Dave Weil wrote:
On 03 May 2004 15:12:03 GMT, (S888Wheel) wrote:
I suspect that that reasonably good digital now is so pervasive, people
have
forgotten how bad, even really pretty good cassette recordings are by
modern
standards.
I suspect most people have dropped the format and have to some degree
forgoten
much about it's sound. I also suspect that only a few ever really used
cassettes for critical listening. Most people I know were not terribly
concerned about sound quality and had them because they were portable.
I *just* picked up a used Tascam 122 and I still like to make
cassettes (I find it more fun than sitting in front of my computer
making CDs) and I *still* like to listen to cassettes on occasion. I
find that for a lot of "rock and roll", the euphony is more consonant
than CD. es[ecially in the car (see below).
Portability is still an issue for me because I still only have
cassette in the car. I've found that when I listen to other peoples'
CDs in the car, they don't *quite* sound as good to me, although the
track selection is preferable. I think it's an issue of them sounding
too "brittle" in that environment. But this is just my taste.
Eventually, I'll probably get around to sticking a CD changer in the
car...it's just that I'm not driven (pardon the pun) to do so right
now...
As I mentioned previously, all of my automobile listening is to metal, Dolby-C
encoded cassettes that I've made myself from my LP/CD collection. I generally
carry around about 45 90-minute cassettes in my car, so I've got plenty of
choices.
If I were to switch over to CD recording and playback in the car, I would, as I
understand it, have to worry quite a bit about compatibility problems between
the home recorder and the car CD player, especially using CD-RW's, which would
be the closest equivelent of how I currently record and rerecord cassettes.
As you've mentioned, ambient noise levels in cars are always going to be a
factor to some extent, and therefore S/N ratios are less of a consideration.
At any rate, given my record/playback chain, which I've described earlier in
this thread, the sound of cassette playback is certainly enjoyable to me in an
automobile environment. (And I do a lot of driving).
Bruce J. Richman