The resurgence of cassette tapes

Lysander

Lysander

Lysander

Capodecina
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Right, I've got a few minutes over lunch and I'd like to discuss this.

Some of you may not be aware that tapes are starting to make a big comeback. OK, not starting to, they already have. It started in the underground with noise, black metal and neofolk acts getting in on it and now it's starting to creep into the bigger labels.

Now, I've always been an outspoken dissenter on this one. Cassette tapes are, in my opinion, the worst sound medium. Sound quality is terrible, and you have to forwardwind and rewind to get to where you want to get it. And cassette players have the ability to mangle the tapes. The reasons WHY this happened in the underground are threefold: firstly, black metal and noise music sounds 'better' on cassette because both demand a thin, noisy atmosphere for enhancement and secondly because it's cheap for the label to do a tape run. Oh, and there's the nostalgia value as well.

Now I'm starting to see them edging their way onto the larger labels. Not for any other reason than it's trendy. What are people's thoughts on this? Good thing or pointless fad?
 
Fad. Maybe a big fad in a small pool of people, but still a fad.

I'm also puzzled about the music needing to be on tape to sound right. Surely you could replicate that in the mix or with effects. Or are we now going to see tape snobs in the same way as we see vinyl snobs?
 
If the music requires such a rubbish sounding medium as a cassette tape to sound 'good', that doesn't say much for the quality of the music.
 
random fact: i used to have a job working in a factory that made cassette tapes. i used to operate the tape winding machines. of course that went bust well over 10 years ago. and even when i was there, there wasn't much music. it was mostly BBC spoken word stuff. i distinctly remember the stephen fry narrated harry potter audiobooks being the bane of my life. :p
 
They belonged in my car but so many so called friends must have nicked them overtime. I found a few at some mates houses but others were lost forever.

I remember a DJ Producer tape from a Fusion and it was the dogs danglies but never found it and never seen it online either :(

Another one was a Ramos & MC Knight tape from a party and it was the best dj/mc combo mix ever as the MC'ing didn't dominate the music at all.
 
Like everything that has come back lately that is 80's influenced.

It will die of eventually because they were so ****. I await the Minidisc fad as I still have lots :D
 
Tapes are ****e. Linear access, poor sound, stretching, dropouts, getting mangled, etc. Store cassette tapes properly, and they'll still be falling apart 15 years later. Cassette tapes died for a reason, and those reasons haven't gone away.

If you want to makes something sound a certain way, then mix it properly and it's still cheaper to bung it on a CD, or even just go digital with high bitrate ogg, flac, ape, etc.

The reason why so many MP3s sound crap is because they've been encoded at low bitrate, mixed to be tinny-sounding, and had the loudness boosted to make it jump out on radio play, which also gives clipping. And MP3 isn't even that good an encoding format in the first place.

Just produce/mix/encode your music properly, and it will sound good.
 
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Total Fad. Alternative word... Hip. You are getting caught up in it, just ignore it unless you have something to gain from it?

Anyone think 80's style clothes look good? (well better than some of the 90's lol). It's a phase.. let people think they are cool, and waste their time and sound quality.
 
I used to make a shed load of mix tapes for the car, constantly got chewed up by the player of course. then it was minidisc, then mix cd's by the dozen so cheap at one point, unbelievable now all music on a usb drive from here so easy. Cassette tapes make a comeback? Cannot see it myself too expensive and utter crap lifespan and rubbish sound quality
 
Jut thinking of the making it sound a certain way thing... The White Stripes have released plenty of CDs that sound like they were recorded on a dictaphone at the bottom of a mineshaft, so clearly it can be done.
 
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