You kids. Stop it with the crappy audio formats. What next, 8-track?
I bought hundreds of records in my younger days, when that was the only choice. I bought good equipment (subject to a student's budget), to get good sound, and not destroy the records with a bad needle. I took good care of my records, and used record cleaning equipment to keep them clean. The sound can be quite good, at least before the record wears out. But hisses are unavoidable. Pops develop, and you get so used to them that they seem to be part of the music. You have to change the record every 20 minutes. Scratches can ruin a record permanently. They are delicate. Records just totally suck, and the only good thing about them was the album cover.
Cassettes are even worse. Bad sound, bad durability, the mechanics are horrendous, with clicking of the mechanism often being audible, no album cover. And no ability to determine where a track starts. Even worse, hunting for the start of a track increases wear on the medium.
I don't understand the hatred of CDs. A truly excellent format. Crystal clear sound, orders of magnitude better resistance to physical decay and damage, longer-playing without intervention. And it is easy to rip them without DRM getting in the way! It bypasses streaming services, so hopefully the artist does a bit better. And in any case, I buy them at my local music store, so I support them (local musicians who run a record store on the side). (And after a purchase, I rip the CD and give it back to the store.)
I'm nearing 50 and I recently bought a record player and a handful of records together with a multi-tier display stand for my home, after not using one since about the advent of CD. I don't use it much, but when I do its a pure nostalgia moment; it takes me back to my teenage years, flipping over records in my room, the "warmer" sound, carefully removing and replacing records from their covers trying not to scratch them, slowing down the whole process of listening to music rather than just picking a music playlist on my phone and over-consuming.
CD's are much less nostalgic for me, even though the quality is good, they feel not only charmless but obsolelete, much in the way that DVD/BluRay do in the age of streaming.
Cassette tape is just a bridge too far; rapidly degrading sound quality, tape de-spooling and getting chewed up and having to yank it out of the player. It was handy in the age of Walkmans if you wanted to listen to music on the go.
I guess the point I am making is that ones level of nostalgia for these older formats is probably highly dependent on your age, memories etc.
I'm in my 30s and I was born in the right generation. CDs used to be cool and futuristic, and they're still a convenient way to handle music in a world where all software sucks and sending a file from one "personal" computer to another requires advanced networking knowledge
Records and tapes don't hit the nostalgia button for me
The things I don't like about CD ... the jewelled cases always coming apart at the hinges, the hinge pieces snapping off and you're left with two loose halves .. I mean cheap enough to keep a bunch of spares around I suppose, but it happens way too much.
Also when they do get scratched, they skip in a really awful "digital sounding" way, unlike vinyl which can be either a mild hiccup or bump, to downright comically burping their way to the end of the track or side. But you're right they were very ergonomic compared to what came before them, there's no doubt like DVD that came a little later they were a complete game changer.
(1) Pre-recorded tapes are cheap and abundant. Quality really varies. My son gets any music he likes to play in his car, I collect anything prerecorded on metal or chrome for the audiophile value. (There are some recordings I listen to because I like the recording, like a tape of Tibetan chanting that sounds like instrumental Frank Zappa)
(2) Tape peaked around 1990 as CD encroached on it. The best tapes and tape equipment sound better than most people who lived through the period remember and certainly better than the mediocre mechanisms and terrible tapes (e.g. ‘type zero’) that are made today. Good chrome tapes don’t have particularly offensive hiss even without noise reduction and are somewhat affordable although metals are out of reach for most people today.
I lived through that period, too. Tape was never a long lasting medium. As you listened to your favourite albums over time, the tape would stretch and the must would sound different over time. Especially if you left them inside a vehicle where they overheated. It was inevitable. And there was the horrible warble of the batteries in a walkman when they were getting weak. By the time 1990 came around portable CD players were available, and a few years later when anti-skip CD players they were far better audio quality than portable tape players ever were.
What I really wanted in the late '90s or early '00s was a DVD MP3 player. Then I could've carrier my entire music collection around with me.
But who was listening to 40hrs of Music really? Was it more scrolling and skipping and looking on the display and not push the play button, looking out of the train window and just listening to the song of the artist?
