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

snowdog

snowdog

snowdog

Soldato
Joined
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Hello,

My dad used to be a great music fan, and spent at least an hour a day running all kidns of stuff from the 60's to the 90's when I was a kid.
He stopped ages ago and I now started downloading everything what I recognize from the cassetes ( google part of the lyrics and get song that way). I somehow took over part of his musical taste, but nvm that...

Now my question is, the mp3's I download somehow sound worse to me than on the cassete, sounds more boring somehow, while from a crappy 10 € cassete player & radio it sounds better ( it's a copy too, a 90 minute ''metal'' casette) , any idea's why the music form the pc just sounds way ''too perfect'' and dull to me ?
 
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Also, music downloaded from dodgy sources is usually only 128kb/s, which is quite low, so you get artifacts. music recorded to cassettes is analogue so there is no compression. of course, there is a loss of fidelity from the low-quality medium but its probably a lower loss in data compared to compressing digital audio from ~800 to 128kb/s

<edit>
even music from iTunes is only 160kb/s
 
A better test might be to:

1) Copy a cd onto a Cassette
2) Rip the cd to mp3 in a reasonable format (say 192kbit VBR)

Then play them both back using the same audio equipment and see which is best.

there are some tapes which sound very good, for some reason. For example my cassette single of Rhythm is a Dancer by Snap sounds very, very good for a tape. Arguably better than my mp3 version in fact.
 
You can get super awesome tapes that are amazing quality...

My dad had a really good hifi he got about 20yr ago, its the section hifi. He is a bit of a sound freak but he used to buy a certain type of tape only and recording cd to tape on that hifi i would have to agree is probably better than mp3 to a certain extent...
 
cassette was never a hi-fidelity format. It'll only sound better than mp3 if you have some truly awful mp3 file.
 
might be losing some clarity on the mp3, which the tape will give u with, its high end freq playback.
 
No, I mean I prefer the un-perfect, the mp3 sounds dull and boring and perfect, while on the cassette you can clearly hear the artifacts, wich give it a little something extra.

I think I actually prefer a bit deformed music, and don't like the sound of mp3's.
 
snowdog said:
No, I mean I prefer the un-perfect, the mp3 sounds dull and boring and perfect, while on the cassette you can clearly hear the artifacts, wich give it a little something extra.

I think I actually prefer a bit deformed music, and don't like the sound of mp3's.
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I think it may be your hardware mate. I doubt different formats is going to make much difference, where as poor speakers + poor sound card will have the effect you're describing.

Like someone said earlier, 5.1 doesn't mean it's good. It just means there's more of them. :p
 
Well It's a copy of a copy, my dad always was a pirate and copied everybody's music from casette to casette, but some are also ripped from his own cd's ( he didn't have a cd player in his car only a cassette player, so he copied all his cd's onto a cassette...) so I dunno the records could be both directly from a cd or a copy from a copy...


H2F Scott said:
I think it may be your hardware mate. I doubt different formats is going to make much difference, where as poor speakers + poor sound card will have the effect you're describing.

Like someone said earlier, 5.1 doesn't mean it's good. It just means there's more of them. :p
Click to expand...


Hardwares fine, best soundcard in ages I've tried, Audigy SE, it sounds much better in ''normall stuff'' than *** onboard rubbish of my last 3 mainboards. Speakers are cheap, but not as cheap as the half inch 1rms speakers or whatever they are on the cheap casette player.

It's not normall music I'm talking about, I'm just talkign about the stuff from years before I've been trying today again.
Normall music sounds good imo.
 
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snowdog said:
Well It's a copy of a copy, my dad always was a pirate and copied everybody's music from casette to casette, but some are also ripped from his own cd's ( he didn't have a cd player in his car only a cassette player, so he copied all his cd's onto a cassette...) so I dunno the records could be both directly from a cd or a copy from a copy...
Click to expand...

if its a copy of a copy, and the artifacts sound good, you have something wrong with you.
 
snowdog said:
Or I think faultless music just sucks I think, I've always preffered Gramophone record to cd's too.
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no music is perfect, they all have "faults"

to be honest come play your Cassette through my KRK VXT8's and tell me it sounds better than an mp3, these retail at 1k a pair.
 
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