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Revival of the Music Cassette


trj22487

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18 hours ago, Link said:

I was told quite strongly by multiple people that I was severely wrong and that there was quite a burgeoning scene around it. I even got a PM asking how it feels to be so wrong.

How about knowing it's so wrong but feeling so right? 🙂 

 

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Echoing chamber alert!!!!

Yeah, the return in popularity to cassettes is just new hipsters being to cool for school.  Truly nothing redeemable about them.  Especially when they start wearing out and pitch starts to modulate (I think that's the right term) because the tape is stretching, or something.

I too get the appeal of vinyl.  My wife and I finally got our first record player before Christmas.  Can't beat it.

Also, I never understood the "loudness" issue with CDs.  Or, more specifically, why that even became a problem.  I even recall that when I was younger (late 90s) I'd get CDs from the library.  Newer ones sounded "normal" while older ones (usually 1986 or earlier) were always extremely quite.  I assume this is the problem.

Is the issue that in order to have a properly mastered CD, and be able to appreciated it, you have to have a good amp for it and by making the audio "loud" you can get around it, especially for smaller devices?  I honestly don't know why they chose to do that to CDs but it killed the quality benefits, IMHO.  I love the volume-range on our record player and it far beats digital crap.

Is there any modern hope for this crap?

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2 hours ago, RH said:

Also, I never understood the "loudness" issue with CDs.  Or, more specifically, why that even became a problem.  I even recall that when I was younger (late 90s) I'd get CDs from the library.  Newer ones sounded "normal" while older ones (usually 1986 or earlier) were always extremely quite.  I assume this is the problem.

Is the issue that in order to have a properly mastered CD, and be able to appreciated it, you have to have a good amp for it and by making the audio "loud" you can get around it, especially for smaller devices?  I honestly don't know why they chose to do that to CDs but it killed the quality benefits, IMHO.  I love the volume-range on our record player and it far beats digital crap.

I believe what you're referring to is "normalizing" volume, where one CD (or track, at times) comes on very loud/quiet, then the next is different (sometimes jarringly so), etc.  I believe a lot of this came (and perhaps still does) from the fact that while the media format was an agreed upon standard, the level at which audio was normalized wasn't (and perhaps still isn't), leading to some discs being too loud or quiet and others just the opposite, something that can be jarring if you've got a bunch of discs in a changer or a bunch of ripped MP3s mixed together.  The volume range of CDs should be roughly the same as with vinyl, although I have noticed that record players tend to more often have additional options available and in use for adjusting/increasing audio levels, so that to me seems to be more a factor versus the capability of the media itself.  A badly mastered recording is bad across the board, regardless of what media it ends up on.

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13 minutes ago, darkchylde28 said:

I believe what you're referring to is "normalizing" volume, where one CD (or track, at times) comes on very loud/quiet, then the next is different (sometimes jarringly so), etc.  I believe a lot of this came (and perhaps still does) from the fact that while the media format was an agreed upon standard, the level at which audio was normalized wasn't (and perhaps still isn't), leading to some discs being too loud or quiet and others just the opposite, something that can be jarring if you've got a bunch of discs in a changer or a bunch of ripped MP3s mixed together.  The volume range of CDs should be roughly the same as with vinyl, although I have noticed that record players tend to more often have additional options available and in use for adjusting/increasing audio levels, so that to me seems to be more a factor versus the capability of the media itself.  A badly mastered recording is bad across the board, regardless of what media it ends up on.

I'll just give you the main example which, for me as a kid, was the biggest disappointment.  Being the nerd that I was, I would frequently borrow the original Star Wars OST.  I think it was copyrighted on the disc 1985.  For the most part it was "super quite" on my discman CD player.  I had to crank the thing to near-full volume just to hear it, and it caused a bit of background hum.  As got older, did minor research on this occurrence and considered it, I just assumed the CDs were intentionally "quite" so that as you were listening to them on a proper sound system for the mid-80's, the audio would sound more true as if you were listening to the audio in concert.  Specifically, the quieter/softer moments of the music would sound soft, while the blaring crescendos would be loud and resonate through the whole house. But, I never got an experience like that because any CD player after 1995 didn't seem to account for that type of audio playback from CDs.

Maybe that assumption is wrong, but that was my armchair, semi-educated guess about what was going on.

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1 minute ago, RH said:

I'll just give you the main example which, for me as a kid, was the biggest disappointment.  Being the nerd that I was, I would frequently borrow the original Star Wars OST.  I think it was copyrighted on the disc 1985.  For the most part it was "super quite" on my discman CD player.  I had to crank the thing to near-full volume just to hear it, and it caused a bit of background hum.  As got older, did minor research on this occurrence and considered it, I just assumed the CDs were intentionally "quite" so that as you were listening to them on a proper sound system for the mid-80's, the audio would sound more true as if you were listening to the audio in concert.  Specifically, the quieter/softer moments of the music would sound soft, while the blaring crescendos would be loud and resonate through the whole house. But, I never got an experience like that because any CD player after 1995 didn't seem to account for that type of audio playback from CDs.

Maybe that assumption is wrong, but that was my armchair, semi-educated guess about what was going on.