Most pre-recorded tapes were as cheap as possible and if you left them in the car player on a hot day, the tape would stretch -- I used to buy the record version and tape it to a TDK SA-90 (chrome) tape which was of much higher quality and thus more resilient and I could usually get 2 records on it (one album per side). If the tape ever got damaged, it could be re-taped from the record (plus the artwork/booklet was always far better on the record than a pre-recorded tape).
Did the same thing with CDs until MP3 players became prevalent.
Oh lord. Inevitably playing Barbara Streisand's greatest hits in my grandpa's light blue Dodge Dart.
While DAT was an expensive and equivalent stepping-tone, CDs were such a vast improvement because they delivered human perceptible Nyquist bandwidth-complete reproduction (PCM 44.1 kHz @ 16-bit 2 CH stereo). And still audiophiles and other sorts of liars insist on making absurd claims without evidence or demonstration that they "can tell the difference" between CDs and higher sample rates because it's simply beyond the laws of physics and limits of human perception. 44.1 kHz @ 65536 levels of sample choices is plenty. If anything, better quality DACs and preamps/amps would be more beneficial.
Its about nostalgia. And to learn something. How mechanics have worked to produce the sound.
CD sound is way too perfect, to clear. I cant listen to Jimi Hendrix on CD.
A short sightend person seeing the world a bit differently, so much bright christmas trees instead of traffic lights....
I feel like the essential property of the resurgence of tapes and records is simple joy and fascination with the technology and its aesthetics. As such, it bypasses any tests of practicality or superiority.
We don't need to talk about audiophiles since they've always been insane.
8 track sucks butt for other reasons. Shit durability and not reliable at all. Cassette tape but worse in every way, there's nothing really to look at, and frankly a brief blip in the story of home media.
But reaching back even further, reel to reel is now prized and expensive. Simple, reliable, and visually stunning.
These things aren't competing with Spotify or whatever at all. They're enjoyed alongside.
I don't know who you're thinking of that hates CDs. They're maybe not catching as much interest, but hate? Not seeing it.
> I don't understand the hatred of CDs. A truly excellent format. Crystal clear sound, orders of magnitude better resistance to physical decay and damage, longer-playing without intervention. And it is easy to rip them without DRM getting in the way!
Same. 16-bit 44.1 kHz stereo is quite something: the CD was released in 1982. I don't know how long it took to develop before that but we're talking 42+ years now. Nearly half a century.
I both pay for a Qobuz subscription (lossless music streaming), which allows to buy lossless songs and I ripped my very own CD collection (I kept the physical CDs though).
There's an entire generation of people raised on lossy MP3s and lossy Bluetooth willing to die on the hill that "lossless CD-quality music is unnecessary". I had mp3 files back in the Napster days. What was a HDD's size back then? 8 GB? Internet connection was some DSL variant.
So, yup, with 8 GB HDD and a slow-as-molasses Internet connection and a computer from 1999, CD-quality lossless files were a bit too heavy (and anyway back then we didn't know yet how to bit-perfectly rip an audio CD).
Don't get me wrong: I've got good memories of Napster and I even still have a few impossible-to-find low quality mp3 files from back then: obscure mix aired one on obscure radio stations etc.
But we're a quarter of a century later: my SSD is not 8 GB anymore but 2 TB. And Internet is fiber to the home.
In other words: no, losslessly streaming and storing files from a format that is nearly half a century old is not a problem.
I'm done arguing with these people who believe it's stupid to listen to lossless music files: they're probably the same people who listen to old cassettes connected to soundbars.
I prefer my lossless music (either streamed over the Internet or from one of my computers) on a pair of Dali Epicon 6 speakers I bought used (video is not mine but speakers are the same):
I have a 1994 Jeep Wrangler. I have a fancy (for 1994) Sony cassette deck that was sitting in my basement for actual decades. My plan was to install the fab 90s tape deck in the fab 90s Jeep.
Unfortunately rubber doesn't do well sitting around for decades, Jeep or Sony. Lucky for me I was able to locate a new-old-stock tape transport on ebay and swap out the mechanical bits.
Result - all the $0.50 thrift store tapes I want to play stashed in the center console where nobody wants to steal them any more. Favorites are the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, Eiffel 95 and The Doors movie soundtrack.
