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93 Comments
- Fanj, on 10/12/2007, -2/+40Dissing vinyl isn't cool.
- LostRiot, on 10/12/2007, -6/+38it'll be like vinyl, 5 years time they'll be cool again and people will use the mp3's on their pc's to make mix tapes.
Mark my words. - mindsnare, on 10/12/2007, -2/+30I'm positive I still see audio tapes for sale at some service stations.
- Homunculiheaded, on 10/12/2007, -0/+28andydumi,
except that tape won't actually be around forever. They physically deteriorate, anyone with a car full of tapes knows this as their favorite teenage mix tape slowly sounds more and more bizarre. Magnetic tapes degrade rather rapidly over time and are not a good medium for archival storage (not that CDs are either). As a librarian who has also spent time working in archival environments we still don't really have an answer for how to store digital media. LOCKSS is our best bet so far (lots of copies keeps stuff safe.)
BTW for anyone interested in the beauty of decaying magnetic tape medium, you should listen to William Basinski's 'Disintegration Loops', absolutely amazing recording of magnetic tape media deteriorating in realtime (although NOT cassette tapes). - AllnightChemist, on 10/12/2007, -2/+29Note: This is the "final" end of the cassette. Not like all the other times they ended.
- scrimaxinc, on 10/12/2007, -10/+37hahah pickmeup truck
- n8r0n, on 10/12/2007, -7/+31What is this "Cassette Tape" you speak of?
Is it similar to duct tape or scotch tape? - jawbreaker4fs, on 10/12/2007, -1/+24It's about as "final" as the final in Final Fantasy.
- bozzel, on 10/12/2007, -5/+25I can't understand your usage of anymore.
- kh99, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17This story is continued on side 2...please flip the tape now.
- ExSlashdotter, on 10/12/2007, -9/+26I love scotch. Scotchy, scotch, scotch. Here it goes down, down into my belly...
- Homunculiheaded, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17Otto, analog goes capture the sound better: http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/question487.htm
this sound be pretty obivious just from knowing the difference between what analog/digital mean.
The problem with cassettes is that they are an all around inferior medium to either vinyl or cd. They have a worse audio quailty compared to a CD, you have to rewind and fastforward to get to each song, etc.
The other issue is that vinyl lasts a lot longer on the self then tape does. The reason vinyl is still popular is because, as a medium, it has some really great advantages that have not yet been completely surpassed by newer media. Despite all the static there is a richness to vinyl that even an awesome CD still can't quite beat. Vinyl isn't just still around for nostalgia. Cassetes, like 8-tracks before them will probably not make a revival because they're a pretty crappy medium that sounds better transfered to digital. - Fanj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15i also agree with this comment too
- hifiDesign, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16I believe most of these "service stations" you speak of happen to be called "truck stops" in the vernacular. Please refer to Dumbledorito's comment @ top.
/sarcasm - RedStateRetard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1330 years ago, record companies were blaming blank cassettes for declining music sales. They wanted to eliminate them or add a special fee to each cassette sold.
The real culprit for declining music sales...crappy music and Pacman gobbling all that teenage money.
MTV won back the teenage market and made music "cool" again. The pendulum swung back and Video arcades died out and Atari went out of business.
30 years later? The pendulum has swung back to the video game side... - andydumi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Libraries in the US still have a good amount of tapes where stuff is archived, including lectures, speeches and whatnot... They will be around forever, as its time consuming and cost inefficient to move everything to CD.
- meuge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Can this also be the final end of grammatic redundancy... please?
- hifiDesign, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11I could see not having a PC being a pretty limiting factor in getting an MP3 player...
- dahitman2389, on 10/12/2007, -12/+22Lol, how can you not laugh and enjoy the truth of Dumbledorito's comment?
- Otto, on 10/12/2007, -7/+16True. And they'll claim they sound better because "they're analog" or some other ridiculous nonsense.
- Fanj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8C120 cassettes, no? 60 mins a side but more likely to get chewed.
