Your thoughts on cassette culture & the down-low resurgence of interest in cassettes?
Cassettes
Logan Torres
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Juan Johnson
>cassette culture
kill yourself
sage
Jonathan Campbell
I wouldn't really call it cassette culture but it's quite nice to have a physical medium that doesn't cost quite as much as vinyl
Luke Bell
Cassette culture was mainly a thing of the 80s really. Now it's just a nice and cheaper alternative to vinyl.
I still buy some every now and then, mostly oddball stuff and hardcore punk.
Andrew Williams
Its nice, I like I like releasing my vaporwave albums on cassette because it reminds me of being a kid and the lower fidelity just makes everything better
Oliver Phillips
I feel like if you average the cost of the mediums, cassettes usually go for about 5-6 USD, CDs 8-10, and vinyl 20-24
Joseph Hill
back to spotify
Kevin Bell
in my local cassette store they're usually far cheaper than records, probably about the same as a CD unless it's real bargain bin stuff
although that being said you can find some good shit going through vinyl bargain bins too
it's just nice to know you could spend next to nothing on a cassette you know nothing about, take it home and there might be something really good on it
John Moore
of all my local thrift stores, only one stocks them. I've asked about cassettes in all bigger ones, and they say it takes up too much space and that nobody wants them, while simultaneously keeping like ten shelves full of mugs which never get sold.
it hurts to imagine what's getting thrown away.
Gavin Campbell
I record cassettes and leave them around town to be discovered, I leave no info but my phone number and get texts all the time saying they found it, it's good fun, much more pleasing than putting it on bandcamp and never getting heard. I give hints on where other tapes can be found and it's like a little treasure hunt. Tapes are also more exclusive than digital audio as well which filters out those who wouldn't be into it and only adds to the mysticism of it. Wish 4tracks were still affordable tho, the reddit tape loop fags are driving the prices up like crazy :(
Thomas Sullivan
Utter retardation, cassettes fucking sucked.
>we had to fast forward and rewind in search of songs we wanted to hear
>they often "got eaten" by the player and we had to carefully fish the tape out and respool it, and now that part was wrinkled up and sounded like shit
>the whole thing sounded like shit anyway because of tape hiss, and hiss reduction made the EQ shit
CDs are shit too, but it was a very welcome development, relatively, but expensive as fuck when they first came out, around $30, with only a very few even released (the first I ever heard was Van Halen 1984, on a serious demo system in a soundproof room, fucking spectacular beyond description). I had to wait until they came down to about $18, most cassettes were $10, but worth about $2 tops (you could find a good bit of old shit in bargain bins for anywhere from $1 to $5 though).
The positives, aside from relative price were only:
>physical size
>could play 'em in Walkmans and vehicle stereos (it took a while for vehicle CD players to become affordable and worth a fuck in terms of skip resistance)
Robert Anderson
it's a great format, but i wish that prices on stuff i like would stop skyrocketing
this link is definitely an outlier in terms of pricing (discogs and ebay are way cheaper), but people still pay these prices
etsy.com
Camden Lopez
OK, I left out perhaps their single greatest attribute, you could also use them to record whatever, including making copies from one to the other, but then the copies would have relatively more tape hiss. Still, if you wanted something bad enough but didn't have $10, it was pretty great if someone you knew had already gotten it and one of you had a duel deck.
Landon Hughes
those prices are fucking crazy. I buy most of my tapes off bandcamp from emo and independent labels and I usually don't have to pay more than $7 after shipping
Carter Young
>etsy.com
nobody buys that, right? because these are sold at yard sales for as little as one dollar
Isaiah Flores
Used cassettes are always a gamble if they still sound good. Usually, parts of the tape are worn and sound like shit. Most were left in hot cars so the tape is degrading and destroys your heads after playback. Then you find that tape that had been eaten by somone's deck, but wouldn't know about it until halfway through.
Jaxson Turner
I wish it started while there were still major manufacturers left.
>>we had to fast forward and rewind in search of songs we wanted to hear
True. Tapes also need a ffwd and rewind if they haven't been played or recorded in more than a year. Other than that I'm an album listener so it's not a big deal for me.
>>they often "got eaten" by the player and we had to carefully fish the tape out and respool it, and now that part was wrinkled up and sounded like shit
Nobody took care of their decks and I was guilty of this too. The tape path needs to be cleaned regularly. Still less of a pain in that regard than vinyl.
>>the whole thing sounded like shit anyway because of tape hiss, and hiss reduction made the EQ shit
Tape hiss and sound quality are mutually exclusive IMO. I've been doing vinyl rips lately and surface noise has been much more of a problem. One tape from '82 was hissy as hell but super dynamic. Turned on Dolby and it robbed some of that.
Adam Lewis
No reason to have cassettes. Me and my sisters ex went and got a bunch of cassettes once, but that’s cause his car he jus thought was a fucking beater with only a cassette player.
Joshua Roberts
Yeah, vinyl is shit too. I've lived through it all, even had a Cadillac with 8 track. While mostly something of a Luddite, I give prayerful thanks for FLAC/ogg/mp3 (in that order).
Sebastian Jenkins
>physical medium that doesn't cost quite as much as vinyl
So you mean CDs
Ryan Rogers
I wouldn't have found my way down this rabbit hole if digital mastering wasn't so shit these days. I like having something physical to collect but I quit spinning CDs a while ago. Try Apple AAC if you haven't already. I find it sounds better than OGG and MP3.
Jace Hughes
its just as stupid as lp's, pointless