|
If you want, I'll tell you the best Hi-Fi tape deck ever made. Actually, I just tell you anyways. It's the Technics RS-B965. One that is in very good condition will now be selling for >$1,000 on eBay now. It was perfect for recording, because it was three headed, so it could record a test tone and play it back at the same time. The test tone would display on the deck's meter. You then had two adjustment controls that would let you set perfect bias and levels for whatever blank cassette you had loaded, from cheap to expensive. This let you make perfect recordings of anything. It had a "CD Direct" jack for connecting a CD player directly to the deck. You could switch from the CD input to what it was recording, and they would usually sound near identical, even if you were recording on a cheap blank.
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2023 04:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 08:00 |
|
|
cassettes rule the word has "rear end" in it which is funny rip my toyota corolla and its tape deck. i made tapes of husker du and minutemen for that. just made them a little more harsh and brittle which was Good. stick shifts and tape decks, some primo hipster millenial joys
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2023 04:57
|
|
|
I remember when CD's were the future, because with digital sound, analog noise was a thing of the past. Everyone was always writing about how music listened to via tape or vinyl was "mostly noise" so eliminating it would be a great thing. Until people eventually figured out that pure digital recording and playback sounded flat and dull, and people actually liked the sound of tape and vinyl better. This is because small amounts of noise mixed in to music actually sounds good to most people. So instead of calling it noise they now call it things like "saturation". Tape imparts its own small amounts of EQ curve, compression, and analog saturation. It's important enough of a thing that nowadays most modern mixing engineers who mix entirely on computer use plugins that try to simulate the effects of tape, and there are a LOT of commercial plugins available that try to do this.      
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2023 05:07
|
|
|
Saturation and noise aren't the same thing. Also waiting for the hipster/berd obsession to roll over to zip disks and betamax tapes.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2023 06:08
|
|
|
syntaxfunction posted:Saturation and noise aren't the same thing. meh. neither of those formats can do this https://youtu.be/e_8s48-hHvc Bula Vinaka posted:I remember when CD's were the future, because with digital sound, analog noise was a thing of the past. Everyone was always writing about how music listened to via tape or vinyl was "mostly noise" so eliminating it would be a great thing. using a plugin ain't trve, man (those do look nice, though) olives black fucked around with this message at 14:23 on Apr 21, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 02:26
|
|
|
I keep my stuff rocking, I very unironically love my tapes, and my GE tape player I repaired myself.  I also make and listen to tapes at work: 
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 03:47
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjpQlAbz28s
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 06:44
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryeIDS4xQ-g
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 06:47
|
|
|
olives black posted:Cassettes are the best, and here's why: You can easily back up a CD at excellent fidelity to a file. That's the first thing I do after buying one, before I even play it. With cassettes, if you back up to another cassette you lose significant fidelity and get even more hiss. And when the tape in a cassette eventually breaks in your player, you have a world of poo poo to deal with. Also, cassettes lose sound quality as they age because of stray magnetic fields and oxide particle shedding. You fool, OP, you Luddite, you absolute moron.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 06:59
|
|
|
BigBadSteve posted:You can easily back up a CD at excellent fidelity to a file. That's the first thing I do after buying one, before I even play it. CDs are deffo the easiest physical medium to back up. They are also the least fun and FLAC renders them totally pointless.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 07:20
|
|
|
CDs nuts
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 07:22
|
|
|
20 Blunts posted:CDs nuts drat. got'em
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 08:31
|
|
|
olives black posted:CDs are deffo the easiest physical medium to back up. They are also the least fun and FLAC renders them totally pointless. The cover art and the tracks themselves (for rarer stuff) are not always downloadable. Also I like to support the artists when finances allow by buying their releases. Don't let me distract ya from talking cassettes here, OP, I was mainly just riffing (sorry!) and I think it's great that collectors like you are preserving some older technologies and media that would otherwise be quickly lost to time. I'll shut up ITT now.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 10:59
|
|
|
BigBadSteve posted:The cover art and the tracks themselves (for rarer stuff) are not always downloadable. Also I like to support the artists when finances allow by buying their releases. It's cool man, figured you were just getting your GBS on  Nothing wrong with CDs either. Plus they can do that cool color changing thing when they warm up like Nine Inch Nails' album Year Zero olives black fucked around with this message at 14:20 on Apr 21, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 14:08
|
|
|
Vile_Nihlist666 posted:I keep my stuff rocking, I very unironically love my tapes, and my GE tape player I repaired myself. I like the buttons on that player. Nice and fat and symmetrical Pretty sure I had that desk CD/tape combo unit as a kid.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 17:00
|
|
|
Thinking about getting this demagnetizing wand for my players and deck: Universal HEAD DEMAGNETIZER for Cassette Tape Deck Recorder Reel to Reel 8 Track VHS Audio Video https://a.co/d/3OHfnoe Is that a good one, or they all p much the same?
