Why in 2018 listen to music on cassettes?
Cassette players - this is no joke, a new vinyl. They just have to become fashionable and prestigious again. There is analog nostalgia, ritual and even euphoria in listening to music from cassettes. Refer to the film, and you will discover a new world, and the music will begin to bring much more pleasure.
“There is nostalgia for the feeling when you hold the carrier in your hands,” says Steve Stepp, president of one of the few remaining audiocassette companies. On his face is not the anger of the retro dinosaur, but the contented smile of a successful investor. While other factories were switching to a CD, Steve bought out “outdated” equipment.
Steve talks about the steady increase in orders. Sales volumes are increasing by tens of percent annually.
To understand where the demand for tapes comes from, it is enough to expand the insert with the texts or photographs of the group. At least media publications make your musical experience more valuable. In addition, it is not just that it is pleasant to hold cassettes in your hands and put them on the shelves.
Each listening from physical media is unique. Analog editions cannot be rewritten without loss of quality, and the film (or vinyl) has a limited resource. Depending on the player, it can be about a hundred plays or less. But sooner or later, only the mashing and artifacts inherent in it will appear on the tape.
Why listen to audio tapes now?
The cassette player is the middle path, the golden chariot of the audiophile. Zen, known in the voluntary renunciation of convenience. It has the worst of other ways to enjoy music. The need to take care of technology, separately charge the batteries and search for cassettes require attention, like a monster home system. In addition, the sound quality remains relatively low.
It is because of this contradiction that paradoxical charm arises.
First, the cassette player will make you listen to music in albums again. Switching tracks is impossible (unlike CD players), and rewinding a track is completely inconvenient. Players and tape recorders are deprived of feedback from the film, display on tape technology is a rarity. Rewinding the track, you are guided by your sense of time and ... you will not use this function.
Learning to listen to albums all over again - it is like quitting smoking. Following the habit, the hand itself stretches to rewind an uninteresting fragment. It will be difficult, but worth it. I dare say that this is the most intelligent way to listen to music. Especially the music recorded in the era of analog.
To cite a vivid example: Pink Floyd's Roger Waters wrote "Welcome To The Machine" as part of the album "Wish You Were Here". "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" plays first, describing the lost dreamer, Syd Barrett, a former band member. "Welcome to the Machine" and "Have a Cigar" talk about the self-interest of the bosses in the music industry, reminiscent of the greed of a drag dealer. Lovely "Wish You Were Here" is a fantasy to turn back the clock, unrealizable and dreary. The second part of the "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" concludes the story: all the rock stars will follow Syd Barrett, just someone will be in the drug Valhalla before.
The importance of a separate super hit in the era of cassette players has not yet become a dogma, and many authors have thought more about the holistic perception of the album. The creators of the past often focused on the whole picture of the album, a combination of compositions.
Listening to the collection takes about an hour. This means that you will not be able to consume music as fast food: a track is another in the morning, to drop a fresh clip at lunchtime and something for dinner. Respect for listening returns romance, anticipation.
I would especially recommend Pink Floyd - this is a kind of Boeing Goshawk, training fighters for those who have lost the habit of listening to music correctly, but want to fly high.
What you need to know about cassette sound
Records on compact cassettes refer to the so-called lo-fi (low quality, not the genre of electronic music), primarily because of the background noise. Regardless of the sound recording method, even empty cassettes, if played at sufficient volume, crack and hiss.
However, 53 years have passed since the release of the first audiotape. 50 years more than it took the American kings of the right sound from Dolby Laboratories to invent noise reduction systems. The latest and most advanced of them is Dolby S (1990), which, together with the use of metal audio cassettes, will make the noise imperceptible to the trained ear itself.
It is possible to compensate for the shortcomings of the carrier, although this task is on the other side of the principle of moderation. The cost of an empty cassette with a metal film coating-type IV (not produced for more than 20 years) - about $15, while the "simple" Type I with a "Kiss" record will be ten times cheaper.
The legendary Nakamichi magnetic tape players cost between $ 1,500 and $ 10,000. In other words, the format of compact cassettes is not damned and of poor quality. For a serious price, the film will play no worse than vinyl.
Yet, what do you get at the start by buying, for example, a Walkman assembled at the border of the millennium? First of all, analog sound. The difference between a digit and an analogue is a slippery topic, but it is impossible to get around it. The analog signal is a continuous wave that we hear. A digital signal is a set of points by which transducers build a sound wave, that is, they collect zeros and ones. It does not give an understanding of how we catch one and the other. Human perception of sound is a field of psychoacoustics research. In addition, there is no unambiguous data on the issue. Therefore, I designate only what I distinguish myself.
©Depositphotos / Toggle switches, buttons, connectors and a rotary control - no, this is not a helicopter cabin, just a Sony WM-D6C. The Tape menu allows you to customize the cassette for one of the three types of film used: iron, chrome, metal. Dolby NR - noise reduction menu. Cassettes were recorded using one of three systems: B, C, or S; information about which encoder was used is printed on the packaging or on the tape itself. For the system to work, the player must have a suitable decoder. Released before the appearance of the Dolby S-player WM-D6C will not be able to noise reduction S-cassettes.
The key difference (on the music forums there will be enough of those who hear it) is in the so-called "jitter". This effect is felt as blurring, blurring, and comes from the inaccuracy of playing digital data. The essence of the distortion is that the computer does not know "how much time". Electronic watches of PCs and smartphones on quartz are not accurate enough to report the desired tick.
For a CD standard with a frequency of 44.1 kHz, the processor should issue 44,100 "hits" in one second, at equal intervals. He does not succeed. Deviations are the smallest fractions of time, but in the end we get the same jitter. The sound is ragged, the tracks simultaneously rush and lag behind at the nanosecond level.
High-precision iridium or rubidium clocks, the accuracy of which is an order of magnitude higher than that of quartz, solve the problem. New and therefore exclusive solution. Atomic clocks are one of the main vectors of digital music development. One day they will be able to press the vinyl and film, while their wide distribution is hampered by the high cost.
©Depositphotos / Vivaldi Master Clock - Swiss watches for your speakers
Of course, the movement of the film in a cassette recorder will also not be uniform. Here, tact violations are called "detonation" or, in slang, "analog jitter". Caused by vibrations in the mechanism, accelerations and decelerations of the film, they are less noticeable than digital distortion. The elastic magnetic tape smoothest advances and delays. The film sound is perceived as distinct and soft. A formal lo-fi suddenly possesses the properties of a hi-end instrument.
It is not so important what makes analogue music attractive: the objective ability of our ears or the ritual of listening. Even with the sudden resolution of the minuses of digital sound, it would be nice to think about whether we are losing something, following the path of simplification. Inflation of joy is the inevitable payment for glut, to which the simplicity of streaming services has.