I was a tape guy, I couldn't afford vinyl so taping records and the radio was my thing. The shortcomings of the Compact Cassette format are not particularly bothersome in an old Jeep, but I also strapped a Bluetooth receiver on the back so I can stream audio like a not-luddite.
Its not hard to find a good deck.
Keep in mind the devices are 40 and more years old.
Cleaning and replacing belts are neccessary, also demagnetizing and calibration.
There are tons of advisories and videos about that on the net.
Also a lot of service manuals are still available.
I got 4 usable decks here, bought on ebay for some bucks.
Sure, some models are overpriced or rare, like the Nakamichi Dragon which is a ultra high end model that brings no trade-off to modern made music on such cassettes.
Other models are expensive because there are collectors like me that want to complete their rack with a deck or record player.
If you got a deck, forget about purchasing newly made cassettes, i bought some of them, all crap.
The reason behind is that the materials gotten rare and industry tried to replace it.
I buy old TDK SA90 or so on the flea market. Those folks survive years of glovebox heat and rucksack-storage of teenagers.
And dont buy them on ebay, the same overpriced bingo-bongo there.
I bought Sony TC-KE300 deck a year ago for like $100! Sweet looking, latest (2000) tech like Dolby and HX-Pro. Had my fun changing the belts, adjusting head azimuth using oscilloscope and greasing gears. Now I'm hoarding sealed chrome cassettes - High Bias ones.
And snatched Sony Walkman WM-FX675 with remote for pennies, perks of not sleeping at 1am :)))) Belt and new gumstick battery was all it needed to shine!
Just go get an old car tape deck from the junk yard. A lot of them will have a built in amp, RCA output, and run on 12v, and is very compact. My garage stereo for years was an old Blaupunkt CD player with an aux in. I mounted it on the bottom of a shelf and it took up no space. I just used an old wall wart to feed it 12v. It put out lots of volume, even though the wall wart was like 12v 1a. This whole setup will cost you like $5-10. I've seen yards that have piles of aftermarket decks just sitting on a shelf. You'll be able to find even more tape decks if you look for OEM units.
I have seen a review, its a cheap device and not comparable to the masterpieces of Sony, Aiwa and other brands back then.
Your used deck probably needs servicing like belt or idler rollers.
Everything is fixable in such old devices, the Fiio-stuff can only be thrown away because of lack of parts and service manuals.
Get an old Walkman, there are many revised ones for sale, in every price range.
They will sound better and will run some more years as the cheap china crap.
I honestly can't see the appeal because tapes generally sucked. I prefer records or PlexAmp/Foobar2000/Tidal. If people in their 20's today want to pretend to time travel to 1984, more power to them.
I thought about getting into tapes about two years ago when I discovered Techmoan but I got into minidiscs instead. Then my son got his '96 Buick which had a busted CD and Tape player, he made a few tries and finally got an OEM stereo with tape.
Prerecorded tapes are easy to find and cheap but I have struggled to find a record deck, I think they are harder to find than just a few years ago. I've made several attempts locally and on Ebay and I haven't found one that works 100% but I do have an unusual dual-deck three-head model that has one deck that seems to be OK so long as I don't reverse direction. Prerecorded Chrome tapes sound really great on it and I got a 10-pack of deadstock tapes to record on, I might give it a try tonight.
It's disgusting though to see this thing sell for a price that could have gotten you a decent three-head deck back in the day
MiniDisc is such a beautiful format that never took off in the US. I picked a used one up cheaply around 2001, then bought another (this one with MD-LP mode) a couple of years later. My first MP3 player was the original iPod nano, ca. 2007(?).
Advantages: it's in a hard shell that has a 3.5"-floppy-like retracting shutter, so you have to work to damage the medium; it's essentially infinitely recordable; it's trivial to make mix discs (and to rearrange the tracks without rerecording); most of the portable recorder models had line, mic, and optical digital inputs, so you could record (in reverse order here) straight from CD (and from digital optical outputs on PC's), or from an in-person interview, or the ever-popular soundboard recording bootleg.
Disadvantages: expensive, and few people had them so you couldn't count on being able to give one to a friend. Making a fully digital copy required some tricks (SCMS defeater, pro gear, or a very specific combination of decks). A bit-perfect copy could only be made with that very specific combination of equipment (MDS-W1 + anything that could TOC-clone, or 2+ of certain pro models).
