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For me it's nostalgia to a big part. I never really liked CD as a format and I was glad when technology got rid of it and went to flash storage or network. I also enjoy finding old tech and opening them and fixing them, whole process is part of the appeal to me as well as the mechanical nature of the format, physical and mechanical things are very interesting to me in a way digital is not. I also gotta admit I'm something of an anti-audiophile, I either have poo poo ears or I just don't care, but I don't really notice the hiss of tapes or it just doesn't bother me. I am the same in so many other things, I don't bother with HD stuff if I torrent a show or something, 720p is fine for me. I just select the lowest sized torrents and ignore the multi-GB ones if I can. I also like to listen to shortwave and medium wave (AM) radio and the audio quality there isn't the greatest, but I still like it, hunting for stations out of the air sent across the world, reflecting on the atmosphere, Now why zoomers like tapes I don't really know but clearly nostalgia isn't a factor for them.
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Aug 13, 2022 07:01
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Shitstorm Trooper posted:All my tapes are harsh noise anyway. Ah, a Lou Reed fan.
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Aug 13, 2022 07:16
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A friend of mine had a huge hoard of fully functional, repaired tape decks. He just sold several dozen of them in one go. If you try, it is definitely not hard to get a cassette deck of good quality, and get it working. He stopped collecting them because it was too *easy* and he ended up with way too many of them. This guy doesn't have particularly great electronics skills (he can't solder), but you learn as you go, and after a couple he could get the majority of them working. Most problems don't require electronics skills anyway, just 'screw it open, clean it, lube it, replace belt, put screws back'. The badly broken ones were dumped (like the ones that had broken digital controls, broken gears etc) because there were too many easy-to-fix ones around. Cassette decks aren't like modern electronics. They're often built to be serviced, and there usually are less than 10 screws in total to undo until you get to the drive belts. Fixing them is not as big of a deal as some people think it is. It's a LOT less work than replacing a phone screen or battery, and about on par with replacing a CPU cooler and power supply. Yes, you often need to replace the belts and perhaps apply a bit of lube here and there. No, that is not that big of a deal. But if you don't feel like fixing them yourself - it's likely that the dozens of decks that got just got sold, went to someone who's gonna put them on Ebay or whatever. Since they're all working, use that to your advantage. Re: quality - it's not exactly hard to make cassettes sound good, even the cheap store brand tapes i bought as a kid sound reasonably well. But as said before, tapes were a medium of convenience, and people didn't put in the effort to make good recordings. Or they'd just chuck them on the floor of a car, where they get dusty, hot, cold, hot again etc and while they don't break from that, they do get worse from it. I was given a few hundred tapes that come from the same person, and although the guy really invested in good tape (Maxell XL2, TDK SA) it's obvious that he didn't clean his heads properly, and that his record head wasn't aligned properly (fairly easy to correct, just get a prerecorded tape or a tape recorded by a trusted deck, and twiddle the screws on the heads until you have maximum treble and channel separation). It baffles me that he never corrected those issues. But i think he simply didn't know what we know today, not having google to ask 'how to adjust azimuth on tape deck'. Especially on the cheaper players such as walkmans, it's literally one screw that you adjust for maximum treble... The sad part is that i've had to do that right from factory with the last walkman Sony produced in 2009 or so. I don't need a few hundred tapes, so i threw away a third of them, kept a third to give away that has a little dropout here or there but are still quite good, and kept one third that don't have any dropouts whatsoever. LimaBiker has a new favorite as of 09:11 on Aug 13, 2022 |
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Aug 13, 2022 08:54
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Edit: whoops wrong thread
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Aug 13, 2022 10:03
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Back in the day I found pre-recorded tapes to be of poor quality, and I only ever owned one: Sade's "Promise." But I made loads of mix tapes on good quality TDK tapes and they maintained their sound for a shitload of plays. I didn't get a CD player in my car until around 2001, and since it could read MP3 I generally just kept a couple of CDs packed with them in a carrier. Within a few years I added an iPod via aux cable to the mix and that became my go-to. My current car from 2015 has CarPlay and although there's a CD player in the glovebox I don't use it. iPhone all the way. I can't imagine using tapes in the modern era for any reason other than nostalgia or curiosity.
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Aug 13, 2022 11:31
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Dick Trauma posted:I can't imagine using tapes in the modern era for any reason other than nostalgia or curiosity. For those of us with really old cars that don't have something like CarPlay or an aux port, the casette deck is your friend.
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Aug 13, 2022 11:37
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Tapes are good for one thing, mixtapes. I totally get nostalgia for the ritual of making/having a mixtape. Sure you can basically just make a playlist and accomplish the same thing really easily and that's basically what we're all doing now but it's not the same. I can't think of literally anything else to be nostalgic for tapes over.
