Comments on: iPod vs. Cassette tape

iPod vs. Cassette tape

mathowie — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 11:26:50 -0800

iPod vs. Cassette Tape: a comparitive study in pictures.

By: milovoo

milovoo — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 11:33:17 -0800

Cassette tape life span - 30+ years??? Hmm, not if you actually listen to it.

By: fenriq

fenriq — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 11:41:23 -0800

Well, at least I'll know to rule him out if my iPod ever gets stolen. But I think the most telling difference is the 90 minutes versus 960 hours. Why continue from there?

By: bendybendy

bendybendy — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 11:42:07 -0800

Tis the irony of archiving that the denser the storage medium, the harder it is to recover the data. Playback is a bitch. A shellac 78 RPM record can be broken in half and is still heavy enough that you could nudge it together on a turntable and have it play well enough to know what was on it.

By: gluechunk

gluechunk — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 11:50:14 -0800

But I think the most telling difference is the 90 minutes versus 960 hours. Why continue from there? Because Cost Per Hour is far cheaper on cassette? Just comparing capacity is not enough.

By: Faze

Faze — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 11:51:06 -0800

I've recently embarked on the project of re-recording all my 100s of cassettes onto CDs, and I'll tell you something, after 30-plus years, those babies wither, stick, break, wobble, or simply turn to powder. But, as bendybendy implies, when they break, I can just open them with a screwdriver, and tape 'em together. They have less comforting physicality than an LP or 78, but they are still manipulable in ways that CDs and digital recording can never be. They are especially good for books on tape, because you can start and stop them right where you left off. CD books on tape are less controllable that way.

By: tommasz

tommasz — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 12:04:26 -0800

Another interesting facet to all of this, Faze, is that after 30-plus years you can still play those cassettes, and on newly manufactured equipment. Digital media has this annoying tendency to be abandoned for the next "big thing", leaving all of those who didn't upgrade stuck trying to keep old equipment going.

By: benjh

benjh — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 12:11:30 -0800

CD books on tape are less controllable that way. That's why there are Audible books on iPod, which will start wherever you left off. And if you listen in one place (your PC) and then want to pick up where you left off on the go, then one sync of the iPod handles that.

By: davidmsc

davidmsc — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 12:13:02 -0800

Where's. My. Victrola. Dammit.

By: solistrato

solistrato — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 12:13:56 -0800

RECORDED MUSIC IS FODEROL GET ME MY MINSTREL

By: grateful

grateful — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 12:29:48 -0800

CD: 3" diameter, 1/16" thick Holds 1.2 hours music Survives a drop Highly Scratchable Plastic Wet? No problem Can come with preloaded tunes Can come with free protective cover Lifespan 10 Years+ $1 each (blank) WINNER!

By: Outlawyr

Outlawyr — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 12:30:30 -0800

No comparison of sound quality? Isn't this about listening to music?

By: lupus_yonderboy

lupus_yonderboy — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 12:34:23 -0800

A cool link from that page: handwritten signs.

By: fungible

fungible — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 12:43:33 -0800

They also don't mention that the cassette (and the CD) requires external devices to play it, which are vulnerable to drops and water and scratching and wear and tear. Not to mention carrying 960 hours of cassettes or CDs with you is pretty uncomfotable.

By: grateful

grateful — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 12:45:59 -0800

No comparison of sound quality? Isn't this about listening to music? CDs win that, too.

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 12:54:02 -0800

Digital media has this annoying tendency to be abandoned for the next "big thing", leaving all of those who didn't upgrade stuck trying to keep old equipment going. The scale might be a bit different, but isn't this also a problem with analog media like microfiche or 78s? My last few turntables didn't have a 78 setting. Print and film have survived (somewhat: nitrate stock proved a disaster to film history): what else?

By: ChasFile

ChasFile — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 13:10:32 -0800

Um, am I the only one here that thought this was meant to be more of a lightheartedly humorous lampoon of bandwagon gadget hysteria and less of a serious, thorough, and critical pro/con comparision?