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2023 12:42
|
|
|
olives black posted:Thinking about getting this demagnetizing wand for my players and deck: I still have one that I ordered from Herrington in the 1990s that still works. The one you linked is probably fine. You're supposed to use it like a monitor degausser. You turn it on while about three feet away from the deck. Then carefully move it up to the head and wave it over the head, then back away three feet, then turn it off. Keep it away from computers and hard drives.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 05:43
|
|
|
Bula Vinaka posted:I still have one that I ordered from Herrington in the 1990s that still works. The one you linked is probably fine. Awesome. Thank you!
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 05:50
|
|
|
kntfkr posted:Minidisc was the best, dork. I had a portable compact cassette player (not a Walkman, I was poor) for years and MiniDisc felt like the goddamn future. Early portable CD players chewed AA batteries and skipped like mad, plus very few people had burners so you were stuck listening to pressed CDs instead of mixtapes. The MiniDisc with a rechargeable lithium battery and dub whatever you like onto a cheap digital medium was amazing. And you could even (very painfully) enter the title and artist on your tracks and see them on the dot-matrix screen! Let's see your CD do that!
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 06:22
|
|
|
~Coxy posted:I had a portable compact cassette player (not a Walkman, I was poor) for years and MiniDisc felt like the goddamn future. where's the tape hiss, though. where's the gentle rattle of the reels
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 06:26
|
|
|
When I was young I was so dumb I couldn't actually hear hiss or other artefacts. I used to go to school and leave the longest tape I had recording the radio. When I came home I would scrub through the recording and find songs I wanted or liked, then dumb those recordings onto a "master" to keep. It must have sounded goddamn terrible.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 06:48
|
|
|
Hell yeah brother. Been collecting vaporwave tapes since 2014 (and yes I do listen to them) and properly recorded ones, especially chrome tapes - sound amazing on my 1989 Denon DRW-750 Here's an old pic of my setup 
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 07:52
|
|
|
 look at what we've lost if i could i'd kit out all my cars with these
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 08:17
|
|
|
I've seen that once, in a very expensive Mercedes. Awesome stuff. Here's a reminder to turn on your cassette players once every couple of months, even if you're not gonna listen to them. Mechanical things like to be used once in a while or mechanisms will gum up, bearings will go sticky etc.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 09:49
|
|
|
LimaBiker posted:I've seen that once, in a very expensive Mercedes. Awesome stuff. yeah gently caress I need to do that, I don't have any cassettes right now for my victrola all-in-one cuz thats what I use downstairs rn since I have no space I hate it because it's good at nothing, but I love it because it does everything
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2023 10:09
|
|
|
Bula Vinaka posted:I remember when CD's were the future, because with digital sound, analog noise was a thing of the past. Everyone was always writing about how music listened to via tape or vinyl was "mostly noise" so eliminating it would be a great thing. Here is a video of people doing this but with VHS audio. The Lofi Magic of VHS Audio Basically, drop out most of the bass and anything high frequency and you'll get that weirdly warm VHS audio. >>>>>>NO PLUGIN ZONE<<<<< And for those high nose  buh ... buh ... muh real media, here's something for youGuy uses the worst record heads plus crappy built in mic to overlay on top of the better audio quality recording Crappy Cassette Recorder as an Effect Microphone ||| Cheaper Than a Plugin EVIL Gibson fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Apr 27, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 16:06
|
|
|
came here expecting new music, instead all i got was a list
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 21:33
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 21:40
|
|
|
Bula Vinaka posted:I remember when CD's were the future, because with digital sound, analog noise was a thing of the past. Everyone was always writing about how music listened to via tape or vinyl was "mostly noise" so eliminating it would be a great thing. This post means well, but you're mostly wrong. At least, you're conflating some terms incorrectly, using some others in a strange way, and not getting the history correct. Noise is not the same thing as distortion. Noise is a usually-random external signal added to the original signal. Distortion is any change in an audio waveform from its input to its output. I suppose in this way you could argue that noise is a form of distortion, but any audio professional would say this is an incorrect and disingenuous application of the term. Just about every system and device we use for turning acoustic waves into electrical signal, or electrical signal into magnetized regions or ones and zeroes, or vice-versa, imparts both