13-Year-Old Trades iPod For a Walkman For a Week 354
BBC Magazine convinced 13-year-old Scott Campbell to trade in his iPod for a Walkman for a week and see what he thought. Scott thinks the iPod wins when it comes to sound quality, color, weight, and the shuffle feature. The Walkman, however, offers two headphone sockets, making it much easier to listen to music with a friend. My favorite part of the review is, "It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equalizer, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette."
Hehe he ain't seen nothing yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
About giving him an 8 track cartridge tape ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereo_8 [wikipedia.org]
At least, there is only one side to those. I still remember listening to Pink Floyd "The dark side of the moon" and "Echoes" while cruising in my car. Even today, when I listen to it on more modern media, I still remember where the sound track would cut for a few seconds in the middle of a song in order to allow the player to change tracks. They did a fade-out in the middle of a song in order to make it sound more appropriated... ;-)
8-tracks came before 4 track mini-cassette :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_Cassette [wikipedia.org]
For those who don't know 8 tracks, the tape is arranged in a endless loop so it was impossible to rewind the tape ;-))) I still have an 8 track recorder in the basement somewhere, I used to record my own tapes ;-)
Re:Hehe he ain't seen nothing yet... (Score:5, Funny)
Always fun convincing people they needed to rewind an 8 track.
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only take you about 3 hours to find a song on the damn things. My dad had one. I finally gave up and copied all his worth listening to music to cassette. It only had fast forward, and there was no way of knowing which track the song should be on.
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Nevermind rewinding tapes, how about DVDs [kf6nvr.net]?
Or Four-Track Tapes... (Score:2)
Originally invented in 1956, four-track was ignored due to marketing concerns but was briefly resurrected in the late 1960s as "the next big thing." When I was a little younger than this kid, I received a "Hipster" Four-Track tape player -- same thing as an eight track, but with a cassette-sized tape in a smaller form factor. I got one tape with it -- The Gentrys. I've long since lost that tape deck and the single tape it had, but I suppose it would be worth a wee bit of money were it in working conditi
Re:Hehe he ain't seen nothing yet... (Score:5, Funny)
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Yeah, the guy who mutilated the gremlins in the movie got chicks too.
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Re:Hehe he ain't seen nothing yet... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hehe he ain't seen nothing yet... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Hehe he ain't seen nothing yet... (Score:5, Funny)
I don't have an 8-track player - but I do leave several 8-track tapes strewn around my car interior.
Best. Anti-Theft System. Ever. (YMMV)
Re:Hehe he ain't seen nothing yet... (Score:5, Funny)
When I was a teenager, 8 years ago (2001-2002), instead of putting a CD deck in my car, I wanted to put my dad's old 8 track deck into my car. That way it would have been ironic, hip, and would have limited me to playing only his old 60s-80s 8 track tapes. Also, I had no money for a CD deck. Almost got it done, but lazy kicked in, and the 8 track deck needed to be repaired a bit, so I abandoned it.
I went around trying to find somewhere which might have one for real cheap, like a pawn shop or similar. This was a pretty interesting thing to go around asking.
I went into this kind of music pawn shop, which had heaps of old things, including old record players, however it was more focused on that sort of indie niche. I walked in and asked the person running the store if they have an 8 track player, especially for a car. There was this old druggie raver looking guy standing behind him looking at records. When I asked about the 8 track player, he turned around and said "Hey man, that was funny, I thought I heard you asking for an 8 track player", at which point I looked at him and said "I am", he looked back with a freaked out yet blank face and said "Whoah". He then proceeded to stare at me after that last thought. All I can think was that I caused him to have some sort of an acid flash back, which he experienced for the next 30 seconds.
Either way, I still got a pile of 8 track tapes and no 8 track player. Probably for the best, I now have a good car, with a good deck, and I like things which aren't shit, now. Though the old bomb (1981 Ford Falcon XD) was awesome for jumping over train tracks, going 200kph, drifting around dirt corners, shredding my tyres and similar.
