I used to have a lot of cassettes back in the day, upwards of 800-900. I never believed this whole CD thing was going to take off... Anyways, I finally had a CD player installed in my car in 2003 and began to phase out all my cassettes, problem was that there was some awesome independent music on them from the Capitol District circa 1990-1996! None of them are labeled... Solution? I have go through a TON of cassettes looking for songs to rip on to my computer.

What a bitch? Fast forward! Rewind! Eject! Fast forward! Rewind! BAH! What did we ever do before CD's?

Anyways, that is how I am spending this morning.
Anyone, similar experience?

When I had my 91 Sunbird,it still had the original square stereo and cassette deck in it,which I wouldn't replace because I didn't want holes cut into the dash. Not to mention someone would have just stolen it,anyway. Boy,did I ever get heckled for that one! lol

I imagine that my Guns N Roses,April Wine and Scorpions tapes are still jammed under the seat in it,heehee. Sun was bad for those babies,so I usually stashed them under the seat.

I'm currently taking all my old LPs and cassettes and bumping them up to MP3 and WAV files. While time consuming to do (properly), it is definitely rewarding. Plus, as you already own those cassettes, you have the right to bump them to a new format without having to pay the record companies twice. Or at least for now. In Canada the Feds want to remake the copyright laws so you have to pay for music for each device you want to listen to it on, plus iPod penalty taxes etc. Our Feds are a minority yet they are acting like a majority.

Sam, you aren't the only one who didn't think CD's would take off. I have a large collection...well...the collection I'm not proud of at all...mostly their Monkees, Beatles and Doors cassette tapes. The Doors, sure, they're fine, some of the Beatles stuff is okay, but the other...well...I'm almost glad I can't find my old cassette tape cases.
Also at the time, a CD went for 30 bucks and the player was like 100 to 200.

Shael

My fear is the loss of CD's as the main media for music. Everyone seems to like MP3's but I've heard that the sound quality isn't as good as a CD. I'm no expert, but if that is true, I don't want CD's to stop being produced.

look at it this way, they didn't stop actually manufacturing Beta machines until just a couple of years ago!

Posted by Samurai look at it this way, they didn't stop actually manufacturing Beta machines until just a couple of years ago!

That may be true, but did they produce anything on Beta Tapes? I'm not afraid of losing the CD Players, I'm afraid that record companies will stop producing their music on CD.

Posted by Nvr2loud That may be true, but did they produce anything on Beta Tapes? I'm not afraid of losing the CD Players, I'm afraid that record companies will stop producing their music on CD.

i remember a few years back when Sony tried to market minidiscs without much success. There were problems galore with the players. My friend had gone through three players before he packed it in. The tech seemed sound... indestructible discs that were the fraction of the size of CD's. If I remember right, and I probably don't, they didn't have quite the capacity of CD's. Then again, this was before digital media really came home.

Posted by Nvr2loud My fear is the loss of CD's as the main media for music. Everyone seems to like MP3's but I've heard that the sound quality isn't as good as a CD. I'm no expert, but if that is true, I don't want CD's to stop being produced.

Well, CD sound quality isn't as good as records or tapes. The benefit of CD's is that that are more durable. The benefit of mp3's is that they are more portable.

Remember, no matter what the marketing guys tell you, digital is never as good as analog.

Posted by MutantMandias Well, CD sound quality isn't as good as records or tapes. The benefit of CD's is that that are more durable. The benefit of mp3's is that they are more portable. Remember, no matter what the marketing guys tell you, digital is never as good as analog.

I realize that may be true, but right now the best sound I'm aware of (for most music) is on CD. Since Tapes and Records basically aren't produced anymore, with only a few exceptions, only CD's are available. I would hate to see the loss of another media and therefore sound quality deteriorating down to MP3 quality as the industry standard.

Posted by MutantMandias Well, CD sound quality isn't as good as records or tapes. The benefit of CD's is that that are more durable. The benefit of mp3's is that they are more portable. Remember, no matter what the marketing guys tell you, digital is never as good as analog.

this was brought up in an older thread, and I'll say it again, I always thought that LP's had a really 'fat' sound... I always thought that the noise on an LP added to the feel of the album at hand. Digital media, although ridiculously handy, it sterile and cold. I will say that after this run of trying to find songs on tapes, they were a stopgap until a better portable medium came along. Tapes are tempermental, inefficient and generally a pain in the ass.

It seems like the iPod style players are like a juggernaut and may actually replace CD's in the next decade, at least that's my gut feeling.

Tiny little robot bands implanted directly into our skulls.

3 years.

As someone who has a gigantor collection of cassettes, records and CDs, I can safely say that a well produced master from the studio transferred to CD sounds fantastic. As an archival option, CD is a great way to have music last your lifetime of music listening. I transfer my vinyl (old and new) up to WAV for archiving on CDRs and to MP3 for my computer/MP3 player and it sounds just as good either right off the vinyl as it does in my MP3/WAV conversion. The thing that really sucks is that more and more lately artists are getting their producers to master their music so everything is uniformly "loud", ie: removing the high and lows so there's less dynamics. Once that gets to a 128kbps MP3 it truly sounds like crap.

MutantMandias is right though - analog IS best. In the television biz where I work, everything is moving to digital. We often "multiplex" our digital signals onto one digital line or transponder. This is an accountant's concept - more digital channels on one "feed". This is why DirecTV satellite and digital cable, even their HD offerings suck. Everything is compressed too much. In the "olden days", an analog feed had the "full bandwidth" if you will and looked great.

So, CDs for now are perfect for me. I make an MP3 for my computer/MP3 player and put the CD on the shelf until it's required again for whatever reason. If the CD gets scratched, you can take it to a place to buff it out - pretty good success rate there.

For TV signals, hard drive PVR, DVD and HD/BluRay work well - assuming the incoming content is of high quality to begin with. Garbage in, garbage out.

I still use my record walkman.

Posted by phrenzee I still use my record walkman. http://www.crunchg...ds/soundburger.jpg

Oh god...my looney uncle still has one of those.

Hey Sam; glad to hear I'm not the only one who thinks the noise of an LP adds to the feel of the music.

And I still don't get the whole VHS instead of BETA thing. Beta seemed to have a much better quality picture. Not that it matters anymore . . . . .

Keep in mind too that a CD was designed to be a exact copy of an analog studio master tape.

My father has a bunch of the first CDs ever produced which is that line of classical music which I know are basically mastered directly from the studio master tapes and they sound superb over the record versions I have heard.

Now these days, recording studios generally record everything direct to computer so they don't even deal with analog studio tapes anymore. There are few exceptions to this though; The White Stripes for example actually request to record everything analog in the studio for some weird reason.

Posted by Agent Skelly The White Stripes for example actually request to record everything analog in the studio for some weird reason.

To get a better recording.