, anywhere. Not bad, and very convenient!
Here's a revival you may not have thought of: The stacked stereo component revival. A couple years ago, I got back into vinyl, and hooked a player up to my modern Dolby Atmos system. It sounds warm and delightful through 7 or more speakers. Just recently, however, I got to thinking about the old Kenwood Hifi system I had as a teenager. All of a sudden, I had the desire to relive my youth and went out and sought a rack system. I got myself matching Technics components, complete with cassette, tuner, equalizer, and an all mighty 110 CD changer. Not only does it look amazing with all the pieces lit up and flashing to the beat, but I can now play all the retro formats. I am slowly starting to rebuild my CD collection, and mark my words, the CD revival is nigh.
Vinyl revival 2022: 41M vinyl records sold vs 30M CDs. CDs are pretty much dead, as you said. I have been collecting vinyl since the mid 70s. It is superior.
I got bored with streaming. Gone from vinyl to cassette. I record digital to tape. I think it has more punch.
Since I stumbled upon your channel when bored and you asked , I'm going to throw in a thought. I watched your revival videos as I came upon them and honestly at first I wondered if you were a little.. well.. crazy? But then I kept watching and you bring up a bunch of objective reasoning to your case so, no, I don't think you are crazy anymore.
That being said; I just really seem to like obscure media and the experience of finding something in a physical format, the ceremony of playing said media, is just as much a part of it as actually listening to the music. So I don't really care if there are pops or distortions.
Enjoyed these videos! I listen to all the formats. One thing I don't think I heard you mention is different mastering. Sometimes mastering on one format can absolutely horrible on one format and sublime on another.
This is a good point, mastering is a huge topic but my quick comment is that CD will accept any extreme of mastering but vinyl will not. 'Californication' by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers is a good comparison in vinyl and CD formats. The vinyl version is much less heavily mastered and in my opinion sounds better for it. DM
It would be nice if they could release a two CD box-set, with the vinyl master recorded to CD as a bonus disc. Like the Star Wars box-set with the special edition that had the theatrical release as bonus discs.
That was true for some 80s metal & rock albums, the cassette often sounded better than the vinyl. Sometimes like: Testament - The Legacy, and The Mission - First Chapter, the cassette sounded better than the CD.
from what I've seen, people don't buy physical copies. they only buy digital copies of releases.
Song selection and queuing is the main problem with cassettes. The ones I am recording now sound great on my deck and system. But you just have to listen in it’s entirety. No skipping around! 👍👍👍
My old Aiwa cassette deck was happy to skip around look for silences between track - it may even have had a remote.
Wow! Interesting, full of kniwledge, experience. It is pleasure and fun to watch your episodes (although I'm more nostalgic to dead formats than you are 😊)
Thank you!
I have so many, Vinyl, Cassettes, CDs, Lossless files, and Hi-Res Files..... I will always enjoy the sound quality, of my CDs, and files way more than the others.
Back in the 80s, there was a radio program called "The Seventh Day", not sure what station here in California...but my father would buy metal tapes and record the full, uninterrupted albums they'd present. He was a huge Beatles/Beach Boys fan, but he was also a music lover in general, and when I'd bring cassettes of Rush, Van Halen, The Police, Michael Jackson, ZZTop, and more to school to listen to on my Walkman, my friends would ask how I could afford to buy them all, and I'd tell them that they were my dad's, and he recorded them off of the radio. Most of their fathers didn't like modern music. I was lucky my father had an open mind with regard to music genres.
vinyl sounds perfectly fine if you have a good stylus and set it up properly. Most people do not. I've done many side by side comparisons with cd and I can't argue with what sounds better to my ears. For a lot of music I find the mastering of vinyl to be preferable.
Spotify/UA-cam Premium here, but vinyl, cassette and CD is so much fun, simple as that, and the
soundperformance can be formidable. Fun
I enjoy all media as I do not compare them. When I try, I realize that it is unfair. I enjoy them all in their own contexts. If I need a Cassette, it is great for background music. CD's are great for places that do not have WiFi. LP's are nostalgic as are my Reel to Reel collection. Love your videos!!!! Keep em coming.