Good blank tapes are maybe $3 now, you can buy minidiscs from Japan for about $1.5 which are not blank (have some Japanese rando's random recordings) but are perfect to re-record over.
I have two MD decks and a portable recorder which is unfortunately broken because it is possible to record via USB with the portable recorder (NetMD) and have perfect metadatqaa.
Never had a NetMD; the metadata would have been nice, but SonicStage was so hated that I never tried.
Still have a couple of unopened MD-80's I bought in the UK ca. 2002. Back then every recorder you bought in the US was someone divorcing themselves from MD, so I ended up with like 30-40 used, which is plenty. It's not like most of my cassettes were all that well labeled anyway.
What are you calling "good" blank tapes? Chrome? "Metal"? If you had the right setup you could get good results from chrome and very good from "metal", but for half the price per disc MD blows them both away. Too bad the MZ-1 was such a weak device. No battery life, heavy, bad ATRAC chip for recording (and all the reviewers could tell how bad it was because they could hear how much better prerecorded MD's were that didn't have to be real-time in their encoding).
I dont see that. Vinyl records are now made for old dudes like me that finally can afford the long wanted records the pocket money wasnt enough for back then.
It is a hype for hipsters and collectors now earning a good salary and the industry is targeting just them and not the broad mass of music consumers.
Modern, electronic made music, is not worth bought on vinyl. You get a digital file pressed onto vinyl.
No Studer tape machine, no valve-driven amplifier and no quailified sound engineer anymore, just soulless bits and bytes.
Most of modern "artists" produce quick songs, using pre-recorded drum-tracks run by a computer and some of them not even master an analogue instrument like a guitar. Voices are compressed and pitched.
For that i can simply switch on every streaming service, its not worth buying it.
You kids. Stop it with the crappy audio formats. What next, 8-track?
I bought hundreds of records in my younger days, when that was the only choice. I bought good equipment (subject to a student's budget), to get good sound, and not destroy the records with a bad needle. I took good care of my records, and used record cleaning equipment to keep them clean. The sound can be quite good, at least before the record wears out. But hisses are unavoidable. Pops develop, and you get so used to them that they seem to be part of the music. You have to change the record every 20 minutes. Scratches can ruin a record permanently. They are delicate. Records just totally suck, and the only good thing about them was the album cover.
Cassettes are even worse. Bad sound, bad durability, the mechanics are horrendous, with clicking of the mechanism often being audible, no album cover. And no ability to determine where a track starts. Even worse, hunting for the start of a track increases wear on the medium.
I don't understand the hatred of CDs. A truly excellent format. Crystal clear sound, orders of magnitude better resistance to physical decay and damage, longer-playing without intervention. And it is easy to rip them without DRM getting in the way! It bypasses streaming services, so hopefully the artist does a bit better. And in any case, I buy them at my local music store, so I support them (local musicians who run a record store on the side). (And after a purchase, I rip the CD and give it back to the store.)
I'm nearing 50 and I recently bought a record player and a handful of records together with a multi-tier display stand for my home, after not using one since about the advent of CD. I don't use it much, but when I do its a pure nostalgia moment; it takes me back to my teenage years, flipping over records in my room, the "warmer" sound, carefully removing and replacing records from their covers trying not to scratch them, slowing down the whole process of listening to music rather than just picking a music playlist on my phone and over-consuming.
CD's are much less nostalgic for me, even though the quality is good, they feel not only charmless but obsolelete, much in the way that DVD/BluRay do in the age of streaming.
Cassette tape is just a bridge too far; rapidly degrading sound quality, tape de-spooling and getting chewed up and having to yank it out of the player. It was handy in the age of Walkmans if you wanted to listen to music on the go.
I guess the point I am making is that ones level of nostalgia for these older formats is probably highly dependent on your age, memories etc.
I'm in my 30s and I was born in the right generation. CDs used to be cool and futuristic, and they're still a convenient way to handle music in a world where all software sucks and sending a file from one "personal" computer to another requires advanced networking knowledge
Records and tapes don't hit the nostalgia button for me
The things I don't like about CD ... the jewelled cases always coming apart at the hinges, the hinge pieces snapping off and you're left with two loose halves .. I mean cheap enough to keep a bunch of spares around I suppose, but it happens way too much.