Are you saying that the same CD sounded quiet on old hardware then normal/loud on new hardware or saying that older manufactured discs sounded more quiet than newer manufactured discs?  The CD hardware being used, for the most part, shouldn't have play any role (outside of understandable differences in amps, speakers, etc.) in regard to how overall loud the music data on the disc is when played back.  What I'm talking about is the actual difference in "normal" audio levels between different discs (and rips of such), meaning that recordings leveled to quiet will be quiet regardless of hardware, loud ones will be as well, etc.

I've noticed that orchestral recordings tend to be normalized lower than other recordings, even in (more) current recordings and releases ("Duel of the Fates" from the Episode I soundtrack gets incredibly quiet in parts but much louder/normal in others), very likely due what you suspected--that they're meant to sound more like actually being present at a performance versus a studio recording.  My issue with this is that they seem to normalize based on the loudest bits versus the quieter ones, or, somewhere in between, leaving the loud parts BOOMING when you adjust the volume properly, and, in my case, the next track in rotation to be WILDLY too loud.  That type of issue isn't due to the qualify of CDs as a media versus vinyl, but the level at which the overall audio data is normalized before it's laid down.

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No, I was using hardware from around 1995, listening to a CD that was created in 1985.  I could tell it was old not just by the copyright but the art and the style of imprinting on the disc. 

The CD was quite on modern hardware. Even when I hooked my CD player up to my stereo.  Any CD from after, maybe, 1988-90 didn't sound like most of the music I got from the library that was on a really old CD.  It was the really old CDs that were almost always (if not always) "quiet", but the Star Wars CDs were the worst on my CD player, as were most other older orchestral CDs.

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On 1/21/2020 at 5:59 PM, guitarzombie said:

I like how people always tell me how much vinyl is than a CD because its analog but yet never talk about cassettes.

 

On 11/23/2019 at 4:56 PM, MachineCode said:

You would be correct. It’s kinda funny because the CD is capable of better quality, but the desire to maximize loudness at the expense  kinda ruins that.
 

Vinyl has a physical limitation where if you tried to achieve that level of loudness, the cutting lathe would jump the grooves when making the master. That built in hedge against the loudness war is what leads to the better quality. Vinyl as a medium seems to impart a sound that people, myself included, seem to enjoy. But it does have drawbacks.

 

Also, the angle of the groove matters for quality. The outside grooves are a more gradual angle than the inner grooves. The stylus makes a better contact with the groove towards the outside of the record and as a result sounds better. This is why records during the vinyl era tended to have the singles as the first track of each side.

 

Cassettes on the other hand were just a compromise all around. Low track width coupled with slow record/playback rate (1 7/8 ips vs a minimum of 7.5 ips for professional open reel formats, more commonly 15 or 30 ips) lead to poor audio quality. Again, it does impart a sound on the audio that some people may enjoy. But you are actually better off with mp3 than cassettes, and mp3 is not a quality format.

 

I did on the previous page. Cassettes are objectively crappy, but they do have a sound that they impart on the material that some people might enjoy.

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@RH, @darkchylde28 This Image I dug out from an old book I had explains what you guys are talking about well.783823489_IMG_05312.thumb.jpg.4fd55a1aa7eb693671338158f0e90569.jpg

Even though I was more on the tracking and mixing side of things, I used to sit in on mastering a lot so am pretty familiar with what makes this happen so I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

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Here is a bizarre bit of trivia (if you don't know it) - the first stereo records  were made in 1952 and had two separate tracks (one on the outer perimeter of the record and another about halway in) - the turntable had two separate tone arms with mono cartridges that would feed into amps (usually 2 since stereo amps had yet to become common).  The stereo lp as we know it didn't show up until 1958.

Similarly the first stereo radio broadcasts either required an am and an fm radio - or if you could afford it a tuner that had two separate tuners - one AM and one FM that would feed into two mono amps.  Needless to say the quality was extremely uneven.

We have come a long ways!

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On 1/21/2020 at 6:23 PM, Wandering Tellurian said:

These were far far far worse for a wide variety of reasons:

 

download (12).jpeg

They were also unique in a lot of ways.  A lot of eight tracks came with unique songs and instrumentals as fillers because they had a static length.  They're definitely worth exploring even if they aren't the best way to listen to music.

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3 minutes ago, CMR said:

They were also unique in a lot of ways.  A lot of eight tracks came with unique songs and instrumentals as fillers because they had a static length.  They're definitely worth exploring even if they aren't the best way to listen to music.

I used to make my beer money in college by repairing those miserable things - they were a continuous loop which manifested all sorts of problems.  In addition the playback head moved up and down on a post and it would invariably get out of alignment. Most people just jammed a matchbook at either the top or the bottom (depending on which way the head had misaligned) to compensate.

There were also some 4 track cart systems but they never became popular.

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14 minutes ago, CMR said:

They were also unique in a lot of ways.  A lot of eight tracks came with unique songs and instrumentals as fillers because they had a static length.  They're definitely worth exploring even if they aren't the best way to listen to music.

I once had an 8 track copy of Tres Hombres by ZZ Top - for some reason the lyrics to La Grange didn't get tranferred to the tape - I used to freak people out (who were usually in a state  of inebriation of one sort or another)  and not tell them about it - they kept waiting for lyrics which never appeared.

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1 hour ago, Wandering Tellurian said:

I once had an 8 track copy of Tres Hombres by ZZ Top - for some reason the lyrics to La Grange didn't get tranferred to the tape - I used to freak people out (who were usually in a state  of inebriation of one sort or another)  and not tell them about it - they kept waiting for lyrics which never appeared.

There's words in La Grange?   

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