I can agree with this in a slightly different way. If I want music as background, I prefer my portable DAB radio to my gigantic B&W loudspeakers. DM
@@AudioMasterclass You are awesome, we are learning from your bright and easy to follow manner, and years of experience, all the best. Cheers!
Have loved your revival videos. Really funny “get off of my lawn!” stuff haha. We just finished another full length album recorded live as a band to 2” tape. We simply like the way rock and roll music sounded recorded this way in the past and tend to dislike rock and roll tracked to Protools to a click track and then edited to hell and back. Why? All of the soul gets completely sucked out of it. “Perfect” sound/time/performances are boring and who wants boring rock and roll records? I like hearing John Bonham’s kick pedal squeaking and his time fluctuations, the Wrecking Crew’s energy, or The Beatles anything. Nothing wrong with a little (or a lot depending on the style) harmonic distortion. I like hearing human performances, not humans made into perfect robots in Protools when it comes to rock. EDM? Sure, use Protools, Ableton Live, or whatnot. But I’ll take my rock dirty, fuzzy, and real every time.
Thank you for your comment, with which I largely agree. If there were such a thing as a tape recorder that didn't have the 20-odd problems I covered in this series I would be happy to own it and use it. DM
The best thing about cassettes is that I was able to erase "Stairway to Heaven" and "My Ding-a-Ling" from their respective albums, before listening to them.
The most boring song ever and the most irritating song ever all in one comment.😅
I love streaming for exploring new music but I do want to own a physical copy of stuff that I really like.
Cassette was great for making tapes for the car but I wouldn’t have any use for it now.
Personally I stream, still buy CDs and intend to buy a turntable just to play some of my existing vinyl, some of which is about 40 years old.
The most important thing for me is access to music, preferably well reproduced.
I agree. If there’s something you really, really like then having it on a physical medium, or buying a download, protects you from any future untoward remastering.
I use them all been converting music to digital before there was MP3s, as a matter of fact I beta tested apps on that dat back in the 90's, however correct on all points, this is memories, i get joy from all formats, as horrible as my tapes sound, but what I found fun is Recordings off the Radio, old ads and cool radio anthems that no longer exist, this is what it is about for most people I know...
another thoughtful and interesting video
I've never understood the revival of tape and vinyl - back in 1987 I was able to afford my first CD player and then ditched all my tapes. My music collection exploded after that, and where I can, still buy CDs today. Packaging has improved a lot in the last few years, perhaps as CDs become collectable items as well as music media with booklets, fold out artwork and even mini posters. I've never seen CDs go bad in all that time and sometimes wonder if it's more of an urban myth, or just wrongly attributed to poor handling.
The reason I got back into vinyl is because I can get a better sound from it
Jazz _kissa_ are niche Japanese cafes stacked with whisky, *vinyl* and high-end audio systems. Well, the atmosphere of these places wouldn't be the same if it was digital!
The Guardian has a short photo gallery, the title; One kissa is all it takes: Tokyo’s finest jazz haunts - in pictures
"In the kissa, you can sip coffee or alcohol while listening to vast collections of vinyl records. They are an integral part of jazz culture in Japan."
Edit; CD's are also played.
Yep I can see the trend in your videos LOL. Well done very entertaining :-)
I sell cds.
The thing about cds and records being an expression of your character is correct.
A little deeper though.
It is often an expression of the personality you wish to project.
I often get really "cool" indie recordings from people. The thing is, they are all in mint condition. Definitely not play more than a couple of times if at all. You can tell from the wear and how tight the holder is.
But they have Madonna and ABBA cds that have been thrashed to death.
I think about these things while I am cleaning up their collection.
Great video, I've enjoyed the others in this series too.
Thank you. I appreciate your comment. DM
I have tracks by the band "Foreigner" on CD and vinyl. Maybe it is the manner in which each was recorded. I prefer the vinyl copy for the richness of sound. The CD seems sterile and compressed. Then again, one of my first CDs was "Chicago XI." I think that CD still sounds amazing.