noise and distortion to the original signal. Any attempts to improve fidelity, historically, have been in the realm of minimizing both of these things. Digital is very good at this. Noise is what you hear when the signal is very quiet, usually manifested as a present static 'hiss' sound. We strive for greater signal-to-noise ratio, expressed in decibels. The wider the SNR, generally the better fidelity. CDs have a SNR of 96dB due to their 16-bit depth (higher resolution systems in recording studios, like 24-bit, affords about a 150dB SNR), and tape is only about 70dB at its best. Distortion is not noise, it's when an output signal is changed in any way from its input signal - like I said, everything imparts distortion, it's just a matter of what kind and how much. A simple way to think about distortion, at least the kind most people think about when they hear the term, is that you're basically 'overloading' the capacity of an electrical system. A circuit can only handle so much gain. The term 'clipping' as a form of distortion generally refers to digital systems, and it's very literal: When the amplitude of a waveform tries to be higher than the system can handle, the top/bottom parts of the waveform are literally 'clipped' off, flattened. This changes the harmonic structure of the signal in a way that is generally considered unpleasant. Analog systems, be they tube, transistor or tape, tend to handle amplitude a little bit differently. You did use the word 'saturation' in your post but as well as incorrectly combining it with the term noise, you seem to think it's some kind of buzzword. It's not. Saturation, in tape, is when the magnetic domains of the recording medium get hit with such a strong magnetic field (a high amplitude signal) that they become stuck and cannot have their poles re-aligned. They are 'saturated' with voltage and cannot record any higher amplitude. On playback, these saturated domains impart new harmonic content that was not present in the original input signal. That's all any kind of distortion or saturation is - introduction of new harmonics or changes to the existing harmonic structure of a signal (because that's all of sound, fundamentals and harmonic series). Audio professionals tend to be fond of the saturation characteristics of analog systems like tube amplifiers or tape machines, for creative purposes, but not for fidelity. We like the sound of an electric guitar through a tube amp because it imparts a characteristic 'warm' harmonic series to the signal, but you would not run a singer's voice through the same device and expect it to sound better. In addition to all of this stuff about dynamic range, SNR and the qualities of distortion imparted by different recording media, the frequency response of a system is an important consideration when discussing fidelity. We know that our hearing goes from about 20Hz to 20kHz; I won't go into this in much detail but this is essentially why Shannon-Nyquist theorem has the ideal sampling rate at 44.1kHz for an accurate representation of a signal; it's twice the range of our hearing (plus a little extra for the roll-offs of anti-aliasing filters and additional information). The frequency response of tape is, in a word, abysmal. Some tape machines - the kind of reel-to-reel devices you'd see in recording studios - have frequency response up to 20kHz, but only at low recording levels, meaning a compromise between ideal SNR and frequency response is necessary. Tape in recording studios can be run at different speeds (usually measured in inches-per-second or IPS); a higher tape speed yields better frequency response but obviously uses twice the amount of tape for a recording. Cassette tapes, you're usually looking at a frequency response upper limit of 15kHz, which is, like I said, dogshit. The reason digital systems were so quickly poo-poo'd by audiophiles on their introduction in the 1980s, was because the converters that took electrical signal and turned it into binary data or vice-versa (called Digital-Analog Converters or Analog-Digital Converters, DACs or ADCs), at the time, were in their infancy and generally considered poor quality. This was the bottleneck that made digital sound "cold and sterile" (not "flat and dull") at the time, but engineers have been working on it for a while and DACs/ADCs are basically perfect now. You might hear some analog purists going on about "staircases instead of waves" - referring to the fact that digital systems use discrete sampling values that, if you were disingenuous, you could plot onto a graph that looks like a staircase instead of a smooth waveform. This betrays a lack of understanding of the anti-aliasing filters present in digital systems, which smooth things back out. In CD quality resolution or higher, the output waveform of the digital system will look (and sound) exactly like its input; smooth waves. CD quality; 44.1kHz/16-bit, is basically perfect. This is a mote controversial, but I would even go so far as to say that for the vast majority of music produced and consumed today, MP3 is all you need. A properly-encoded 320kbps MP3 - ripped from a 44.1kHz/16-bit file, of a pop/EDM/metal/hip-hop tune that you're listening to on iPhone earbuds or your car stereo or the sound system in a nightclub - is functionally identical to its CD-quality counterpart. Some DJs consider