the 'sound' of cassette tapes

[zombie no.one]

I have to admit to serendipity.  I've been wondering for about 6 weeks, where is my walkman??    

used to love my walkman. taking the dog for long walks and blazing a brand new tape through the headphones, miss those days. I've never made the switch to ipods for some reason. my walkman even had a 3-way graphic equalizer, that's something even top-of-the-range stereos stopped having after around 2000ish - or at best they'd have fairly useless standard presets like 'rock', 'disco', 'jazz' etc... and none of them would sound exactly how you wanted it

I don't even own anything to play them on anymore. I don't have the heart to get rid of'em though. They're museum pieces.

fair enough. I've ended up re-buying half the albums I sold years ago anyway

[tracy]

I have to admit to serendipity.  I've been wondering for about 6 weeks, where is my walkman??    
My car is so old it has a built in tape deck I haven't used in years ... but it did afford me the opportunity when it was new to reacquaint myself with my old mixes, mostly '80s Punk, New Wave, Hip hop, Dance...Classical - emphasis on CESAR FRANCK, RAVEL, BACH, BEETHOVEN, and my own humor tapes and Halloween music...    

AH!  I have so many tapes... but have lost many more!!!  

OH!  Oh yes!  '50s DOO WOP!!!  My friend had many many LP collections of those great '50s hit records, including a lot of radio and local city related records, some really great sh!t... hot... full of classics and not so well known minor hits, a great education all transcribed on my double header tape deck from turntable... one tape recording off the other came in real handy doing creative crap like mixing recordings and cut-up samples.  

Our Dodge Caravan still has a cassette tape player and yesterday I was driving around listening to "Henry Mancini Pure Gold"....what a great tape!

I love 50s DOO WOP! The 50s had some fabulous music...in fact even though my Mom was a teenager in the 50s I like her era's songs more than she does. She listened mostly to classical or jazz....both which I also love. Yes...I'm a bit ecclectic.

[alandhopewell]

 I pretty much assume that digital recording preserves it exactly the way it was intended to sound.

this would stand to reason. but any music up to (at a guess) the mid 90s would not have been recorded digitally though, so that means there can be no definitive digital version of it.

I just think there's something about cassette tape that lends audio/music a certain something...

     It certainly did for me....I'd go to the drugstore, buy a brick of TDK 60's for about $5.00 (seven cassettes), then go to the main branch of the Cleveland Public Library, fire up my twin-deck Sanyo AM-FM cassette recorder, and wind up with seven albums for less than the price of one.

[zombie no.one]

hah yeah I used to dub off cassettes from my library too (shhhh). oh it's okay now surely? they're not gona get us. "home taping is killing music", remember that logo... the music didn't die (most of it just got worse lol)

[Criswell]

hah yeah I used to dub off cassettes from my library too (shhhh). oh it's okay now surely? they're not gona get us. "home taping is killing music", remember that logo... the music didn't die (most of it just got worse lol)

Yeah Home taping was gonna kill music just like VHS was gonna kill the movie theater. And now downloading is apparently gonna kill both of them  

[Jim H]

I pretty much assume that digital recording preserves it exactly the way it was intended to sound.

Any recording is merely an imitation, and always an imperfect one, of the original sound.  When they have to transfer it to another format, there's always going to be alterations and changes further from the original.  Sometimes the artist is there doing it the way they want (some artists created their sounds with the hiss and clicks of vinyl being an intended component, interestingly enough), sometimes it's other people and they can botch it.

A prominent example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

I have heard songs where I like the effect cassette tapes have on them.  Some 80s music, with heavy electronic sound, seem to be enhanced by it.  More classic stuff (50s and 60s), or orchestral music, not as much.

[Trevor]

It certainly did for me....I'd go to the drugstore, buy a brick of TDK 60's for about $5.00 (seven cassettes), then go to the main branch of the Cleveland Public Library, fire up my twin-deck Sanyo AM-FM cassette recorder, and wind up with seven albums for less than the price of one.

I did this once when the SA Censor Board banned The Wall by Pink Floyd and a friend of mine taped the whole album for me onto two C90 cassettes from her tapes. 

[claws]

I thought this was interesting enough to post here.



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