Just because music is published on CD does not mean it will always sound great.
My newest LP features John Coltrane. "Kinda Blue," is remastered from the original studio tapes and is stamped on 180 gram vinyl. Yes, I have to keep it clean, but it sounds amazing!
I just personally prefer the sound of vinyl. I don't mind a few scratches and surface noise. I think part of it is because I understand how it works on a very basic level whereas with digital formats it's all 1s and 0s. I've never really gotten into streaming music as it doesn't interest me in the same way as going into a record store and looking through crates trying to find what I'm after. I think "the hunt" is a big part of the appeal. You have to search for it so you feel like you've earned it in some weird way. But to me, and perhaps it's all in the mind, vinyl just sounds better. Maybe not from any technical perspective, but to me, vinyl sounds more "real" if that makes sense. Possibly because the stylus is vibrating in the grooves to create the sound...or it could just be all mental. I think another factor in my love of vinyl came from early negative experiences with CDs. My uncle Les was the first in our family with a CD player and we all went around to check it out, but the 1 CD he had somehow wouldn't play anymore. Apparently it'd been working fine the day before but suddenly appeared to have been wiped. It turned out that he'd managed tp scratch it somehow and now the laser couldn't access the information. If a record gets scratched, you'll hear a click, with CDs it might mean nothing or it'll completely ruin the disc. With streaming, that can't happen but they can take away whatever song it was you liked whenever they feel like it. I like having my own archive.
Vinyl has something in common with a steam engine or locomotive - you can look at it and see how it works. There's a certain value in that and it's not entirely nostalgia. M
They could have kept the bigger size of vinyl sleeves for enjoying the artwork, it was a great part of getting into the music of the band/artist, but still make CD's since vinyl is a format belonging to the past. But it doesnt matter today, the concept of making an album is gone too! Its all about releasing hit songs on Spotify, etc. Wich is very sad imo! The music industry is so different from when I grew up and enjoyed rock music all between 70s-90s I guess. I never really liked cassettes, it was worse than vinyl in quality imo. I sold my vinyls in the 90's I think and bought everything on CD again, same albums. I still buy CD's today though.
That's exactly what consumer society wants. You buy and then throw it all away and buy it again.
@@janisliekne2688 Unfortunately yes!
🤔You always have such well thought out videos. I have to say that, as someone with good equipment and a vinyl collection from yesteryear, I recently purchased a handful of some of the recent “quality 180 gram” vinyl records. What I found was that, although the S/N ratio seemed improved, and sonically were acceptable, the records themselves STILL suffer from problems of not being perfectly flat, and not even always a perfectly round groove for the stylus to track. This will probably exacerbate distortions down the road with repeated listening. As much as I like artwork, information, and marveling at the record player in action, I have to agree that there are enough negatives to turn one off. I don’t feel that the industry really learned what is important to the audiophile experience in that medium.👨🏻
PS) Don’t get me started on CD “issues,” let alone cassettes!🤬
Thank you for your comment. I missed out 'swinger' records in this video but I'll be sure to include it in my eventual update. DM
For a professional, classical musician like me 'swingers' were the worst. Piano recordings particularly and the inevitability that it would get even worse towards the centre.@@AudioMasterclass
I grew up with both vinhl AND cassette, as I was born in 1986
I wonder when CDs with the label, 'Full Dynamic Range Remaster' will appear - coming to an HMV near you soon!
Can't come soon enough.
iPod revival, I could get behind that. Stuff your vinyl, CD and streaming, music just sounds more alive at 128kbps through cheap headphones. ❤
I still use my IPOD classic. Its still such a good machine, accepts file all the way up to 320 kbps which is perfectly adequate for listening to stuff while commuting or taking walks
I wet clean my vinyl records and don't have any clicks or pops. Sure there are a few scratched records in my collection and that scratch/skip is annoying but most of my vinyl records sound wonderful. I have 80 year old records that still sound great and I can enjoy the music but several 30 year old CDs that won't play at all. A small vinyl skip is better than loosing the entire CD because it can't read the table of contents. The main reason I love my vinyl collection is access to old recordings that will unlikely make it into digital streaming catalogs. I also love the whole experience of going to a record shop and flipping through the collections looking for something special. Vinyl records are surprisingly robust if well cared for. I won't get rid on my CDs but I really find it hard to buy new CDs especially when they are on my streaming service. But I have no problem buying an old Blue Note recording of Freddie Hubbard on vinyl.