- seanherman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8there's a rich history of self released, hand crafted cassette releases by underground artists throughout the 80s and 90s. Unlike vinyl, they are easy to mass produce with cheap materials, which made them ideal for the underground and independent artists. Vinyl requires numerous test pressings, special facilities, and specialized machines. With the rise of pcs and lowered costs of cds, cdrs have mostly replaced cassettes for these tiny independent artists. Limited runs will usually run with a circulation somewhere between 30-300 for the most part. It's a really healthy, exciting scene that is as healthy as ever. I don't see a big reason to keep using cassettes (or 3" cdrs for that matter, which are also used), but some of these smaller labels enjoy the format. It might be overly nostalgic, but they do have a certain charm. For those of us who still value packaging, limited, self released and underground label scenes, cassettes are certainly absurd, but are still very much alive and well.
- shartman, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9The only reason that cassette tapes are still around can be summed up in two words. "Truck Stops".
- spudnic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Cassette players have had the ability to automatically fast forward to the next song by listening for the few seconds gap between tracks for years now
- derkles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5It is worth noting there are a few dozen labels still producing cassette releases. Most notable are the noise and avant-folk-jazz-new-weird-america genres. I buy about 50-75 new cassettes a year from touring artists. Call me weird, but I have a ton more respect for a band who has a vinyl or cassette release.
- seanherman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Why the need to purge the format? If people enjoy using it, then they'll continue to use it and produce new music on it. I don't think anyone in the world would ever claim that cassettes are worth keeping around for their impressive sound quality. Some fools use that as a justification for vinyl, but most of us wouldn't ever pretend to hear a difference. We enjoy vinyl because it's nostalgic, we enjoy the larger art, it's durability as a format, it's collectability and it's rich history. Why don't we mock new cars with nostalgic body designs, or those people who enjoy renovating and driving classic cars?
Despite it's elitism, the tech crowd isn't above this sort of fun, fanciful nostalgia. How many of you are still playing NES games? Building PCs in NES cases? Buying a new water cooled, over clocked, $600 video card for a 2% performance increase? - antlerboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4i still make mix tapes out of my mp3s. its a lot more personal of a gift than a burned cd ever was. plus it has that magical nostalgia effect.
- jawbreaker4fs, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10@Otto
You're retarded. Vinyl has smooth, physical waveforms as opposed to CDs which have discretized transformations. It's pretty damn obvious that vinyl is a superior format in terms of sound quality. - rickremixx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4VINYL FOREVER !!!!
- idonthack, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@Fanj
I always listen to music in albums. IMO each album is a complete work of art, and if you only listen to part of it you are only getting part of the message the artist meant to convey. - jimmiss, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Cracker (pejorative), an abusive or slang term for a white person."
- Wikipedia - JimJones, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4the underground noise scene begs to differ
http://hansonrecords.net sells ***** of cassettes - uppedbyhiggins, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3???
You had me at the first part...but lost me at the second. - spudnic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yeah, because it took decades for DVD to replace VHS.
Not claiming that the jump from DVD to HD-DVD/blu-ray is as big, but decades is a bit of a exaggeration. - xmod3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It will be decades before Blu-ray and/or HD-DVD replace DVD's. And buy that time, we'll all be downloading full-length movies.
Blu-ray is already obsolete! - Iolite, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I have to agree with Homunculiheaded. For as much retro charm or practicality as cassette tapes may (or may not) have, they really do not handle wear and tear very well. Back when I was young and dinosaurs roamed the earth, we used cassette tapes as our primary audio media, and they weren't that great. The exposed ribbon could get damaged, tapes could get 'eaten' by players, and the ribbon wore down easily. CDs, on the other hand, retain much better sound quality over repeated usage.
Although I will have to say, it was a lot easier carrying cassettes around than records. - spudnic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/drives/7a8d/
- diggdong, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Oh, the good old days, spending 2hrs taking apart the stereo, recutting the tape, trying to tape the tape to the tape, trying to screw the cover back together, playing to find out the new dubbed copy of NWA was taped on the wrong side.