Also when they do get scratched, they skip in a really awful "digital sounding" way, unlike vinyl which can be either a mild hiccup or bump, to downright comically burping their way to the end of the track or side. But you're right they were very ergonomic compared to what came before them, there's no doubt like DVD that came a little later they were a complete game changer.
Two things.
(1) Pre-recorded tapes are cheap and abundant. Quality really varies. My son gets any music he likes to play in his car, I collect anything prerecorded on metal or chrome for the audiophile value. (There are some recordings I listen to because I like the recording, like a tape of Tibetan chanting that sounds like instrumental Frank Zappa)
(2) Tape peaked around 1990 as CD encroached on it. The best tapes and tape equipment sound better than most people who lived through the period remember and certainly better than the mediocre mechanisms and terrible tapes (e.g. ‘type zero’) that are made today. Good chrome tapes don’t have particularly offensive hiss even without noise reduction and are somewhat affordable although metals are out of reach for most people today.
I lived through that period, too. Tape was never a long lasting medium. As you listened to your favourite albums over time, the tape would stretch and the must would sound different over time. Especially if you left them inside a vehicle where they overheated. It was inevitable. And there was the horrible warble of the batteries in a walkman when they were getting weak. By the time 1990 came around portable CD players were available, and a few years later when anti-skip CD players they were far better audio quality than portable tape players ever were.
What I really wanted in the late '90s or early '00s was a DVD MP3 player. Then I could've carrier my entire music collection around with me.
But who was listening to 40hrs of Music really? Was it more scrolling and skipping and looking on the display and not push the play button, looking out of the train window and just listening to the song of the artist?
Most pre-recorded tapes were as cheap as possible and if you left them in the car player on a hot day, the tape would stretch -- I used to buy the record version and tape it to a TDK SA-90 (chrome) tape which was of much higher quality and thus more resilient and I could usually get 2 records on it (one album per side). If the tape ever got damaged, it could be re-taped from the record (plus the artwork/booklet was always far better on the record than a pre-recorded tape).
Did the same thing with CDs until MP3 players became prevalent.
> 8-track
Oh lord. Inevitably playing Barbara Streisand's greatest hits in my grandpa's light blue Dodge Dart.
While DAT was an expensive and equivalent stepping-tone, CDs were such a vast improvement because they delivered human perceptible Nyquist bandwidth-complete reproduction (PCM 44.1 kHz @ 16-bit 2 CH stereo). And still audiophiles and other sorts of liars insist on making absurd claims without evidence or demonstration that they "can tell the difference" between CDs and higher sample rates because it's simply beyond the laws of physics and limits of human perception. 44.1 kHz @ 65536 levels of sample choices is plenty. If anything, better quality DACs and preamps/amps would be more beneficial.
Its about nostalgia. And to learn something. How mechanics have worked to produce the sound. CD sound is way too perfect, to clear. I cant listen to Jimi Hendrix on CD. A short sightend person seeing the world a bit differently, so much bright christmas trees instead of traffic lights....
Hey old person. Stop it with the complaining.
I like my vinyl records because I think the tech is neat and like them. That’s all you need.
I feel like the essential property of the resurgence of tapes and records is simple joy and fascination with the technology and its aesthetics. As such, it bypasses any tests of practicality or superiority.
We don't need to talk about audiophiles since they've always been insane.
8 track sucks butt for other reasons. Shit durability and not reliable at all. Cassette tape but worse in every way, there's nothing really to look at, and frankly a brief blip in the story of home media.
But reaching back even further, reel to reel is now prized and expensive. Simple, reliable, and visually stunning.
These things aren't competing with Spotify or whatever at all. They're enjoyed alongside.
I don't know who you're thinking of that hates CDs. They're maybe not catching as much interest, but hate? Not seeing it.
> I don't understand the hatred of CDs. A truly excellent format. Crystal clear sound, orders of magnitude better resistance to physical decay and damage, longer-playing without intervention. And it is easy to rip them without DRM getting in the way!
Same. 16-bit 44.1 kHz stereo is quite something: the CD was released in 1982. I don't know how long it took to develop before that but we're talking 42+ years now. Nearly half a century.
I both pay for a Qobuz subscription (lossless music streaming), which allows to buy lossless songs and I ripped my very own CD collection (I kept the physical CDs though).