Get an external DAC for your computer and add equalisation.
I rotate my artist artwork on my wallpaper on my computer!
Looks fucking awesome on my MacBook especially! Apple animated it nice! Most people have pics of their family but not me!😁
Rotates while I’m jamming on Spotify out my Xbox with a beautiful visualizer! Wish I could show you all a picture of it!
Levels 1 & 2 - In my high school / college years, I was a Voracious fan of music - all sorts - I ALWAYS wanted to hear new/different stuff, rather than the same music over & over, as most everyone else I knew did (that drove me NUTS & made me HATE a lot of Classic Rock to this day).
In Jr High/early High School, had a crappy Sears mono cassette recorder - it was my Dad's, but he never used it - I used to tape albums I didn't have off the radio or from friends, but it was terrible quality, but I GOT TO HEAR MUSIC I DIDN'T KNOW!!!!!! - I also recorded all sorts of live broadcasts, the infamous King Biscuit Flour Hour, The Midnight Special, PBS (USA public TV) broadcasts like the 1975 Bob Dylan Rolling Thunder special. Keep in mind, lp's were EXPENSIVE, $2.99 at 1st, Jr High era (1973), then as the OPEC boycott & petroleum shortages got worse, rose quickly - $3.99, $4.99, $5.99, $6.99, $7.99 by the time I went off to college (1978).
So, freshman year of college, I bought myself a Sanyo "pro" stereo cassette deck, $160, ostensibly to record the Grateful Dead's 11/24/78 & 12/31/78 fm broadcasts, but I was now ARMED with a cassette deck that could actually make me as good a copy of a record from friend's collections as if I'd bought the actual album for $7.99, except I was using a good quality (Maxell UDXL-II) 90 min cassette blank bought for less than $4.
Often times, if the friend was wealthy, or had savvy parents who owned a really good stereo, the recording would actually sound better than if I had the record on my own low fi system, as I'd plugged my good cassette deck into their Hi Fi system to make the recording, their turntable, stylus, & cartridge quality was good enough to over compensate for any "loss" imposed by the cassette medium.
So sure, I was "Ripping Off" the record companies & the artists, but I was a Voracious music fan, & would still buy albums if I couldn't get them from any friends. It just broadened my horizons. In fact, I considered myself a 'better" consumer, as I'd be buying lp's of obscure bands, instead of the latest Eagles / Fleetwood Mac lp as everyone else was (I could tape these).
Another thought: I would Owe all the Hullaballoo / Bro Ha Ha / Hoopla over such Hallowed Events as the 50th Anniversary of the release of Dark Side of the Moon to the existence of Vinyl (OK technically 33-1/3, yes, there are Hipster Idiots who now Venerate the 45, but I'm gonna Ignore them), cassette, & CD - otherwise, we wouldn't give a rat's ass about the 50th anniversary of Money (& maybe Time - did that chart?) - we'd be celebrating some crappy 1 hit wonder - well OK "Troglodyte" was a cool song, by a real band, & the live version is not much different than the studio version - Jimmy Castor is even more Nuts watching him perform that song live (search on You Tube, it's Great! ("I gotta thank you all - 'cause we really needed it!!!"). We used to freak out our Jr High teachers running up & down the halls in our pre-pubescent un-cracked voices yelling "I'LL SOCK IT TO YA, DADDAY!!!!" in between classes. Fun times!!!!!
ua-cam.com/video/JNS42Na2mpc/v-deo.html
I remember commenting somewhere - "That little Jam at the end should go into a 20 min Tweezer Reprise"
I've never understood why digitally released albums don't come with a digital version of the booklet with artworks, photos, credits, lyrics etc. Even artists I speak with can't answer why. I seems so simple to me, just add a PDF copy of the booklet file with the music files. Any insights into this?