- rocketdog7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2i agree, four track and eight track recorders are the best way to learn how to record and save your song writing ideas. although garageband is now my (unlimited) "four track"
- betobeto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2What got to me on cassette tapes, more than the finicky cassettes themselves, is how easily the mechanism on tape decks can break and how hard it can be to fix them. Ever tried opening/fixing a tape deck? Those must be mechanics made in hell, so intricate and complex unless you make a living fixing them. That said, that hasn't stopped Nakamichi decks (perhaps the finest example when it comes to cassette decks) to still command top prices on eBay, expensive repairs/hard to find parts notwithstanding.
- ccyr85, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Chuck Klosterman also has a good rant about that in Sex, Drugs, and Coco Puffs
- laterallateral, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Great book about that: Thurston Moore's "Mixtape"
See "The Breakup Mix", "The Roadtrip Mix"
Very entertaining book. - laterallateral, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3LostRiot is right.
The tapes will be back into fad again. I see this starting up, already.
Some groups belonging to niche musical genres, mostly ones identifying with the DIY and LOFI ethos such as
extreme noise, grindcore and art-punk bands continue to favor cassettes as their primary release medium for a variety
of reasons. Some value it's low quality as an aesthetic, others utilize the cassette in order to provide their audience with
what they believe to be a more open, public-friendly forum, due to the technology's relative lack of judicial moderation since it's
fall into obsolescence. These bands often encourage their audience to freely distribute copies, create samples from and splice
the tapes to create new material/mash ups witch is then viewed as a continuation of their work.
Which leads up to what many believe to be a new future for the cassette tape. In my opinion, the technology has always been
slowly making a shift from recording media towards it's employ as a genuine instrument. This becomes obvious when considering
festivals such as Bent, Make:Faire and the Chicago CJ Championship all of witch focus to varying degrees on magnetic tapes and
related audio equipment as sound generators.
From that optic, tapes appear to be alive and well. - jawbreaker4fs, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3You must be a genius. Who else would have thought an outdated technology would no longer have widespread use? You should apply for a MacArthur grant.
/sarcasm - antlerboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2popfrogs: who DOEN"T own a cassette player? and if you think you dont... check the back of your closet, ask a friend for one or find one laying on the side of the street. they are everywhere, i swear. you just need to have the desire to look.
mix tape trading is an art form that is alive and well, my friend... - Gryffydd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Actually, the jump from DVD to Blu-Ray/HDDVD is much smaller than the one from VHS to DVD, and that's the problem. VHS >> DVD was a huge, huge improvement in viewing experience in every way--no rewinding, vastly better audio and video etc. DVD >> HDVD/Blue-Ray gets you better picture, but only if you have a TV that can handle it, and better audio, but only if you've got the system to handle it.
- Dumbledorito, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Wow. How was what I said stereotypical? I heard an interview with Garth Brooks and other country music stars, and they were being asked why they still released songs on cassettes, and THEY were the ones saying many of their fans still have cassette decks in their trucks and cars.
I wasn't trying to perpetuate any stereotypes, you drunken chaw-stuffing inbred redneck hicks. :) - superguysteve, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2stating that you "called it years ago" has also died.
- VinceNoir, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@popfrogs
@scottcindy
OK... go ahead. Enlighten me. What's wrong or "racist" (I wasn't aware being from the southern U.S. was a race) about the term cracker. If you can give me some good reasoning for why I shouldn't be using it, I will stop. I'm an open minded and non-bigoted guy. Also, what term is appropriate to use when speaking of southern U.S. citizens who are opposed to northern beliefs, education, intellect and liberal policies? I need something to describe that group of people (red staters doesn't work as there are some up north). I realize that not all southerners are like that as I stated originally. However, I'd like to be able to address the group of people I speak of who are willful in their ignorance and don't want to open their minds to other ways of thinking and who happen to be from the south. (There are some up north, but their number isn't as big). So go ahead and tell me why cracker is bad and what a good replacement is. -
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