There's an entire generation of people raised on lossy MP3s and lossy Bluetooth willing to die on the hill that "lossless CD-quality music is unnecessary". I had mp3 files back in the Napster days. What was a HDD's size back then? 8 GB? Internet connection was some DSL variant.
So, yup, with 8 GB HDD and a slow-as-molasses Internet connection and a computer from 1999, CD-quality lossless files were a bit too heavy (and anyway back then we didn't know yet how to bit-perfectly rip an audio CD).
Don't get me wrong: I've got good memories of Napster and I even still have a few impossible-to-find low quality mp3 files from back then: obscure mix aired one on obscure radio stations etc.
But we're a quarter of a century later: my SSD is not 8 GB anymore but 2 TB. And Internet is fiber to the home.
In other words: no, losslessly streaming and storing files from a format that is nearly half a century old is not a problem.
I'm done arguing with these people who believe it's stupid to listen to lossless music files: they're probably the same people who listen to old cassettes connected to soundbars.
I prefer my lossless music (either streamed over the Internet or from one of my computers) on a pair of Dali Epicon 6 speakers I bought used (video is not mine but speakers are the same):
https://youtu.be/ZQ_A4KOPuJc
YMMV.
I have a 1994 Jeep Wrangler. I have a fancy (for 1994) Sony cassette deck that was sitting in my basement for actual decades. My plan was to install the fab 90s tape deck in the fab 90s Jeep.
Unfortunately rubber doesn't do well sitting around for decades, Jeep or Sony. Lucky for me I was able to locate a new-old-stock tape transport on ebay and swap out the mechanical bits.
Result - all the $0.50 thrift store tapes I want to play stashed in the center console where nobody wants to steal them any more. Favorites are the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, Eiffel 95 and The Doors movie soundtrack.
I was a tape guy, I couldn't afford vinyl so taping records and the radio was my thing. The shortcomings of the Compact Cassette format are not particularly bothersome in an old Jeep, but I also strapped a Bluetooth receiver on the back so I can stream audio like a not-luddite.
</old>
Its not hard to find a good deck. Keep in mind the devices are 40 and more years old. Cleaning and replacing belts are neccessary, also demagnetizing and calibration. There are tons of advisories and videos about that on the net. Also a lot of service manuals are still available. I got 4 usable decks here, bought on ebay for some bucks. Sure, some models are overpriced or rare, like the Nakamichi Dragon which is a ultra high end model that brings no trade-off to modern made music on such cassettes. Other models are expensive because there are collectors like me that want to complete their rack with a deck or record player. If you got a deck, forget about purchasing newly made cassettes, i bought some of them, all crap. The reason behind is that the materials gotten rare and industry tried to replace it. I buy old TDK SA90 or so on the flea market. Those folks survive years of glovebox heat and rucksack-storage of teenagers. And dont buy them on ebay, the same overpriced bingo-bongo there.
True!
I bought Sony TC-KE300 deck a year ago for like $100! Sweet looking, latest (2000) tech like Dolby and HX-Pro. Had my fun changing the belts, adjusting head azimuth using oscilloscope and greasing gears. Now I'm hoarding sealed chrome cassettes - High Bias ones.
And snatched Sony Walkman WM-FX675 with remote for pennies, perks of not sleeping at 1am :)))) Belt and new gumstick battery was all it needed to shine!
Just go get an old car tape deck from the junk yard. A lot of them will have a built in amp, RCA output, and run on 12v, and is very compact. My garage stereo for years was an old Blaupunkt CD player with an aux in. I mounted it on the bottom of a shelf and it took up no space. I just used an old wall wart to feed it 12v. It put out lots of volume, even though the wall wart was like 12v 1a. This whole setup will cost you like $5-10. I've seen yards that have piles of aftermarket decks just sitting on a shelf. You'll be able to find even more tape decks if you look for OEM units.
Has anyone used something like the FiiO CP13, I'm looking to play back and digitise some old cassette recordings.
I've tried buying some old cassette decks from ebay before, but had problems with it starting to chew the tapes, so would prefer to buy something new.
It looks like with the FiiO you can tweak the speed/azimuth.