One thing that may not change is the factor that the production of the original song has a lot to do with audio play back quality despite the source whether it be cassettes, cds, or vinyl but usually more so in former days. However on the whole there will always be a bias between the 2 groups- those who prefer digital recordings oppose to those those that favor stereo recordings esp old school production on Capitol, MGM, and RCA.😊
I love vinyl I have record's which I purchased in he 70s which I still play without the cracking and starches you talk about, If you play vinyl you nead a good turntable if you buy a £300 one a expect good results you will be disappointed it is true that records nead to be stored and looked after correctly unlike a CD ( which I also play) but if all right vinyl is a great experience
They need to bring out a real 32-bit 192000khz format of CD though for the format to survive and be everyones preferred format.
Brilliant 🔥
Casettes. I totally see why i don't have nostalgia for them. They always sounded like utter crap to me. The vinyl, the minor mechanical miracle that sound of any kind comes off of it is part of my enjoyment of it.
great video ,thanks :)
You're welcome. DM
I think we miss the point that everything we hear is our interpretation. We really have no idea what someone else is hearing. I have a good turntable a good dac and cd player. In playing the same track on CD, streaming or record (I hate the word vinyl) most people say leave the record on. When asked they say the record just sounds more real. Music is an art and the connection we feel to it is not something that can be quantified just by measurements our brains alter and change what we perceive on an individual basis.
"The Beatles" "Revolver" sleeve is without question a classic work of art. As is the music inside. The problem is that sleeves have vinyl LPs in them.
Agreed. DM
"Anyone who says they're an expert probably doesn't have a clue." Quote of the year, if not the millennium (it's fairly early days yet).
well, here's to point out that most buyers of new "vinyl" today do not even own a turntable. They listen to the sound on streaming services but still have the artwork that they can touch physically. And if streaming services end up with the same habit as game publishers, there is still a physical copy that buyers OWN and no beff jezos, no gill bates and no bitten fruit company could stop them from listening (btw this is why i doubt that ippods will ever revive)
One of the original benefits of vinyl was the theoretical frequency extension out to 30k or more...when the recordings were made on analogue tape (where CDs cut off sharply at 22.5k). But what is the benefit of vinyl releases in a digital recording age? I presume just a tactile experience...which I'd had a gut-full of by 1988 😁
Metal tapes were great for recording albums! But the commercial prerecorded tapes. E.G. Let's Dance -- David Bowie. The album and 12" singles sounded great for the time. Any of the three remasterings...excellent. The prerecorded music tapes. Blech!
I'll keep my Vinyl and CDs. I like listening to music on the format of the time it was released. 90% of my collection are 1st pressings. All this "Remastered from the Original Tapes, blah, blah" is 85% of the time, just a marketing cash grab. Flogging a dead horse, if you will ).
Streaming isn't all that, especially since the Loudness War kicked in, post 1994. One reason to keep buying vinyl, they can't use dynamic range (Brickwall) Compression as much or the stylus will exit the groove wall. On top of that, a well known hi-res download site was caught out when some one threw a 24/96 download into a DAW and looked at the spectrals. Surprise, surprise, it was 24/96, upsampled from 44kHz. Hard brickwall cutoff / lowpass at 22kHz can't lie, another good reason to keep your Vinyl and CD.
SACD was similar, a lot of content was just CD quality upsampled wav's then coverterted to DSD. When I rip SACD, from my collection, I always either encode to flac at 24bit / 88kHz (If Digital Source) or do my own 30kHz cutoff (If Analog Sourced), just to get rid of the DSD noise that resides in the upper frequencies, when you convert back to PCM / Flac.
I do tend to enjoy a lot of recent reissues on Bluray though. DTS-HD MA is lossless and some of the material being released at 24/192 is just superb listening.
