View Single Post
  #31   Report Post  
Posted to rec.audio.opinion
Harry Lavo Harry Lavo is offline
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,243
Default Which is more important?


"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
news
"Harry Lavo" wrote in message

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
. ..
"MiNe 109" wrote in message

In article
, "Arny
Krueger" wrote: Harry:


Even the first five years
of high-quality cassette decks were of appeal only to
the high-fidelity market as more or less a "gimmick".


IME, there never has been and never will be a high
fidelity cassette machine. But thanks Harry for
admitting tacitly that you have tin ears.

Otherwise, if they were used at all, they were used as
dicatating machines.

In what alternative universe?

This one:

http://audiotools.com/cass.html

"The cassette or rather the "Compact Cassette" was
invented by the Dutch company Philips in the early 60's.
Originally intended for voice recording and therefore
designed with no regard for sound quality it
nevertheless quickly gained acceptance with hobby
recordists."

You missed my point. It became unclear because I
followed Harry's paragraphs. I agree that cassette was
basically a voice-grade medium, and in the most limited
meaning of that phrase. It's Harry's clear statement
that it was a hifi medium that I take exception to.


Your point was a strawman wiggle. I never said the
cassette was "hi-fi".


You said it had appeal to the Hi Fi market.


I think you need new glasses Arny. I said no such thing. I said even the
high quality cassette decks were initially viewed as gimmicks. It wasn't
until many years after Dolby came along that the Hi Fi market accepted
them...and then only as a means of making music portable, certainly not as a
high fidelity sound standard. Open-reel tape and LP held that rank, and for
many hi-fi lovers they still do.



I said it was an acceptable sound
standard for the masses (your "mainstream")


Wrong - it was incapable of unseating the LP.


That's funny .... because by the late '80's it did....in terms of number of
hamburgers sold...to the masses.


and still would be if it had the convenience of CD.


Wrong again, cassettes were more convenient than CDs in several ways.


And CD's were more convenient than cassettes (and LP's) in many ways. They
were industructable.


In the days when cassettes were were competing with CDs:

(1) Portable cassette players were cheaper
(2) Cassettes could be recorded at home, CDs could not.
(3) Cassettes were more pocket-sized


Yep, and they continued to grow until nearly 1990 partly for that reason.
Why do you suppose the masses behaved this way when they could have had
vastly superior "perfect sound forever". Was it perhaps because they
weren't that critical or discerning about sound quality and cassette quality
was perfectly acceptable to them?



In other
words, Arny, if the CD had *only* the sound quality of
cassettes circa 1980-85, it still would have been a
success based on the industructableness and convenience.


Wrong for reasons already stated.


Your opinion, of course, and you are welcome to it. I will grant you it
would probably have taken longer, because then they would have been less
acceptable to those who did care about sound....but they would have suceeded
nonetheless IMO. The real thing holding the cassette up and the CD back was
the fact that cassettes had a lock on the car market until the early '90's.
When CD's took over the car market, it would not have mattered if the sound
quality was cassette level or not....they would have become the standard in
any case.

In fact I've never had problems with
dstroying cassettes, and I still produce them regularly to this day.


Just as I've never had problems destroying my records....but apparently
others including you have. I've had my share of tape snarls and cracked
shells, and I'm not alone.


Especially if Sony called it "Perfect Sound Forever"
(they now argue they didn't really mean to emphasize the
"perfect sound", rather they really meant to emphasize
the "forever").


Wrong again.


Not according to a report I heard recently (can't remember where on the
internet, so it is not highly credible). This source said he was told that
directly by a Sony engineer.


And cassettes were again superceded by the CD
because they were more convenient, Arny.


Convenience in this case also meaning more
predictably higher quality.

Not necessarily...just less chance of breakage and
requiring less care.


I'm talking about formats, not specific recordings.


But thanks Harry for showing your disregard for sound
quality by defending the cassette format.


I'm not defending it for sound quality, quite the
opposite Arny...can't you read.


I can read, and that's one of your problems Harry. You
called cassette a high fidelity format, and thank you
for making things so clear.


Didn't he say "high-quality cassette decks"?


He also said a lot more than that. Try to see the whole
picture.


Can't admit even a clear-cut mistake, eh Arny?


What mistake, Harry?


The one you keep repeating, Arny. Perhaps you should read the beginning of
*this* post again.