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Aug 13, 2022 12:19
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His Divine Shadow posted:Now why zoomers like tapes I don't really know but clearly nostalgia isn't a factor for them. The idea of physical media. Not a zoomer (late millennial), but there's a certain appeal to the idea of a physical object you can actually hold in your hands actually being that piece of music. It's just novelty sure, but it's born out of growing up in a time where the sum of your media collection was files on a hard drive that will always replay perfectly, every time, because it's digital. Plus also the whole ritual of interacting with a device that actually physically does something. There's gears and servos and electromechanical mechanisms inside it that you can feel whirring away whenever you press a button. For the last like twenty years basically every consumer piece of tech has been solid state, so there's something that just feels different about interacting with older tech where there's actual mechanical bits inside that do stuff.
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Aug 13, 2022 12:29
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I just wish I'd kept all the mix tapes friends and girlfriends made for me in the 90s.
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Aug 13, 2022 12:44
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Varance posted:For those of us with really old cars that don't have something like CarPlay or an aux port, the casette deck is your friend. Get one of those tapes that’s actually an aux in?
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Aug 13, 2022 12:45
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Varance posted:For those of us with really old cars that don't have something like CarPlay or an aux port, the casette deck is your friend. Because of the italics you now must post the car. 
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Aug 13, 2022 14:34
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Dick Trauma posted:Back in the day I found pre-recorded tapes to be of poor quality, and I only ever owned one: Sade's "Promise." But I made loads of mix tapes on good quality TDK tapes and they maintained their sound for a shitload of plays. I didn't get a CD player in my car until around 2001, and since it could read MP3 I generally just kept a couple of CDs packed with them in a carrier. Within a few years I added an iPod via aux cable to the mix and that became my go-to. I've not had a newer car since owning a 2000 Hyundai Accent in 2005, so for a decade or so there I was using a trunk disc changer, a tape deck, and sometimes a tape deck aux for an mp3 player- these days my car audio source is 100% a lighter Bluetooth/FM tranceiver- it has a tape deck/CD/DVD that I've never used and probably never will
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Aug 13, 2022 15:54
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We went to the Udvar-Hazy Center Air & Space Museum a few weeks ago and they had these awesome machines near the Space Shuttle IDEX II Workstation   CDC 3800 Computer   UNIVAC 1232 Computer Tape Reader  
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Aug 13, 2022 16:25
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Arivia posted:Get one of those tapes that’s actually an aux in? Dick Trauma posted:Because of the italics you now must post the car. OK, maybe not that old. '01 Tacoma. Drivin' it 'till it dies. Or as long as these things last, until I die. Varance has a new favorite as of 19:29 on Aug 13, 2022 |
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Aug 13, 2022 19:12
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Arivia posted:Get one of those tapes that’s actually an aux in? My mom’s car has a weird auto-reverse system that makes it spit those tapes out immediately. The solution? Bluetooth tape adapter.
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Aug 13, 2022 19:24
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I've been lazy enough to use a portable Bluetooth speaker paired to my phone as a car stereo
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Aug 13, 2022 19:44
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I think some people just drive with bluetooth earbuds nowadays.
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Aug 13, 2022 19:47
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Cojawfee posted:I think some people just drive with bluetooth earbuds nowadays. I’d worry about not being able to hear other drivers shooting at me.
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Aug 13, 2022 19:59
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in the early 2000s I drove a car from 1965. I was wishing I had even an 8 track.
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Aug 13, 2022 20:44
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Lowen SoDium posted:I have a pair that I got earlier this year. The software is a little janky, but it is usable. The Sinden Launcher helps a lot with the emu set up. It definitely works well when set up. I think I would be happier if I had just bought one, rather than two. I pictured me and my buddies blasting baddies in front of my 77" TV. But one problem with the guns is the camera has to have full visibility of all four corners, so in order to use a giant display you have to stand very far away, and my room wouldn't accommodate that.
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Aug 13, 2022 20:47
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BrainDance posted:Tapes are good for one thing, mixtapes. I dumped all of mine to FLAC before throwing any of them out. Teenage me had some bad taste every now and then, but a tape you knew inside and out was really something. Hell, sometimes I hear a song and when it's not followed by whatever followed it on the mixtape, I get tripped up.
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Aug 14, 2022 03:28
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:I dumped all of mine to FLAC before throwing any of them out. Teenage me had some bad taste every now and then, but a tape you knew inside and out was really something. Hell, sometimes I hear a song and when it's not followed by whatever followed it on the mixtape, I get tripped up. I did the same thing, tape hiss, bad segues, dropouts and splices and all. Takes me right back 35 years ago.