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Right, it was a chick magnet in 1972 although ;-)
Re:Hehe he ain't seen nothing yet... (Score:5, Funny)
I hated the cut in the middle of songs, although I don't remember any "good" songs being cut, usually it was mid-album lamers that got cut.
The upside to 8 track was the infinite play capability; critical for those 1970s pot smoking sessions when everyone got too mellow to get up and change the music. Of course this was also the downside, waking up at 4 AM to switch off the Nth playthrough of "Led Zeppelin IV".
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> I hated the cut in the middle of songs, although I don't remember any "good" songs being cut,
> usually it was mid-album lamers that got cut.
It did not happen often with top of the chart hits playing on the radio, usually 2 to 4 minutes long songs. It only occurred with non radio suitable albums with pretty long songs, sometimes songs that took the whole side of an LP record (33 rpm).
Technically, the challenge was to split a 2 side LP in 4 equal parts. Otherwise, if one of these 4 parts was considera
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On the 8 track of the Allman Brothers Idewild South, they padded the last "program" so there wasn't so much empty space by repeating the section of "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" from the drum break until the end.
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I hated the cut in the middle of songs, although I don't remember any "good" songs being cut, usually it was mid-album lamers that got cut.
One glaring example I remember: on Billy Joel's "52nd Street" 8-track, they cut "Zanzibar" in-half because it's too long for one track (5:13). It fades out during Freddie Hubbard's excellent trumpet solo.
I am so thankful that 8-tracks quickly lost to cassette tapes, so I really never had to deal with them. Even though cassette tapes sucked, they were genuinely portable
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Not only were you listening to "Money" on Track 2 but you could probably also faintly here "Speak to Me" on track 1 at the same time through the bleed through.
Re:Hehe he ain't seen nothing yet... (Score:5, Funny)
you could probably also faintly here "Speak to Me" on track 1 at the same time
That was just 'the lunatic in your head' that you were hearing.
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This was due to head misalignment, it also occurs with 4 track mini-cassette but it is harder to recognize the interfering song because it is then played backwards ;-)
Re:Hehe he ain't seen nothing yet... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yeah, thanks for the (bad) memories... I bought a few 8-track tapes back in the day. It was great how you'd often have a track change RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FRIGGIN' SONG.
I also had one of these popular brightly-colored "portable" 8-track players that had a big T-shaped handle on the top. If you wanted to change tracks, you'd whack down on the handle... I think this was the one [kaboomtoys.com].
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Be careful, we are the Asgards. We have been around for much longer than you can humanly imagine and we have already experienced all of what you are experiencing now ;-))
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On the plus side... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:On the plus side... (Score:4, Informative)
You don't need iTunes to put music on an iPod, either.
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No. Suggest putting your own copy of some recording
on your own portable device and some nutter will come
out of the woodwork to claim that you are "breaking
the law".
Back in the day, some of us did it vinyl -> cassette.
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Re:On the plus side... (Score:5, Funny)
Could you suggest a program I could use instead of iTunes?
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gtkpod or various other implementations all work great. me and my wife use them with various ipods.
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Re:Gotta love them cassettes.. (Score:5, Funny)
And there's just something about it that no CD/DVD/MP3s can match.
Like the ability to get wrapped around the heads in a crappy/broken player? ;-)
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4 track audio actually wrap around the capstan and pinch-roller, the tape is only 'dragged over' the head, meaning crap on the head can scratch the tape surface, but there's not really any way for it to tangle there. Any sticky crap on the capstan/rollers would cause the tape to adhe
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Not to advocate cassettes, but at least they didn't get scratched in stupid CD trays that eject and retract at all the wrong times, like when you're halfway through changing the CD and rebooting. Then you try to rescue the CD from being scratched as it's jammed halfway into the closing tray, only to have the tray try to eat your fingers too.
Surely you are trolling. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Surely you are trolling. (Score:5, Insightful)
Worse, the mere act of not using a cassette degrades it. Not even vinyl can say that. It just degrades in an analog way that will leave the tape technically playable for a long time. But it also starts with signficantly worse quality than either CDs or vinyl and goes downhill from there.
I can understand the nostalgic property of vinyl to a certain degree, but longing for cassettes is just pathetic.
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I liken it to an old car.