Good call :-)
With how cheap digital storage has become (there are 32BG SD cards sold directly by Amazon for $7 and 64GB cards from Best Buy for $11.), I would love to see a new chip-based physical audio format. It needs to play without an internet connection or DRM, needs to be at least as durable as an SD card (preferable more so), likely without moving parts for playback. It would ideally be small enough to be space efficient compared to CDs or Cassettes, but needs to be large enough to still feel like a "tea ceremony" like physical formats of the past, maybe about the size of a GameBoy Advance cartridge. It needs to cost the same or less than CDs, but have 24 bit .flac or .wav files that can be easily copy/pasted to any computer with a simple USB cable, no DRM. All it really needs to do to succeed is to market itself as a better way to support artists than streaming while actually owning your library. People want ownership again.
Talk to Philips and Sony. They'd love something like this to succeed.
My friend, what about reel to reel ?
ua-cam.com/video/obymcNXa4T8/v-deo.html
Laserdisc is the longest-lived and most faithful way to archive music, film, data. Ironically it’s the least accessible.
Laserdisc just for music sounds swell.
It may not have reached you yet, but both the CD and ipod revival were definitely underway two years ago
Oddly enough, sales figures have reached me www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/ CD not reviving yet it seems. As for the iPod, there's one inside my phone.
@@AudioMasterclass I mean in the niche sense of people talking about the pros etc online. Maybe not a total renaissance, but there have been groups for CD collectors on Reddit and UA-camrs modding and upgrading iPod classics. Perhaps it's less of a 'revival' and more of a 'there's a niche for everything now'.
Meh, let's revive Mini Disc optical format....
And call it there.😉
Honestly, I personally don't want to deal with any form of tape anymore. (haha, you too ADAT tape 😐)
The first pass was enough tape fiddling for me.
Vinyl has its ups and downs, and isn't an ideal choice by any stretch.....but no tangling, rewinding or roller maintenance ...
Mini Disc was a great, bombproof format that didn't tend to degrade much with the passage of time. I miss it frequently.
Oh yes, consider what happened in I think maybe 2008 (?), when we lost a lot of music that now only exists in people’s private spaces.😉
I'm guessing you're referring to the Universal Studios fire in 2008. Sad. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire DM
@@AudioMasterclass Yes David, thanks, the “name” slipped my mind!😉
CDs do degrade over time. Not with number of plays, necessarily, but disc rot will mean that virtually all the music you have stored on cds will be lost after only two or three decades. For cds from the 80s and 90s, it’s already very dicey whether any of them are still going to be good when you get them at say a thrift store or a garage sale, which the same can’t really be said for vinyl or even cassette.
So what happened to all those not-worth-fixing ipods? I still have my Sandisk players from the same era. If the battery goes bad, I pay 50 cents and put in a new one.
I am all for vinyl and cassette revival, not CDs. CDs should be confined to the scrap heap where they belong.
If its all about sound then you need both cd and a turntable its a mixed bag out there
my record collection is nailed to a wall...
when the FERRO tapes would be mixed with cobalt then they might sound decent ..... but otherwise no use ...
You have not the faintest suspicion how close a good turntable comes to live music. But to be honest one has to spend 5.000-10.000 dollar.
$10,000 would take me to 300 of my favourite concert series including travel. Turntable, no thanks.
The ipod revival is well under way. Ditto Zune.
some say that tape is actually best for tracking...would love to have your thoughts on that, can it be true?
its objectively worse quality than high end digital recordings and its a lot more work to use it too
@@drkastenbrot to my experience i do find that digital recordings - and maybe it' by mistake or bad equipment, don't rly know - they often have some strange mid-high frequency distortion thing...rly awful and impossible to get rid off, keeps me wondering if tape is actually free of it and more clean
What "Tape"?
He's talking about Cassette Tapes, as final retail duplications for consumers.
Recording to tape is an entirely different thing. (Though consumers could actually record to Cassette tapes, but not professionally. And there were Portastudios....)
Tracking to Multitrack Tape, such as 2-inch 24-track that became "standard" for a good period, varied significantly depending upon what Machine, what Brand/Model of Tape, what Speed, Bias, Noise Reduction, Levels and a dozen other factors.
However, the industry pretty much mastered the art of squeezing the most quality out of that tape.
When Digital recording first arrived, I don't think anyone was impressed with the results Sonically at first. But over time, a tipping point was reached, and today there are very few who claim that Tape is inherently superior to Digital Recording any more. (Well, very few who are actually recording rather than posting on Gearsluts and UA-cam)
That said, Analog Tape is absolutely still used for it's artistic qualities. It is a non-linear process converting electons into magnetism and back. What you record to tape, is not what you get when you play back that recording.
Now today, we have TONS of Tape-Emulation plugins that promise to provide all of the bonus qualities of actual tape to your digital recordings.
And, last thought: the Multitrack Tape Machines were the first things to go from those "million dollar studios" of our dreams. Digital recording provided so many benefits over tape, it became extremely difficult to justify at a certain point.
You may still enjoy riding a horse and buggy in Central Park, but as your main means of transportation, not so much.
@@4low395 "Distortion" is a perfectly measurable and quantifiable term, and digital recordings can easily have an order of magnitude lower distortion than the fanciest tape.
OK can you tell one medium (other than FM radio) that is more practical than a cassette , in a Car?
Music that you can reach with one hand.
Take it, push it in, and it starts playing and plays round and round.
Do you need CD perfection there? Would you hear it?
Do you need dolby ? (You need a dolby that can silence 1.6 liters of gasoline aerosol exploding 30 times a second)
you can touch it,
you can drop it,
Works in dust, works in hot weather ..
My car has a CD changer, never used it once .. USB, Bluetooth.. never ..
I dont have time for them
Even if I had steaming audio in my car, I wouldnt use it..
(Why should I sit down and browse menus, for music that is just meant for little entertainment, masking the engine noise and keeping me awake)
Cassettes were good.
(Push and drive technology)
Will cassettes and CDs survive the solar flare/ EMP event?
Possibly, but will they survive the asteroid?
@@AudioMasterclass If my music collection is damaged by an asteroid impact then I may be somewhat damaged too.
I think you're missing a pretty important aspect of formats: tinkering! And that is where vinyl, in my opinion wins. Nearly everything in vinyl players that contribute to their sound quality, or lack thereof, is essentially down to resonances! A quiet hum from a motor, or a click from some surface noise, happens to hit some resonance of the player and gets amplified dozens, or hundreds of times. And most vinyl noise is broadband and will therefore hit a lot of resonances at different frequency. Or it just sounds unnatural because the actual music gets amplified by some resonance. And controlling resonance is anyway part science, part voodoo. You need no degree in electronics, or anything else, to give it ago. Place the player on a different surface and it will sound drastically different! Change the mat on the platter, or remove it, and you can hear the difference. Wonder if some protruding thing on your player (say, the tonearm lift) creates a resonance? Just file it off and see if it makes a difference. The possibilities are a endless, and a guy who never did well at school can be just as good as some physics professor.
And for sure, resonance may play some part on the sound of a cassette or cd player, but nowhere near vinyl. And sure, you can substitute a better clock chip, d/a converter, output amplifier, or whatever, on a cd player, but you need a whole other level of competence to pull it off, compared to putting your vinyl player on different rubber feet.
The first thing you must do is go see an ear specialist, get your ears pumped of all the years of gunk and get some hearing aids if you think digital is better than analogue. By the way, digital is just the processing side, using binary digits, computer algorhyms, electronic clocking and jitter corrections and sampljng rates to process the signals which are then converted back to analogue for the human ear to hear the music.
I think someone may be losing the plot. It may be time for an Analog Intervention.
Its a collecting hobby really.
Like football cards.
If it wasn't then mint condition records wouldn't fetch a high premium.
Of course the real value of vinyl and cassette doesn't rely on the sound quality. It's very easy to say with today's perspective that those formats were worst on a technical level. It's not just the nostalgia or the experience (and yet the nostalgia is what makes those revivals possible). What really makes those formats important is that they shaped the musical culture of several generations. They brought music to us. They allowed an entire music industry to thrive around them, and music today would not be the same if it wasn't for those formats.
