Cassettes, why do they sound better to me than mp3's ?

fini said:
You contradict yourself. Whilst neither are faultless CD's are less true to life and less good quality than records as they artificially cut of the top and bottom frequencies. If you prefer music to be faulted you'd thus prefer CDs over records.
Click to expand...

The top and bottom frequencies that most people cannot hear anyway so it is a bit of a moot point surely. CDs will tend to sound more 'clinical' and exact time after time since they don't tend to degrade/alter in the same way as a record would which is part of what Robosapien is saying. I'd also have thought the DAC would impact on how good the CD will sound.
 
Robosapien said:
The tape sounds 'warmer'? Might be nostalgia, a yearning for your childhood perhaps. Blweh.
Click to expand...

Tape saturation is a wonderfull thing, and something digital recordings severly lack. The fact that you remember the warmth of old analog recordings is fantastic, as all too many don't. :)
 
I've never been into this vinyl v cd war but I can tell you a good story.
It was 1987 and I was working in a rock music record shop in Hanley.
We had just had our first rack of rock cd's and a bloke came in and part exchanged 200 vinyl albums for around 17 cd's.
The following week he was trying to buy all his old vinyl back because it sounded way better than his cd's.
Last week I was in a mates house and he put his old Led Zep III album on and I asked if he had the cd.
He said the vinyl ****** all over it.
 
dmpoole said:
I've never been into this vinyl v cd war but I can tell you a good story.
It was 1987 and I was working in a rock music record shop in Hanley.
We had just had our first rack of rock cd's and a bloke came in and part exchanged 200 vinyl albums for around 17 cd's.
The following week he was trying to buy all his old vinyl back because it sounded way better than his cd's.
Last week I was in a mates house and he put his old Led Zep III album on and I asked if he had the cd.
He said the vinyl ****** all over it.
Click to expand...

its all down to playback gear, and what it was mastered on.
 
OzZie said:
Tape saturation is a wonderfull thing, and something digital recordings severly lack. The fact that you remember the warmth of old analog recordings is fantastic, as all too many don't. :)
Click to expand...

Sometimes I resample synth lines to tape - It can give quite a nice result. I've tried similar plug-ins, but they don't really give the same result...

But a recording made on a 8 track is always going to sound different to something in protools... neither one is better IMO, just different.
 
Neoni said:
its all down to playback gear, and what it was mastered on.
Click to expand...

Oh, originally I listened through all the songs on 2 Jamo Dynamic D4 speakers ( 120W RMS/8Ohm, 60 x 31 x 27 cm) , some old technics amp, and an aiwa something dual cassette player/recorder. Might be indeed I'm just a yearning for my childhood perhaps...


Btw what speakers would sound good then for my pc & others, I thought about ''demanding'' z5500's for my b'day from my parents, but is there anything similairly priced that might be better ?
 
CDs and mp3s of your old songs will more than likely have been remastered as well, and as such will have lost a hell of a lot of "range" between the loud and quiet points. If you listen to an old vinyl on a good system, you will here the much harder impact of bass drums and the like, punchy and loud, whereas today everything seems to be equalized so that the volume is constant throughout the track, which in my opinion, is not a good thing whatsoever.

Google "loudness war" for more info.
 
Last edited:
snowdog said:
Btw what speakers would sound good then for my pc & others, I thought about ''demanding'' z5500's for my b'day from my parents, but is there anything similairly priced that might be better ?
Click to expand...
I'd go for a 2 or 2.1 channel system for music. There are soooo many options out there I don't know where to start... I quite like tripath based amps, and am still hunting around for some half-decent speakers myslef. :)
 
I have some mates who are both musicians and they both prefer the sound of Vynil of modern digital recordings. They say it has a warmer sound to it as the added crackle etc of the stylus adds to the overall sound quality. They are both complete audiophiles too and really know there stuff... maybe there's something in it?
 
The vinyl "phenomenon" has only happened to me once. I was round at a mate's house and he was playing some of Elvis' concert recordings, through an "average" hi-fi. The cd's sounded good. No problem there.

It was when he put on "Recorded Live At Madison Square Garden", on VINYL that my ears pricked up. I hadn't even noticed him put the record on, but the difference to my ears was immediate. The CDs sounded like what they were: re-mastered thirty year old recordings. The vinyl?

It felt like I was THERE.
 
Use eax effects that u can tinker with throguh creative mediasource thing like i do, u can make mp3s sound like cassettes easy enough.
 
I remember getting my mono cassette recorder and sticking the speaker of my mono radio on top of the microphone and recording Radio Luxembourg.
Now that was quality.
 