I have seen a review, its a cheap device and not comparable to the masterpieces of Sony, Aiwa and other brands back then. Your used deck probably needs servicing like belt or idler rollers. Everything is fixable in such old devices, the Fiio-stuff can only be thrown away because of lack of parts and service manuals. Get an old Walkman, there are many revised ones for sale, in every price range. They will sound better and will run some more years as the cheap china crap.
I'm old but don't miss either records or tapes at all. Those gorgeous album covers however....
https://archive.ph/ETIxC
Hides my Nakamichi DRAGON
I honestly can't see the appeal because tapes generally sucked. I prefer records or PlexAmp/Foobar2000/Tidal. If people in their 20's today want to pretend to time travel to 1984, more power to them.
I thought about getting into tapes about two years ago when I discovered Techmoan but I got into minidiscs instead. Then my son got his '96 Buick which had a busted CD and Tape player, he made a few tries and finally got an OEM stereo with tape.
Prerecorded tapes are easy to find and cheap but I have struggled to find a record deck, I think they are harder to find than just a few years ago. I've made several attempts locally and on Ebay and I haven't found one that works 100% but I do have an unusual dual-deck three-head model that has one deck that seems to be OK so long as I don't reverse direction. Prerecorded Chrome tapes sound really great on it and I got a 10-pack of deadstock tapes to record on, I might give it a try tonight.
It's disgusting though to see this thing sell for a price that could have gotten you a decent three-head deck back in the day
https://teacusa.com/products/w-1200-dual-cassette-deck
which has the same mechanism as all the other tape decks made today
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-last-cassette-pl...
which is simple and reliable but sounds awful.
MiniDisc is such a beautiful format that never took off in the US. I picked a used one up cheaply around 2001, then bought another (this one with MD-LP mode) a couple of years later. My first MP3 player was the original iPod nano, ca. 2007(?).
Advantages: it's in a hard shell that has a 3.5"-floppy-like retracting shutter, so you have to work to damage the medium; it's essentially infinitely recordable; it's trivial to make mix discs (and to rearrange the tracks without rerecording); most of the portable recorder models had line, mic, and optical digital inputs, so you could record (in reverse order here) straight from CD (and from digital optical outputs on PC's), or from an in-person interview, or the ever-popular soundboard recording bootleg.
Disadvantages: expensive, and few people had them so you couldn't count on being able to give one to a friend. Making a fully digital copy required some tricks (SCMS defeater, pro gear, or a very specific combination of decks). A bit-perfect copy could only be made with that very specific combination of equipment (MDS-W1 + anything that could TOC-clone, or 2+ of certain pro models).
Good blank tapes are maybe $3 now, you can buy minidiscs from Japan for about $1.5 which are not blank (have some Japanese rando's random recordings) but are perfect to re-record over.
I have two MD decks and a portable recorder which is unfortunately broken because it is possible to record via USB with the portable recorder (NetMD) and have perfect metadatqaa.
Never had a NetMD; the metadata would have been nice, but SonicStage was so hated that I never tried.
Still have a couple of unopened MD-80's I bought in the UK ca. 2002. Back then every recorder you bought in the US was someone divorcing themselves from MD, so I ended up with like 30-40 used, which is plenty. It's not like most of my cassettes were all that well labeled anyway.
What are you calling "good" blank tapes? Chrome? "Metal"? If you had the right setup you could get good results from chrome and very good from "metal", but for half the price per disc MD blows them both away. Too bad the MZ-1 was such a weak device. No battery life, heavy, bad ATRAC chip for recording (and all the reviewers could tell how bad it was because they could hear how much better prerecorded MD's were that didn't have to be real-time in their encoding).
Maybe vinyl will get cheaper.
I dont see that. Vinyl records are now made for old dudes like me that finally can afford the long wanted records the pocket money wasnt enough for back then. It is a hype for hipsters and collectors now earning a good salary and the industry is targeting just them and not the broad mass of music consumers. Modern, electronic made music, is not worth bought on vinyl. You get a digital file pressed onto vinyl. No Studer tape machine, no valve-driven amplifier and no quailified sound engineer anymore, just soulless bits and bytes. Most of modern "artists" produce quick songs, using pre-recorded drum-tracks run by a computer and some of them not even master an analogue instrument like a guitar. Voices are compressed and pitched. For that i can simply switch on every streaming service, its not worth buying it.