An old car, properly maintained and serviced, works like new. A cassette can never say the same as no amount of head cleaning will prevent or undo the degradation that occurs over time whether used or not. Even the highest quality cassettes (the only kind I'd buy) are on a slow curve to uselessness.
You can argue that mp3s appeal to the ear only as opposed to cassettes (or even vinyl for that matter) that appeal to the ears, eyes, touch and if you're weird like me, then even taste
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Here we branch out into technically superior and characteristically superior.
If you like the audio characteristics of cassettes, a digital audio file can reproduce every single flaw and bit of distortion. You could even apply filters to make brand new CDs sound just like an old cassette.
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You could even apply filters to make brand new CDs sound just like an old cassette.
A webcam microphone recording of the track being played through $5 Walmart speakers under a pillow, then downsampled to a 32kbps wma file should do the job.
/~Rockwolf
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A cassette lasts longer than a CD-R.
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I guess they're durable as long as you don't listen to them much. The mere act of playing a cassette degrades it. And then there's the sound quality issue. Comparing cassettes favorably to mp3 is one thing, but to CD/DVD? Seriously?
When I was studying music years ago I did some blind tests to show whether I could detect the difference between analog and digitally sampled (CD) recordings. I got it every time. CD sounds like rubbish for a lot of music. It's great for modern music, but real rubbish as far as complex sounds like violins etc go. For strings, LP's and analog cassettes really do offer a nicer sound.
Re:Surely you are trolling. (Score:4, Interesting)
Just curious, you didn't write up your experiment, did you? My old prof [wikipedia.org] would probably be interested in reading.
Also, are you sure that the CDs were "worse" at reproduction on absolute terms, or that the analogue recordings simply induced distortions that you found pleasant, like tube-induced second harmonic distortion? It's almost impossible to do double-blind audio analysis with analogue v digital, because analogue always gives itself away with noise, and I've read that subjective listeners often cannot tell the difference between analogue and digital for most program material if the digital is noised up, or if needle pops are added, or if programs like string-heavy orchestral programs are given even-harmonic distortion.
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I agree, I think you're failing at Nyquist, because the HF response of analogue cassette was nowhere near what a CD can do, and by the sampling theorem, a waveform under half the sampling freq is reproduced perfectly -- I hope you don't labor under the impression that the signal comes out of the speakers steppy, because it doesn't. I think the best high-end you could get out of a player was a 2 inch machine running at 30 ips, and even then you're only going to be able to squeeze 30-40 kHz bandwidth out of
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Digital sampling works great however for modern largely electronic music. It's a shame that you can't really get analog recordings anymore... I miss real sound.
And yet, classical and jazz listeners were the first adaptors of CDs way back when, and are likewise the first/only adaptors of SACD.
Out of curiosity, did you ever happen to listen to the Telarc 1812 Overture [classicalcdreview.com]? This was one of the earlist digital recordings, but was set to vinyl. The cannon blasts were said to leave pieces of woofer all over the living room floor.
Re:Gotta love them cassettes.. (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm. In a pinch, audio cassettes can do double-duty as impromptu teething devices for your toddler, and still play music afterwards. Is that it?
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They were also vulnerable to a bad master tape during manufacturing. The only pre-recorded cassette tape I bought back in the day had a dropout in the music. I took it back and exchanged it for another copy. The replacement had a dropout in the same place. (And yes, it was a different tape, I know they didn't just hand the same tape back to me.)
I ended up getting about a dozen LPs back in the early '80s (two or three of them Wierd Al), then stopped because CD would obviously take over.
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I got so used to the dropout in my copy of "... and Justice for All" that when I finally got it on CD years later it sounded weird to me for a long time.
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A CD in a hot car could also have problems, especially if the CD is a recordable disk. If the tape deck eats a tape, it only affects a small part of the tape, if needed you can cut and splice it. On the other hand, if a CD is scratched the result may be anywhere from unnoticeable to a skip to an unplayable disk. It would be quite hard for a tape player to make the whole tape unusable (short of a malfunctioning erase circuit).
And cassettes are durable. Once somebody (not me) stepped on a cassette that I real
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The problem with your comment (and I'm not picking on you, just stating a point) is that most people today who would burn a CD probably have another copy of the data at home. So, the tedious effort of repacking a tape just to play it again (I know I've had the pleasure of doing this....) is actually quite substantial when compared to smashing a CD-R of your favorite music and then spending all of 5 minutes burning a new copy.
I still have yet to convince my wife that she should not use pressed CDs in her ca
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Heh.. Your post reminds me of all the people nostalgic about Vinyl. They said/say the exact same thing about tapes. It's interesting how some members of each generation seems to fall in love with the FORMAT of the music.
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The sound of, say, Metallica's Garage Inc on tape is way better than on mp3. Cassettes are beautiful. They are durable, unlike CD/DVDs, and I have 25 year old cassettes that still work. They are hardware, tangible mechanical form of music. And there's just something about it that no CD/DVD/MP3s can match. And then there's the cover art sitting on an actual cover. Man I miss those days.
Man this is just wrong. Yes, tape has a higher fidelity than your standard 128 kbps mp3. But not for long. You'll lose most of the highs from ambient electromagnetic interference over the years, unless you store it in a lead box or something.
I wouldn't exactly call them durable either. You've never had a tape eaten by a bad deck? Or a little brother that decorated his room with the tape?
And cover art? It's smaller than a CD case!
Have you ever even heard of vinyl? Promo posters, bifold and tr
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Man this is just wrong. Yes, tape has a higher fidelity than your standard 128 kbps mp3. But not for long. You'll lose most of the highs from ambient electromagnetic interference over the years, unless you store it in a lead box or something.
Depending on where that MP3 is written, after some number of years the cassette may sound bad and the MP3 might be unplayable.
I wouldn't exactly call them durable either. You've never had a tape eaten by a bad deck? Or a little brother that decorated his room with the tape?
It's also very easy to damage a CD. It's easily scratched, CD-Rs don't like sunlight (and UV rays) and degrade faster than a tape. Tape, eaten by a bad deck can usually be saved. A broken CD cannot be fixed, however it's likely that the cassette you sat on contains a tape that can be moved to another shell.
I've got 80 year old 78's
I have one record that's 94 years old :)
Anyway, cassettes are usually more dur
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Yes, tape has a higher fidelity than your standard 128 kbps mp3.
I very much doubt that. Even if you're using a well-recorded expensive "metal" tape as your point of comparison, I reckon a well-encoded 128kbps MP3 is still going to beat it for overall audio quality.
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I personally think CDs had better cover art and you were much more likely to get more stuff to read in the CD over than the tape cover. The paper was generally better quality and it didn't fall apart after years of use (assumi
Re:Gotta love them cassettes.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Best part, you can use them to trade music with your friends, just like the Metallica guys did before they got famous.
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there isn't?
http://www.avguide.com/forums/turntable-isolation-platform [avguide.com]
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On the other hand, modern CDs are so compressed that you do not need any NR to record them to a cassette. This is not a deficiency with the CD as a medium, just the mastering.
And I though that switch.. (Score:5, Funny)
..was there to make my C64 games load faster...
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ActionReplay with the fastload. Man was that good. Especially with the 1541 (3mins to 10 secs).
Low-slung... (Score:5, Funny)
It comes with a handy belt clip screwed on to the back, yet the weight of the unit is enough to haul down a low-slung pair of combats.
Pull your pants up and wear a belt! You damn kids
Re:Low-slung... (Score:5, Funny)
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Perhaps it's because I'm quite bright, but apart from the metal switch, I never had any of those questions when I first picked up a tape deck.
Re:Low-slung... (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps it's because I'm quite bright, but apart from the metal switch, I never had any of those questions when I first picked up a tape deck.
Maybe because tape decks were in common use when you were a kid, and you saw them being operated?
I'm not sure it's fair to call kids "spoiled rotten" because they see the superiority of current technology over what was in use years/decades before they were born. Kids may have a hard time imagining life without iPods and the Internet, but many young adults have a hard time imagining life before TVs and telephones were in every house. Many of us have a hard time imagining life without electricity, automobiles, or indoor plumbing. Insofar as this kid is spoiled, we're all spoiled.
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That was my thought, are kids today really that spoiled rotten? I mean when I was a kid we got to choose between cassettes and records then later cassettes and CDs. But, I don't recall any of my friends ever speaking so derisively of the turntables.
Perhaps it's because I'm quite bright, but apart from the metal switch, I never had any of those questions when I first picked up a tape deck.
I think part of the reason you had little trouble was the contemporary "general knowledge" of the time. You learned tapes had double sides, because at the very least you saw an adult flip the tape around and there was usually writing on both sides. You saw it being used, you heard you parents (or whoever) talk about the device, etc. Even if you don't recall someone specifically stating "Now Sam, remember the tape has two sides so when you reach the end you need to flip it" you learned it from somewhere.
T
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Perhaps it's because I'm quite bright, but apart from the metal switch, I never had any of those questions when I first picked up a tape deck.
Yes, you're very smart. Pat yourself on the back.
That was pretty metal (Score:5, Funny)
As I listen to Dëthklok, I marvel at a radio that would have a Metal/normal equalizer preset.
That would be pretty metal.
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The Sony Walkman which my parents got me in the mid 90s also had the awesome Metal tape switch. Too bad I wasn't into the genre at the time, I'm sure it would've amused my young self to no end. Still, it took me a while to figure out what it was for, since of course I did not RTFM.
Unfortunately it was snatched on one of the school trips, so while it's not cluttering up my drawer somewhere, I do still have the kit earbuds. From what I can remember about it, it was a model related to the WM-FX211 [walkmancentral.com], though not
Boombox (Score:5, Funny)
Was that really written by a 13 year old? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down "rewind" and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured.
That is definitely one articulate 13 year old. Apparently the schools in Aberdeenshire [aberdeenshire.gov.uk]. are really good.
Re:Was that really written by a 13 year old? (Score:5, Funny)
Not to mention the missing apostrophe! What an illiterate little fuck.
How could you tell? (Score:4, Funny)
I'd like to introduce to my friend, h|tler:
<h|tler> HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU TELL THAT I'M 13 BY LOOKING AT WHAT I'M WRITEING????????????????
(From http://bash.org/?14207 [bash.org])
The slashdot filter had me remove a bunch of question marks. Yes, there are even more in the original.
Re:Was that really written by a 13 year old? (Score:5, Insightful)
My favorite part is:
Furthermore, there were a number of buttons protruding from the top and sides of this device to provide functions such as "rewinding" and "fast-forwarding" (remember those?), which added even more bulk.
Emphasis mine.
That part sounded more like a nostalgic review rather than from someone who see the functionality for the first time.
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This isn't really uncommon practice in the journalism world. My sister was interviewed by an Isreaeli reporter shortly after the rocket attacks a few months back, because of her status as an American and her
Ah, memories! (Score:2)
I bought a Walkman in Munich in 1981 when I was a tourist and the device was still relatively new. It was so cool! The first versions looked so well made!
Nowadays, the thing's junk compared to my Sansa player, but my memory takes me back to when it was the single coolest single thing I owned.!
not so naive (Score:2)
Here are the two reasons I liked my first MP3 player better than a tape or cd player. First, even on my primitive player, which I used from a time before the iPod ex
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For that matter, I wonder how many people really owned metal bias cassettes, even back in the hey-day of the Walkman?
I remember being told by someone "in the know", at some point in my childhood that the "chrome" and "metal" positions on a component stereo tape deck were for "better quality" cassettes with those "bias settings". But I never had reason to USE any setting but "normal" until much later, when I found some "chrome" TDK branded cassettes on sale (at about double the price of the others) and decid
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My father used metal tapes in an expensive Nakamichi hi-fi cassette deck. He used them to record his classical music from his vinyl records, so he wouldn't degrade the record with repeat listening.
But I never saw anybody else use them, at most people would buy the "chrome" tapes, which were much more like the normal tapes, only very slightly better. Nothing like these "metal" tapes that cost a small fortune. And they actually were heavy, almost as if the cassette was made of lead - other cassettes seemed fl
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RTFM? (Score:2, Insightful)
Minidisc (Score:2)
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Man, I bought my wife a mini-disc player six years ago because I thought they were pretty cool. You could put a lot of music on a disc, and although it wasn't quite as big as an iPod, you could always just carry another disc or two because they were pretty small. I thought it was a great balance between size and expandability, and the player was pretty small and easy to carry around. The sound quality was great. I thought, 'I know she asked for an mp3 player, but this is even better than an mp3 player.'
But could he... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:But could he... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't see why not. There's only one official way to use a rotary dial phone. Dialing by fiddling with the receiver "off hook" switch was a pain, and only for those cases where you had to make a call when somebody put one of those locks on the rotary dial.
It's not at all physically obvious why casette tapes should have "sides". The answer is in the physical property of the media. The speed with which the magnetized tape passes the head determines the strength of a signal. One of the trade offs of the technology is that higher speed and overall tape length. Having two sides to the tape allowed the overall tape length to remain manageable while doubling the capacity of the cartridge.
Likewise with the "metal" button. His guess was actually quite clever, and not too far off the mark. "Metal" here is a ridiculous piece of jargon; all tapes use metals or mixtures of different metal compounds bound to a plastic substrate. "Metal" tapes have a mixture with different recording and playback characteristics than the older iron oxide tapes. How the hell is anybody supposed to infer that from a label on a button?
Judging from the picture, they game him a beat up old tape player. It's no wonder it didn't sound so good. He was quite observant to note that some of the sound problems he heard were a result of weak batteries driving the motors, which might be worse on an old device. The quality of the tapes he used could also be an issue. Old, worn out tapes would sound bad, and new tapes that weren't recorded properly in the first place could have problems too.
Back in the day, a really good "walkman" type tape device with a decent set of portable earphones and a good quality tape could actually sound acceptably good. Maybe not audiophile quality, but then again you'd be taking your life in your hands to walk around with anything "audiophile quality" on conspicuous display. Even today people listen to their MP3 players using earbuds. I would say that a portable tape player with everything in tip-top shape and a pair of decent over the ear earphones would give an iPod with stock earbuds a run for its money in terms of sound.
Re:But could he... (Score:4, Interesting)
A friend of mine had to teach their kid how to use the "phone without buttons", recently. Let's just say that it's non-obvious, and much more so than I expected.
Your points are good, but leave off one interesting bit about cassette players -- not all of them were especially good at matching the same tape speed. I had a sony that would play just the tiniest bit faster than it should, mucking up the pace and tone of the recording. Oddly enough, the sanyo it replaced had a speed control so that you could adjust for that.
Finally, he never got to listen to two of my favorite cassette bands -- "de-magnetizer" and "head cleaner" -- what's a cassette experience without 'em?
Funniest Quote (Score:4, Insightful)
Aw, that's cute. We'll see what he says when he's forty and he gives his kid an iPod to play with.
Wait, what? (Score:4, Funny)
That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equalizer, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette."
Wait wait wait. They had actual METAL cassettes? Like, made out of metal?
The scary part is that I'm being completely serious. I'm only 21 but I had a Walkman for a few years before I got my first CD player, I always wondered about that switch but since I never saw a cassette made out of metal I assumed the same thing he did, that it was being genre-specific.
Now one of the great mysteries of my life is solved.
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Vegeta99 is right about the sound quality. (I don't know about the chemical composition of the tape-- it's probably on Wikipedia, but I can't be bothered to look it up. ;) The cases were always plastic, of course.
Metal tapes were a lot more expensive than regular tapes, and you could only buy them at specialty stores, such as Musicland. If you were going to create a master mix and then duplicate it on a cutting-edge dual-cassette deck, you would create the master on a metal tape ($4 to $5 each in mid-80'
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I agree the Sony MP3 players are much better in terms of features like FM radio, bluetooth headphone support, easy to upload and change music as well as use to store other files like your resume. It is also cheaper for the size of storage and options you get.
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It's not the writing style of an average 13 year old, but the average 13 year old, or even average much older person doesn't get to write articles for the BBC.