Everytime I hear Kasabian club foot normally It doesn't sound right because when it first came out one of my uni housemates used to play it full blast on a mini hi-fi to the extent that it was hugely distorted, and IMO sounded 'better' than just playing it normally.
 
Analogue audio signals sound 'warmer' than digital ones.

As such, whilst high bitrate mp3s and cds are technically 'cleaner', they are also somewhat flatter, as each frequency is so well defined (or something) compared to tapes/records.

Besides, the crackle of a record is a wonderful thing to hear :D
 
Well, this is an ages old thread but I have to share something.
I've got 3 genesis cd's, And then there were three, selling england by the pound and a trick of the tail, as my dad said I listened to a compilation of them on casette.

Now I've been listening through the cd's and I can't recognize most of the songs, and I need to replay the Casette ( which sounds a lot warmer/familliar to me ) on a Walkman to detect all the songs, in fact I only managed identify '' The lady Lies'',''Firth of Fifth'', ''Burning Rope'' and ''Squonk'' from the cd versions, all the others, like Down and out, undertow, say its alright joe, etc, I had to listen through the songs form the cassette and put the song text in google, to find them on the cd versions lol, I don't know what it is as once I find them, It sounds familiar but when I first listened through the cd's, it wasn't.

Ohwell I guess I'll someday dump all my cassettes onto my hdd, instead of buying/downloading remastered versions...
Indeed after re-listening they don't sound as ''perfect&clear'' as on cassette, but the cassettes sound much warmer&familliar&better to me, it's not just ''noise'' added like I thought before, it's something else. Also I have an mp3 version of ''Atom hearth mother'' of Pink Floyd and I also have it on Cassette, the mp3 has stereo effect ( eg at the end of the first track you hear proper stereo effect), the cassette version somehow has a differently mixed stereo, there's more difference between the channel eg at some bits of a track, you can hear an instrument only form left and another only from the right, while when I listened through it on my mp3 it was more even...
Ohwell, at leats my z5500's have an extra analog audio in port, I plug my Walkman in these days and keep my pc off, 1: No more (pc) jet sound 2: good old familiar sound from childhood and No need to re buy anything :D.

However, I'd be interested, is there a place that sells digitalized versions of songs, with the old non remastered version? Eg. I got this Beatles cd too, and it aint the same as the LP version I got, on the LP if you put all the balance on ''left'' all you hear is music, and when you put it all on ''right'' you can only hear the vocals.
I'd be interested to have digitalized versions of those, is there any place that does this ? Remastered/mixed CD/mp3 versions make me :(.
 
Last edited:
Ask most audio afficiados and they'll tell you that analogue is the most natural sound.

I do believe you can get a good sound from digital its just that the mastering these days is a bag of carp, quite why I have no idea.
 
Damn I really need to get an USB LP player. Nosing through my dads lp collection he has loads of lp's I didn't know he had, I MUST dump them on my pc lol.
Anyone know how much an usb lp player is now, I rly wana dump the lp's on my hdd I'm willing to bet they sound 100x better than the cheapo cd rips I have now.

This is what I found:






I had no idea my dad had DSOTM on LP as I've seen him listening to the CD ( which we also own).

Also found these 2 casettes :D :

 
snowdog said:
Now I've been listening through the cd's and I can't recognize most of the songs, and I need to replay the Casette ( which sounds a lot warmer/familliar to me ) on a Walkman to detect all the songs,
Click to expand...

I find this very hard to believe.
So you're saying that you could identify a Genesis song when on cassette but not the same song on CD even though its the same song?
I agree that there could be sonic differences and even a remixing over the stereo channels but what you're saying is ludicrous.
 
dmpoole said:
I find this very hard to believe.
So you're saying that you could identify a Genesis song when on cassette but not the same song on CD even though its the same song?
I agree that there could be sonic differences and even a remixing over the stereo channels but what you're saying is ludicrous.
Click to expand...

Well it it could have something to do is that concentration with listening to new cd's is utterly terrible, I hate listening any unknown music and the first 5 plays of any CD are terrible imo.

Eg. at first I couldn't even listen through Animals once because I hated it, and hence I was avoiding it for ages. Now it's one of my fav albums. I always ''mist get into'' music before I even start liking something. The easiest way to do this for me was usually custom music when playing games.

It's prolly not coz I just couldn't hear it, I just didn't pay enough attention to identify bits I've heard before. As I hate paying attention to new music. But the cassette on the other hand is exactly as I can renumber it, and except that I have the knowledge I know every song on it, that makes me more focused and enjoy it more.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom