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For many years the most popular way for people to listen to recorded music was the good old vinyl record, and even today audiophiles still seem to prefer this format due to its analogue nature.
Vinyl was a bit cumbersome though, and not practical if you wanted to record your own music, so the cassette tape was invented to solve these problems, and also allow you to tape the UK chart show off the radio!
During the 1980’s it wasn’t long before the average Joe turned to compact discs for their music, since they were both more portable and more hard wearing than vinyl, and didn’t get all chewed up in your stereo like cassette tape could. It took a few more years though before you could make your own CDs.
Compact discs are obviously still incredibly popular today, but with the advent of digital music file formats such as MP3 it looks like CDs are unlikely to have as long a lifespan as vinyl enjoyed. Indeed, many radio stations now rely on downloads to provide their weekly chart shows!
Of course there have been other formats for storing music over the years, such as miniDisc and 8 Track tape, but those listed above are without doubt the most popular systems.
To the point of this weeks survey then. Of the four main music formats mentioned above, which gets your vote as your favourite way of listening to recorded music?
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I seem to remember something called DAT tapes which were supposed to replace CDs, but didn’t.
My car still has a cassette player so I have somewhere to listen to all my old Madonna tapes. Got rid of all my vinyl albums some years ago and slightly regret it now, but not much, because most of them were scratched and wouldn’t play properly. They included the soundtracks to Dirty Dancing, Labyrinth and Back to the Future.
Yes, DAT tapes are another you can add to the list of also rans. They did become quite popular as a means of backing up computer data though.
I still love vinyl, and have amassed an even bigger collection recently thanks to charity shops. Our local music emporium is selling beautiful retro 60’s style red record players, with build in cd and radio for £150, and I’m sooooo tempted to replace my battered old midi system (still going after 20 years, so it seems a bit unkind to retire it…)
I remember those DAT things, weren’t the RIAA and Company trying to stop the use of DAT in the home because that meant you could copy high quality, digital music, indefinitely! So many audio recording decks were not sold on the consumer market, and most DATs sold were computer backup and transfer devices.
There were also these things called Digital Compact Cassettes. They had sliding access doors, just like 3.5-inch floppy diskettes, and were backwards compatible with Music Cassettes. They were around some time around the mid-90s. They stopped making them around 1996-1998.
The first time I came across DAT tape was, as you say AudioDruid888, for computer backup purposes. I didn’t realise it was originally an audio format until after that.
Never heard of the Digital Compact Cassettes though. I’m intrigued.
Vinyl: Has the best sound quality, not very convenient, with large non-recordable discs and bulky turntables. I only have 30 LPs, 50 singles and a one 78 anyway. Vinyl captures the full sound instead of parts of the sound. Does have problems of wear and analog noise. Are large, discs that are a good novelty to have. Its nice to have a song I really care about on vinyl.
Vinyl does scratch easily and no matter how clean you keep your records, they all get a little dusty and will have some clicks and pops.
Cassette: I really like these for listening to music in my car. I have a collection of around 500 tapes; both prerecorded, dubbed from vinyl and radio and mix-tapes.
I never carry boughten Music CDs in the car anymore, I use cheap copied CD-Rs for that.
Because after 6-8 months of keeping those CDs in the car with me, they probably will be all scratched and smudged up. I never have this problem with cassettes, so I have 2-3 CDs in the car and a good 10 or 12 tapes in there.
I always have a two-tape “Road Trip” Mix Tape, and two “commuting” tape mixes in the car. Tapes are very convenient, just throw it in the player, rewind and play!
It is a pain in the rear to find a specific song on a cassette, though and I’ve had tapes unravel on me, so the format isn’t perfect
CDs: I use CDs out of convenience and quality. They are so convenient and have good quality. CDs are very easy to collect, I have approximately 800-900 CDs, both store-boughten Music CDs, Home-burned CD-Rs and CD-RWs and second-hand Library CDs. I just love these things!
MP3s: I do have an I-Pod, though I prefer to actually physically own my music. I use 256 KBPS CBR, encoded at a 48.8 KHz sample rate.
I have copied my most prized songs onto this, so I can jog with music that doesn’t skip. (I don’t care what they say, anti-skip CD players still skip when jogging!) I really don’t like the quality of MP3 though, I’m hyper sensitive to treble and there is not very much bass in even 320 KBPS MP3, it does still sound a little tinny and flat.
So my verdict is:
CD beats Vinyl beats Tape beats MP3.
>;)
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