And although we can now listen to music with much better quality, although we can listen to whatever music we want, the experience is now "worst" than it was before. We don't find so much time to just listen to music, we tend to do other things simultaneously. The joy of buying a new record is lost, the value of music has dropped, because now you can listen to whatever music you like just by tapping a button. The music that new artists are producing in many cases is more basic, less sophisticated, or just worst, because the music that they make is much more consumed than it is enjoyed.
I really believe that we have lost something important. This era of the internet is great but also worst in so many levels
"The music that new artists are producing in many cases is more basic, less sophisticated, or just worst, because the music that they make is much more consumed than it is enjoyed."
It's unfortunate that I read so many comments like this on music videos on UA-cam. So many older or invested music lovers fail to look beyond the Spotify playlists and top 40 radio play, to the tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of worldwide musicians that self-publish online, musicians that are talented, dedicated, and toil in obscurity because they don't help the bottom line of some corporation.
Sorry, life goes on and evolves, beyond what any of us grows up with in our youth. Time waits for no one. If you want to respect that which came before, you can do that...but you can't force others to experience what you experienced, so they can fully understand and embrace it. Just think of the countless generations before yours that felt the same about some artistic endeavor that by your time was ignored. In this, different generations are more similar than they think.
@@rikk319 I'm sorry because maybe i failed to choose the right words. I don't think this is a generational rant. It's not me saying the past was always better. Society is changing rapidly, and we're losing important things in the way, and this trend is not exclusive to music.
I know there are thousands of musicians producing incredible music, maybe more and better than ever, and i don't mean to diminish their importance, but the problem is that their music is not popular, therefore less relevant in the big scheme of today's musical culture. This is today's music industry and social media overlords feeding the people with cultural fast food. They democratize music to musicians and people by diminishing the value of music. I have the feeling that popular music in the past was generally more diverse, more sophisticated (musically). Music was a richer language than it is today.
Nothing digital replaces cassette.
And the power goes out and you have nothing ! If you have a machine powered by whichever form of battery you can play the physical media !
I still find cassette still sound half decent, but streaming I feel you loose a bit of detail in sound quality.
Streaming very sterile sounding.
@@SnarkyRC I found my system can be very revealing especially the limitations with streaming I.e being very bright in the treble and light in the bass depth even with a good dac when I use my turntable cd and cassette the treble is smoother and bass is more punchier
People who preach about audio and music are very arrogant and wrong. Audio sound, audio mediums and music are all subjective and as such is based on people's taste and preferences.
Cd no hiss, no pop, no noise, no life 🙂
What about an 8-track revival 🤣🤣
Oh no, that's not going to happen. I never used 8-track myself but I did use NAB carts (also known as Fidelipac) professionally which work in a similar way. They were extremely convenient but the sound quality was dreadful. DM
@@AudioMasterclass you'd be surprised how many 8-track collectors there are. I got into it a little bit out of curiosity after a techmoan video about them. Never heard of the format before but the awkwardness of the format (fading songs out and in during the switches, really??), the clever yet strange mechanics (a moving head) and the high maintenance properties (replacing the pads etc) appealed to me. I think I got 20-odd tapes and two players, which is enough for my purpose. But there are whole 8-track collector groups, there are some companies that transfer your CDs to 8-track cartridges including artwork and the like, and the enthusiasts constantly speak about how they long for a revival of the format. I agree with you though that the chances of that are slim to nonexistent. They claim the tapes sound warm but they mean everything above 9k is missing 😆. And then the wow and flutter 😖. However, it does force you into listening to a whole album, which can be a good thing. If all of the album is good at least.
It goes to show that there's a collectors' market for just about anything. Maybe I will make that video. DM
What is all this stuff about streaming services? Be quiet now.
No, cassettes, all bad. Especially 2nd generation mix tapes of any kind.
It’s all lame. But then most people are.