The thing is, most people don’t have high enough quality equipment to hear the difference once you go beyond 192kbps. The crappy headphones specifically can’t tell the difference. So why change?
Oh, and MP3 does a heck of a lot more than cut off the highs and lows. If that’s the only difference you hear, then they are doing a better job at fooling audiophiles than I thought.
Anyways, it’s not like CDs are that high quality anyways. With the right equipment, you can definitely hear a difference if you go on up to Audio DVD. And, if you’re going to do anything to the music, you definitely have to use a higher sample rate. Does the fact that you are satisfied with mere CDs mean you don’t care about audio quality?
I know, but I didn’t feel like going into a full technical analysis.
The difference is that there really isn’t anything else easily available that’s better than CDs. Whereas CDs are an easily available alternative to MP3s.
I don’t own a tape player right now, but I still have a very important tape:
I did a video project for class involving a music video, around 1997. I wanted to use the original LaDiDaDi by Doug E. Fresh and the Fresh Prince. However, all the versions I was able to get off the Internet did not have the sample from Sukiyaki. Apparently, they got into some legal trouble or something and all subsequent reprints of that song had it removed. By networking through friends, I was able to get my hands on a dj’s copy of the original album (on vinyl) in the original form.
However, in 1997, nobody owned record players anymore. My mother had a 20+ year old one but the needle had completely rusted out. Nobody sold record needles anymore either. This was way before the recent vinyl resurgence. I had to drive all over town to find a record store that still had a working record player, and beg them to allow me to transfer that song to my tape recorder.
After returning the album, that tape is possibly the last full version of LaDiDaDi I will ever hear. I’m afraid to play it because tape players today aren’t new either. Someday, I feel like I have a duty to digitize it and spread it over the Internet as far and as often as possible.
For those who don’t know the missing section: It’s all because of you
I’m feeling sad and blue
You went away, and now my life
Is filled with rainy days
I loved you so, how much you’ll never know
You’ve gone away and left me lonely
I still listen to cassettes. My 10-year-old car has just the tape player, and I’m too cheap to install a CD player or any other newfangled gadget. Also too cheap to replace my cassettes with another medium. Ditto for the vinyl.
Plus, I like that cassettes are easy to handle and they take a lot of abuse.
I have no way, currently, to play any cassettes.
But it’s been less than a decade since I gave up my big box-o-tapes, one of those lovely cheap cases that held 60 on a side.
There’s only one tape I really wish I still had, though, as it was a recording of a Christmas when I was a child that was very neat. I am hoping someone in the family still has a copy of it somewhere; I need to save it in every format I can think of, in treblicate.
Since I wrote this, I still live my life cassette-free. Upgraded my iPhone to a 32GB model with about 5800 songs on it, about 644 albums’ worth, if you average about 9 songs to an album. Got rid of the cassette player in the car, got one with a CD player I don’t listen to and an input jack for an external source (the iPhone). Still have not bought a single CD in the last couple of years, I go exclusively with digital downloads. Turned my back completely on the analog age, my iPhone and computer are my main music sources.
My car was made in 2003; mp3 players were the supermegaexpensive option. I’m slowly acquiring mp3s of all my “old” songs (in vynil or cassete), but so long as I have that car and the cassetes, I’ll listen to them. There’s areas of Spain where you can’t get a radio signal even after sacrificing three nubile blonde virgin girls and a dozen newborn lambs to the demon of the airwaves, it’s just a No Go…
I can listen to them… we have the technology (subtle Steve Austin Reference.). But my collection sits in a Cassete attache… cool, little, naugahyde briefcase with metal fixtures. But tape carriers with their molded plasti-vinyl faux velvet covering and uni-alternate tape and cassette case staggering are entirely extinct. I want to digitize some of my tapes very badly.
Mp3s, eh? Some mail-order catalogs, and Radio Shack, now advertise equipment to convert cassettes to mp3. I’d like to put my cassette stuff onto mp3 files, then put it onto an iPod–or the PC equivalent thereof-- because it would be considerably less cumbersome to carry around than cassettes or even CDs.
I do. I’ve got a whole box full of them. Most of them I bought for only one song (they used to be really cheap.) Some of them I really like and yes, have played over and over and some of them just “self-destruct.” But if I’ve got it I play it. There’s one in particular that I’ve bought many times, and each time it gets “liberated” by somebody else who really likes it, too. Haven’t bought it in CD form yet; maybe I can keep it if I do. It’s called Cantaloop. Maybe a jazz/hip-hop mix. The last time I bought it (a cassette) the owner of the store played it while I was looking for other stuff. Everybody in the store stopped—and started grooving. One guy asked me if he could buy from me (before I’d actually bought it myself.) If there was Cantaloop stock, I’d buy it.
I did until 3 months ago. My old car had a CD/cassette player, and as I’d owned the car for 12 years, I had a LOT of cassette tapes! Relatively fewer CDs. I know a guy who records a satellite radio talk show on cassettes during the day and plays them back in the evening while he’s reading or whatever. He can’t listen to it at work during the day.
Hijack/ - my cassette adapter for my iPod has developed a problem - when I push it in, the deck starts flipping from side A to side B endlessly. I’ve replaced the adapter three times, but as soon as the deck warms up, flip…flip…flip…“arrrrgh!!!”. It must be the deck - is there any trick that might fix this? I have to wear one earbud to listen in the car now.
I’m pretty sure that the reason this is happening is that the wheels on the adapter aren’t turning freely enough, so the deck, which is perhaps overly sensitive, is encountering some resistance and interpreting it to mean that it’s reached the end of the tape it’s playing and should now reverse direction to play the other side. I’ve had this happen to me, and I admit, it is frustrating, but I don’t know how to fix it. One thing that might be worth a try is fast-forwarding the adapter for a few seconds, to see if that loosens things up—but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Thanks, Knead. I’ve just installed Audacity on my computer. Now can you please tell me, on this thread or even on a separate thread, how I use the boom-box-like dialog box that shows on my screen? I already have a suitable patch cord. Thanks very much.