themselves audiophiles, but I'm very adamant that anyone who tells you they can tell whether a DJ in a crowded club is playing WAVs or MP3s, is lying through their teeth. With all of that said, there is something to be said for the listening experience of an analog medium. This goes way beyond the simple fidelity of the system though, because we've had decades of proven research that digital systems are orders of magnitude more 'true' than the litany of ways analog systems can introduce distortion and noise. The experience of sitting down with a vinyl LP, physically removing it from the sleeve and admiring the large album artwork as you take in the recording, definitely is something that's been lost in the digital age. Additionally, some do prefer the 'warm' and 'punchy' characteristics of the actual recording medium. But to conflate this with actual audio quality is wrong. Digital is perfect. Even those plug-in tape saturation emulators you talked about are getting pretty bang-on, in TYOOL 2023. There's basically no reason anymore to own an actual tape machine unless you really like the workflow of recording to it and the distortion it imparts. Basically, go ahead and enjoy listening to your vinyl, or even the noisy-rear end cassette tape that your garage band recorded to on a TASCAM four-track (honestly, these things are dope). But don't try to spin it like you're listening to a better-quality medium. You like it because of its distortion. To be reductive, you like it because it sounds bad. Since I'm totally harshing on this thread's buzz with this reply, I'll close with this interesting quote from Brian Eno about distortion: quote:Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them. Mister Speaker fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Apr 27, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2023 22:37
|
|
|
Mister Speaker posted:Basically, go ahead and enjoy listening to your vinyl, or even the noisy-rear end cassette tape that your garage band recorded to on a TASCAM four-track (honestly, these things are dope). But don't try to spin it like you're listening to a better-quality medium. You like it because of its distortion. To be reductive, you like it because it sounds bad. that's not just reductive, it's wrong. first of all, when it comes to aesthetics in music, "bad" and "good" are highly subjective terms, not technical terms. but also even if you say that music can be measured against to various culturally defined standards of quality that can be used in an attempt to establish some degree of objectivity, the fact remains that distortion in and of itself has been considered a good and valuable sound, tool, texture etc. by a pretty wide range of professional musicians, composers, and producers for several decades at this point. but also you're missing what people like about it. if it truly "sounded bad" to people, they wouldn't spend much time listening to it. and yes part of the appeal is that it sounds like an earlier period of time (which isn't the same thing as sounding bad). but also part of it is simply the fuzziness of the sound itself. there are all kinds of artists that use tape and simulations of tape in various ways within the recording process to enhance and exaggerate what were once perceived as "flaws" of the medium. sometimes something that originally was a flaw can turn around and become something good. there's a legend that blue cheese was invented when a shepherd left a hunk of cheese in a cave and came back to find it moldy. he was so hungry he ate it anyway and it turned out to be delicious, and now people love it all over the world. even if physical tape ends up going away eventually, artists will be using various tools to simulate the sound of tape (and vinyl) distortion and saturation for decades or maybe even centuries to come, because to them it sounds good. even Eno's quote is, to me, a bit short sighted. yes, distortion was once the sound of something being too loud for the medium meant to carry it. but it's become such a common part of so many genres of music that it's now, in many contexts, a comforting sound. not a sound of excitement or of failure, but of warmth or memory. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Apr 28, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2023 03:30
|
|
|
Taste is subjective yeah, but it's also equally dumb to tell people that they can't say the "flaws" make it bad but the "flaws" actually make it better.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2023 04:51
|
|
|
syntaxfunction posted:Taste is subjective yeah, but it's also equally dumb to tell people that they can't say the "flaws" make it bad but the "flaws" actually make it better. if people enjoy the sound of the "flaws" then they are no longer really flaws if an artist is using distortion for effect and their audience enjoys the sound/aesthetics of that distortion, then it's not really a "flaw". especially all kinds of distortion is commonly used on purpose these days (and has been since the 60's) Earwicker fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Apr 28, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2023 18:08
|
|
|
I can't access youtube but someone should please embed FIREFLIES MADE OUT of DUST because it's naturally born cassette music from like 2010 and it's really great. It's "no-fi". 