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Aug 14, 2022 03:49
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NyetscapeNavigator posted:It definitely works well when set up. I think I would be happier if I had just bought one, rather than two. I pictured me and my buddies blasting baddies in front of my 77" TV. But one problem with the guns is the camera has to have full visibility of all four corners, so in order to use a giant display you have to stand very far away, and my room wouldn't accommodate that. 77" would take a lot of space to use those guns. I have a 65" I am using and needs a distance of about 6 feet or more to work right. I bought 2 of them too incase I ever get any of my friends from back home to come up and visit me (they never do)
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Aug 14, 2022 05:07
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:I dumped all of mine to FLAC before throwing any of them out. Teenage me had some bad taste every now and then, but a tape you knew inside and out was really something. Hell, sometimes I hear a song and when it's not followed by whatever followed it on the mixtape, I get tripped up. I was pretty good at filling a tape to the very last second, but there's a few where the song gets cut off and those have stayed with me. I play the mp3 of the song and my brain wants to cut if off early from having listened to that tape so many times.
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Aug 14, 2022 10:40
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:Hell, sometimes I hear a song and when it's not followed by whatever followed it on the mixtape, I get tripped up.
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Aug 14, 2022 14:46
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Dick Trauma posted:I was pretty good at filling a tape to the very last second, but there's a few where the song gets cut off and those have stayed with me. I play the mp3 of the song and my brain wants to cut if off early from having listened to that tape so many times. I used to listen to a certain internet radio station so much I could anticipate the errors in their files. I knew when stuff was about to glitch or stop early or repeat etc.
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Aug 14, 2022 16:54
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Dick Trauma posted:I was pretty good at filling a tape to the very last second, but there's a few where the song gets cut off and those have stayed with me. I play the mp3 of the song and my brain wants to cut if off early from having listened to that tape so many times. Listen for the smoke alarm beep in Nickelbacks 'This Is How You Remind Me'
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Aug 15, 2022 09:21
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I got back into cassettes right before the pandemic hit, and I've really enjoyed making mixtapes with cool covers. The only problem is that I'm running out of good music, so I'll have to go exploring before I can make some more. Photo dump:         
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Aug 15, 2022 11:37
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afen posted:I got back into cassettes right before the pandemic hit, and I've really enjoyed making mixtapes with cool covers. The only problem is that I'm running out of good music, so I'll have to go exploring before I can make some more. This reminds me. Last year's summer I also used a walkman ironically for a bit when cycling around the city. I noticed an interesting thing. The player picked up some kind of signal that traffic lights use to communicate. Or that's what I assume. It only happened in intersections with traffic lights. It was a bit like modem noises or the old GSM interference in speakers. I meant to record it but never got around to it.
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Aug 15, 2022 11:45
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Humphreys posted:Listen for the smoke alarm beep in Nickelbacks 'This Is How You Remind Me' someone's phone goes off during rock the casbah and iirc they kept it on purpose
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Aug 15, 2022 11:47
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Humphreys posted:Listen for the smoke alarm beep in Nickelbacks 'This Is How You Remind Me' Hahaha, you listen to Nickelback.
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Aug 15, 2022 11:54
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What if they like Nickelback?
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Aug 15, 2022 11:57
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Is the little bubble bloop sound on Englishman In New York intentional?
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Aug 15, 2022 11:58
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Humphreys posted:Listen for the smoke alarm beep in Nickelbacks 'This Is How You Remind Me' I'm not falling for that.
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Aug 15, 2022 14:51
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moonmazed posted:someone's phone goes off during rock the casbah and iirc they kept it on purpose That song was recorded 40 years ago, nobody's phone was going off. They added that sound on purpose.
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Aug 15, 2022 15:21
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there were cell phones in the 80s dude
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Aug 15, 2022 15:23
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It was the drummer's Dukes of Hazzard wristwatch
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Aug 15, 2022 15:46
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moonmazed posted:there were cell phones in the 80s dude It was a watch. The version of the song on Combat Rock, as well as many other Clash compilations, features an electronic sound effect beginning at the 1:52-minute point of the song. This noise is a monophonic version of the song "Dixie". The sound effect source was generated by the alarm from a digital wristwatch that Mick Jones owned, and was intentionally added to the recording by Jones.[7]
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Aug 15, 2022 15:49
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Reminds me of the Mattel Football sound in Supertramp's "Logical Song." I bought that game a couple of years later and so the sound has become a permanent part of my memory.
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Aug 15, 2022 16:06
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The error that will always stick with me is that for some reason, the MP3 of the only Yellowcard song I know (Lights and Sounds) re-ran the opening guitar riff after the end of the song; on the rare occations I look for it now, I keep expecting that.
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Aug 15, 2022 18:32
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