A two-panel comic strip titled "Back in the Day" and "Now." In the first panel, a man sits at a desk cluttered with 1990s technology, including a bulky cell phone, a portable CD player, a radio, a cassette player, headphones, and stacks of CDs. He thinks, "Wow, it would be great to have all that in one device." In the second panel, the man sits at a clean, empty desk with only a modern smartphone in front of him. He has a nostalgic expression and thinks, "I miss my Walkman."
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[–] 3 points 9 months ago (1 child)

Yeah. Most of the modern prerecorded tapes are still crap. Although maybe like 20% of the pre recorded ones sound decent, surprisingly.

Cassettes were never designed for music, from what I understand. Instead, it was a format that music adopted later. Considering that, cassettes can actually sound really good imo. But I do have the luxury of using type II tapes. Type 1 isn’t bad if you have a really nice deck and a really good recording.

But isn’t there a whole lot more to this story? I believe cassettes were responsible for getting many underground artists started, who record labels would have never signed. I also heard a story where disregarded tapes set for recycling made their way from USA to other countries. Those tapes influenced music in that country, and they never would have been if they were another format.

That last point isn’t about audio quality, but it always seemed like cassettes didn’t get the respect they deserved imo.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    Yeah. Daniel Johnston got to be a known musician because the guy was one of those creative souls that couldn't help but to create music in this case, he released his music in cassettes and one of them somehow got to Kurt Cobain's hands.

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