By: tommasz

tommasz — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 13:25:59 -0800

PinkStainlessTail, you could probably include wax cylinders and piano rolls (which were thought by some to be the end of the music industry, but I digress). In the case of 78's and microfiche, the data isn't that hard to recover compared to say, 8" floppies from a Dec word processor. In ten years, that last statement may no longer be true, I'll admit, but the scale is important. Sometimes, ChasFile, a humorous example can be rather thought-provoking and funny.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 13:29:38 -0800

I have 900+ cassettes pre-loaded with music of dubious quality (and legality!) I'll trade them for any iPod, posthaste. Speaking of sound quality: The other day I had a semi-downtempo DJ jam session with a friend. Me on my laptop with Traktor DJ studio, he on vinyl on Technics 1200s and CD DJ units. The difference in sound quality was incredible, even after I tuned my levels the best I could for the best balance between amplitude and non-modulation. Though, considering we recorded the session to ATRAC on MiniDisc, it's barely noticable, I guess, and kind of moot. I need an external USB2 multichannel audio device, pronto. You. Yes, you! Get me one before I kill this cute little kitten. I'll take that Hercules DJ gizmobox one, the one with the assignable buttons, joystick, jogdials and 3 stereo output pairs.

By: reklaw

reklaw — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 13:35:20 -0800

ChasFile, why do you hate iPods so much?

By: Monk

Monk — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 13:47:49 -0800

Devices nessesary [sic] to play iPod whille driving (shows iTrip, car charger and cassette converter) My car doesn't have a cassette deck. What's your solution for me, Mr. Tape-man?

By: mrgrimm

mrgrimm — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 13:52:02 -0800

I have 900+ cassettes pre-loaded with music of dubious quality (and legality!) I'll trade them for any iPod, posthaste. if you can give me a list of *all* the music, i'll consider it. that's a shitload of music, my friend, and if any of them are out of print or rare, it's a bad trade for you (imo).

By: dodgygeezer

dodgygeezer — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 13:59:31 -0800

The iPod looks pretty - iPod wins

By: Keyser Soze

Keyser Soze — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 14:16:31 -0800

$1 each (blank) You're getting ripped off.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 15:02:52 -0800

Bah. You think I'd trade my Pop Will Eat Itself and Ministry "Every Day is Halloween" cheesy synthpop singles for an iPod? (Not that anyone would or should take 'em.) No sir. What you'd be getting is mostly a grab bag of bad techno DJ mixes back from when I could only hold a pitchlock for a few seconds and mixed like a drunken manatee, along with random stuff taped from other tapes or from the radio. Then again, I don't actually have 900 tapes - anymore - thank goodness. TWAJS. :) However, tapes are to be found easily, and rather cheap. And can probably be found for much cheaper if I actually bothered to look. Not to mention, you could just go to a swap meet or rummage sale these days and offer someone a dollar or five for a whole greasy carton of used and commercially recorded tapes, if you looked around. Which has its own high bandwidth sort of thing going for it, come to think of it. There's a useless nerd project for someone. Make a portable robotic tape library shaped like an iPod with the same amount of storage. You could probably do it with Lego.

By: eyeballkid

eyeballkid — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 17:06:40 -0800

I'm going to miss the bite-size nature of CDs (.cda) / cassette tapes when they are finally, totally phased out. With my 15GB iPod, I find all my playlists are hundreds of songs, which end up on shuffle. I like a well thought out mix cd, and I always liked fucking around on tape mixes. Sure, I could limit all my iPod playlists to 74 or 90 minutes (45min/side), but it's not the same for some reason. *sigh*

By: Satapher

Satapher — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 17:16:08 -0800

i <3 blort

By: Grod

Grod — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 20:07:02 -0800

they forgot the aesthetics. Tapes don't look cool

By: divrsional

divrsional — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 09:12:03 -0800

I'm with eyeballkid. I was pretty thrilled when Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians came out on CD and I could hear the entire piece without flipping an LP. However, iPod playlists are not the same as mixing a tape. Even if I use Jam and mix the songs onto a CD I'm still limited to 80 minutes. Plus there's none of the elegant duality of Side A/Side B at fifty minutes each. I don't know why it should matter, but it does. That was the pinnacle of the personal mix tape. iPod playlists are too impermanent. I do have a few tracks on my iPod, however, that are digitized versions of those old mixes, one file per side.

By: weston

weston — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 15:31:12 -0800

Just got back from a quick trip down to Capitol Reef in Southern Utah. Used tapes and NPR the whole time. I do want an iPod, but it was a pretty good reflection on how the good old stuff is still pretty good.