Members Jeff da Weasel Posted September 30, 2008 Members Share Posted September 30, 2008 Still, tell me "BurritoFest" wouldn't be awesome! I'm just saying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted September 30, 2008 Members Share Posted September 30, 2008 Yes. Or a TortaFest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted September 30, 2008 Members Share Posted September 30, 2008 After all, you and I are honorary Mexicans. We covered that already, didn't we? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Will Chen Posted September 30, 2008 Members Share Posted September 30, 2008 Cassettes better than MP3!!!!!!!:eek: The "harmonic" bass response of tapes was horrendous. CD's were a huge improvement and MP3's are still decent by comparison. Sure tapes didn't "squash" audio and leave high end artifacts (unless you call hiss an artifact), the just truncated the dynamic (and harmonic range) and added a bunch of hiss. I just recently found some old tapes in a box and popped some in for giggles...no thanks, I'll take MP3 any day. Back to the topic at hand, Border's now has a digital music kiosk in their stores which allow you to buy MP3s. Not sure exactly how you download them, but thought the kiosk idea was interesting. I don't get much time to do the critical listening I'd like so I'm fine with MP3s as a convenient playback media. In fact, I've kinda made a personal pact to stop buying CDs (though I've broken my rule many times). So I'm actually slowly transitioning to a CD-less environment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted September 30, 2008 Members Share Posted September 30, 2008 Cassette sounds better than mp3. It totally drives me bonkers that people can't hear the "simplification" that data reduction is doing to audio. 1. Extremely reduced harmonic content.2. Extremely reduced depth and soundstage.3. High frequency smearing and loss of detail.4. High frequency artifacts. And just to be fair and balanced, cassettes feature: 1. Not much response over 10kHz, if any.2. Harmonic distortion that starts kicking in a very low levels.3. Wow.4. Flutter.5. Tape stretching.6. Inconsistent oxide formulations that lead to dropouts.7. Noise levels about equal to AM radio, which requires the use of noise reduction...8. ...except the noise reduction often mistracks on record and playback.9. Head anomalies that do weird things to the low frequencies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members audioicon Posted September 30, 2008 Author Members Share Posted September 30, 2008 Just to be clear, the point of my original post is this. If you are going to spend top dollars on recording, studio, engineers for a listener to "re-seasoned" the entire production, then why not save the money for promotion? If I'm going to get Bruce to mix my album, it will pain me to see people not appreciating the "perfection and professionalism" brought to the production. I'm not saying MP3 is bad as a format. But again, why waste all the money? If George Martin wants to work for free on my production, then that's great but I don't see myself spending thousand on a record when it's going to end up in another format. AI Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members slight-return Posted September 30, 2008 Members Share Posted September 30, 2008 I guess it depends - probably the first thing to address is if ithe question is rhetorical or inquisitive Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the stranger Posted October 1, 2008 Members Share Posted October 1, 2008 Cassette decks sold by Harman Kardon and Japanese companies such as Aiwa, Akai, Denon, Pioneer, Sony, Teac, Technics and Yamaha were also common, with each company offering models of very high quality. The best units could record and play the full audible spectrum from 20 Hz to 20 kHz with wow and flutter less than 0.05% and very low noise.A very good live cassette recording could rival the sound of an average commercial CD, though the quality of pre-recorded cassettes was usually lower than could be achieved in a high quality home recording. Cassettes remain popular for audio-visual applications. Some CD recorders incorporate a cassette well to allow both formats for recording meetings, church sermons and books on tape. By the late 1980s, thanks to such improvements in the electronics, the tape material and manufacturing techniques, as well as dramatic improvements to the precision of the cassette shell, tape heads and transport mechanics, sound fidelity on equipment from the top manufacturers far surpassed the levels originally expected of the medium. On suitable audio equipment, cassettes could produce a very pleasant listening experience. The best home decks could achieve 20 Hz-20 kHz frequency response with wow and flutter below 0.05%, and 70 dB of signal-to-noise ratio using Dolby C, up to 80 dB of signal-to-noise ratio using Dolby S, and 90 dB with dbx. Many casual listeners could not tell the difference between cassette and compact disc. Some companies, such as Mobile Fidelity, produced audiophile cassettes in the 1980s, which were recorded on high-grade tape and duplicated on premium equipment in real time from a first-generation digital master. Unlike audiophile LPs, which continue to attract a following, these became moot after the Compact Disc became widespread. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_recorder I couldn't believe some of what was on the wiki page. Obviously, I'm not the only one who's crazy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted October 1, 2008 Members Share Posted October 1, 2008 Just to be clear, the point of my original post is this.If you are going to spend top dollars on recording, studio, engineers for a listener to "re-seasoned" the entire production, then why not save the money for promotion?If I'm going to get Bruce to mix my album, it will pain me to see people not appreciating the "perfection and professionalism" brought to the production.I'm not saying MP3 is bad as a format. But again, why waste all the money?If George Martin wants to work for free on my production, then that's great but I don't see myself spending thousand on a record when it's going to end up in another format.AI If you want a better sounding MP3, start with a better sounding recording. This has been the case for decades with 8-tracks and cassettes, so why, now that we have an arguably better-sounding "convenience" format, are we suddenly calling for crappier sounding recordings? If we as sound engineers do not care what the recording sounds like, then who will? ~~~~ And quite frankly, most people DON'T pay for Bruce Swedien or George Martin to mix their albums, so that's a non-issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the stranger Posted October 1, 2008 Members Share Posted October 1, 2008 Notice Ethan (critic of high resolution voodoo hype) posted a thread titled: Is it live or is it Memorex? -Recorded Realism You'll notice he didn't say: "Is it live or mp3?" or "Is it live or CD?" I think that his choice of words tells us all we need to know about cassette vs mp3. P.S. Sorry I jacked your thread, AI! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the stranger Posted October 1, 2008 Members Share Posted October 1, 2008 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members slight-return Posted October 1, 2008 Members Share Posted October 1, 2008 You'll notice he didn't say: "Is it live or mp3?" or "Is it live or CD?" I think that his choice of words tells us all we need to know about cassette vs mp3. hmm good point , maybe it does! I mean check out what Memorex offers these days Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted October 1, 2008 Members Share Posted October 1, 2008 hmm good point , maybe it does! I mean check out what Memorex offers these days Here's what they offer: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members slight-return Posted October 1, 2008 Members Share Posted October 1, 2008 and so much more www.memorex.com (now to be fair, they do make one or two magtape dictaphones) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted October 1, 2008 Members Share Posted October 1, 2008 In fact, I've kinda made a personal pact to stop buying CDs (though I've broken my rule many times). So I'm actually slowly transitioning to a CD-less environment. I can happily recommend online streaming. I've subscribed to one streaming service or another since 2004 and I'm on Rhapsody now. I love it. It is -- by far -- the best of the three services I've been on. (Which may have something to do with why the first service I was on -- MusicMatch On Demand -- was bought by the second, Yahoo Music, which did pretty OK [their player was less buggy than the MM Jukebox in its final days -- but then Windows 3.0 was less buggy than the MMJB] but never really got it. But Rhapsody is, by and large, really together, has a great selection (only a very few hold outs at this point) and even has an online version so that you can access your subscription playback from any machine with broadband. And it's even got a big selection of real classical music (not all this Yo Yo Ma meets Bonnie Raitt type stuff) as well as broadway shows, old jazz... really, it's great. And the fi is pretty hi -- I'm guessing at least 192 kbps WMA. For about the price of one CD a month. It's a real bargain. (And they have a 'portable' tier that works with Plays-for-Sure Mp3 portables for $3 more a month.) I haven't tried their primary competitor, Napster, so you might want to check them out, too. But I'm totally sold on the subscription model. I've never had so much music at my fingertips. It's been a real delight. [if it sounds like I'm shamelessly shilling here -- I am -- but it's only because I don't want any more of my subscription services to go under. For some reason, the subscription model has mostly received a bad rap from the "why rent when you can own" pop tech writers -- but something tells me that those guys don't actually buy a lot of music between being mailed swag by labels and, of course, doing their due dilligence by keeping on top, journalistically speaking, of the p2p/torrents scene. So -- of course -- it doesn't sound like that great a deal to them... ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted October 1, 2008 Members Share Posted October 1, 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_recorderI couldn't believe some of what was on the wiki page. Obviously, I'm not the only one who's crazy. But you are crazy. You'll admit that. You have to remember that my comment, which spurred this whole thing on, was centered around "convenience" formats, in which I specifically mentioned Sony Walkmans, which I don't ever remember sounding really great.OTOH, if you are talking about a three thousand dollar Nakamichi cassette deck and comparing it to the highest-resolution MP3, then I don't know which would sound better, but they'd both sound good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the stranger Posted October 1, 2008 Members Share Posted October 1, 2008 The cassette would sound better. Your subconscious would summon your powers of mind over matter and make it sound better. :ninja: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the stranger Posted October 1, 2008 Members Share Posted October 1, 2008 But you are crazy. You'll admit that. What, me worry? ..............................................(Get it? ) You have to remember that my comment, which spurred this whole thing on, was centered around "convenience" formats, in which I specifically mentioned Sony Walkmans, which I don't ever remember sounding really great. Yeah, but when you were high, it didn't matter. You had some quality jams and that's all that mattered. OTOH, if you are talking about a three thousand dollar Nakamichi cassette deck and comparing it to the highest-resolution MP3, then I don't know which would sound better, but they'd both sound good.I'm talking about a $200 Sony deck. Oh my God, he really is crazy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the stranger Posted October 1, 2008 Members Share Posted October 1, 2008 See, thing is...the highest rate mp3 will more than likely sound better than the two hundred dollar sony deck you bought at Sears, but it won't feel better. The magneto voodoo mojo tape possesses will be obliterated by binary reduction. Why do you hate America? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the stranger Posted October 1, 2008 Members Share Posted October 1, 2008 Still, tell me "BurritoFest" wouldn't be awesome!I'm just saying. I'm just saying. Hey, ever tried frying those frozen burritos in your deep fryer? It rocks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted October 1, 2008 Members Share Posted October 1, 2008 See, thing is...the highest rate mp3 will more than likely sound better than the two hundred dollar sony deck you bought at Sears, but it won't feel better. The magneto voodoo mojo tape possesses will be obliterated by binary reduction. Why do you hate America? Why are you using Japanese tape decks? And, uh, Haitian cassettes? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the stranger Posted October 1, 2008 Members Share Posted October 1, 2008 I'm a free market globalist. Don't buy all this dissident propagandist routine, it's just a front. I'm a quintuple agent from the fourteenth dimension. I share this information with you to help you achieve audio nirvana. Thanks for tuning in. I'll have to get back to culling my comments to rehash in my blog. Stranger Sound blog, brought to you by help of the home of shoe spammers worldwide. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted October 1, 2008 Members Share Posted October 1, 2008 I'm a quintuple agent from the fourteenth dimension. I share this information with you to help you achieve audio nirvana. So these posts and all, this is radiantly beautiful altruism on your part and nothing more. So sweet of you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members audioicon Posted October 1, 2008 Author Members Share Posted October 1, 2008 And quite frankly, most people DON'T pay for Bruce Swedien or George Martin to mix their albums, so that's a non-issue. I'm confused, I do know not everyone uses these two. In fact, George has a different class of music. But I'm not following this point. More light- More Light AI Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the stranger Posted October 1, 2008 Members Share Posted October 1, 2008 Drool... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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