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2023 18:18
|
|
|
Earwicker posted:[quote]sometimes something that originally was a flaw can turn around and become something good. there's a legend that blue cheese was invented when a shepherd left a hunk of cheese in a cave and came back to find it moldy. he was so hungry he ate it anyway and it turned out to be delicious, and now people love it all over the world. even if physical tape ends up going away eventually, artists will be using various tools to simulate the sound of tape (and vinyl) distortion and saturation for decades or maybe even centuries to come, because to them it sounds good. I already addressed this with my comment about plugging a guitar into an amp vs. running a voice through the same amp. Obviously we still use loads of old recording techniques and devices because we find the distortion they impart to sound pleasing, on parts of a recording. But with amp and tape emulations, we have a significantly higher degree of control over that distortion than ever before. We can choose exactly when and how to apply it, instead of being limited by the medium itself because it's the only way to record our entire mixdown. Do you think recording engineers in the 1960s wouldn't have jumped at digital if they had the opportunity? It's not wrong to say "you like it because it sounds bad." Like I said, it's reductive of the qualities that make a recording to tape what it is, but it's entirely correct that what you actually find pleasing about the sound of vinyl or tape is its distortion. You don't have pops and clicks and tape hiss when you listen to a band play live.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2023 20:38
|
|
|
I have a pandora subscription but cassettes are cool op I made a cassette copy of one of my last albums for a friend that wanted one and it was a neat experience
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2023 21:11
|
|
|
I have some tape things. And other things.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2023 21:13
|
|
|
Mister Speaker posted:It's not wrong to say "you like it because it sounds bad." Like I said, it's reductive of the qualities that make a recording to tape what it is, but it's entirely correct that what you actually find pleasing about the sound of vinyl or tape is its distortion. You don't have pops and clicks and tape hiss when you listen to a band play live. that depends on the genre and simulation. for example the mellotron is a highly valued instrument in many musical circles specifically because of it's distinct tape-based sound and the elements of distortion and warble that are often part of it. obviously a lot of people use software emulators instead of actual mellotrons but that's usually because the real ones are expensive and hard to get hold of these days and annoying to maintain. but bands that can get them, absolutely use them and many of the characteristics of the mellotron that were originally considered flaws are now what makes it valuable and sound distinct from the much more advanced and accurate samplers that have been invented since the mid 20th century. i dont think most people who use the mellotron or enjoy it's sound would call it "bad".
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2023 21:42
|
|
|
evobatman posted:I have some tape things. And other things. gently caress man... you seen the ebay prices on those D5s and D6s? A few years back I used to want a D5M. Recently started looking again and just gave up. Prices are too crazy, even for ones that need work. I did end up buying a refurbed radio-recording walkman though, but for 1/20th the price
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2023 21:57
|
|
|
evobatman posted:I have some tape things. And other things. Wtf, I have never seen a Discman like either of those
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2023 22:11
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 08:00 |
|
|
Earwicker posted:if people enjoy the sound of the "flaws" then they are no longer really flaws Yeah see again, you're discounting people who don't like it and do see it as flaws. You can like cassette and all the not flaws it has, but you should probably also consider that people are allowed different takes and some people think cassette sounds like poo poo. Personally I hate them because of the fragility, not sound reasons. And also honestly I just stream music now. They sound fine tho.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2023 22:24
|
|