Are cassettes worth getting into, or is it a meme? I'm in a desperate quest to find soul.

total meme

>>127284372 (OP)
Even they are getting expensive now. The best bet is using MP3s

>>127284469
like those cheap vintage mp3 players, ipods and the sort

>>127284372 (OP)
I like tapes. But for how expensive they are, most of the time they aren’t worth it. I’ll still buy tapes if local musicians release them, as they are usually cheaper.

Soul is on 45s exclusively, with a dansette

meme. the primary use of cassettes was for home recording of records or CDs. good tape deck, good tape, and you could make an acceptable copy of your friends media you didn’t have or didn’t want to buy. literally boomer torrents/slsk.
pre-recorded cassettes always sounded poor in comparison, for two reasons, they generally used fairly shit quality tapes and tapes always sound best played back on the deck they were recorded on, because the head alignment is precisely the same.
tapes degrade with use and a little just with time, even if you dont play them. tape decks, while not unreliable per se, certainly develop more faults than other pieces of hi-fi because theyre such complex mechanisms. you cannot buy any good quality tape decks new any more, they stopped manufacturing the mechs and heads years ago, all you can get are bargain basement chinese shitters. so you'd have to find a quality vintage deck without too much wear on it, andgood luck with that if you dont know what youre looking for.
in short there are many drawbacks and the only thing the format has going for it is novelty.

invest on reel to reel nigga, thats the rizz now

>>127284919
the little Nagra mini reel2reels were so cool. they even did a super tiny one called the NS for like spies and stuff

>>127284372 (OP)
pre recorded record label tapes were shit.
the whole point from an audiophile point of view was to buy 90 minute basf chrome and put an entire vinyl on each side

>>127284970
>spy
the red one. that one is a work of art, it it isnt at the moma these jews need to kys themselves. ive got many R2Rs i love them, got a huge 70lb akai but the compact ones are just badass.

Its fun and I like the way its sounds. People didn't really use tapes to listen to studio albums, but I like to buy them for 80s releases

Not a meme if you're into it for the collection/history aspect of it but you have to be real deep to find stuff worth amassing. If you're just getting into collecting and digging deeper with music history, vinyl and CD's are going to have way more readily available (and better quality) stuff. But if you're real deep in a certain subgenre or movement there's probably a bunch of cassette stuff that is hard to find anywhere else.
>>127284491
is a pretty good post about why it's not really that worth it for newer releases anymore

>>127284919
>>127284970
and why are these motherfuckers used in field recording and not as studio reels?
Is Otari and Studer really much better?

>>127284372 (OP)
I have a couple hundred tapes. Most play fine but the risk with them that isn’t there with vinyl and CDs is you can’t sight inspect them to tell if they’re shit or not. I can see scratches on those but sticky shedding/warped tapes look the same and you can’t tell until you get it home and play it. Pressure pads fall off all the time on old tapes but I can fix that. Opening a case to splice loose belts back together is a meticulous process that I don’t have the patience for. There is something fun about listening to them on a Walkman if you can afford a refurbished one.

>>127285187
the nagras? bc theyre lliterally that, theyre for highest quality field recording/film audio tracks. theyre super compact, they even had batteries, and took small reels (they had 10' adapters but theyre goofy and just a proof of concept really) everything about their design was about portability. the brands you mentioned mostly made hulking heavy boxes designed to be glued for years in a corner in the studio, gave more lenght, more tracks, built with splicing in mind so they had extra space on top, different purposes.

ive got pink floyds the wall in several formats and the best sounding one is cassette, alternate mixing maybe? it sounds super clear and detailed, and way more wide than the other formats

>>127284372 (OP)
It's a meme. I own a few cassettes but I mostly bought them to support the artist. They're fun to collect but I don't even own a cassette player.

>>127285241
>>127285187
its also about multitrack recordings. a studio machine using 1 inch or 2 inch tape could record 8, 16 or 24 tracks for complex works, depending on the model
portable machines use narrower tape formats, 1/4 inch or 1/2 inch and often only have 4 tracks

As an older anon who was around when tapes were one of the mainstream commercial formats, the appeal was always the convenience not the sound. You bought the tape version for your car/Walkman, or so you could have a stack of them by your stereo. But if you cared about sound even a little, you would have the album or CD to really listen and dub your own copy onto tape for portability.
Side note, until I was in my 20s random tumble weeds of magnetic tape were as common a sight on the side of the road as fast food bags.
Anyways tape hung on for DIY bands and demos until CD burners became ubiquitous in the 00s.
But when even CDs went the way of the Dodo what are your local DIY kids going to put on the merch table? Small runs of vinyl; if you have the following and resources to make that viable. Putting a code for your bandcamp in a sticker pack is kind of lame.
But if you can figure out how to print a zine, you can make a batch of tapes. Simultaneously the nostalgia cycle caught up so cassettes were retro cool again.
It helps that some artists are always trying to fuck up their sound to make it more interesting. And if you're sampling, tapes are a buck a dozen and come with a baked in "authentic" sound.
This exact thing happened with vinyl when thrift stores were giving them away, people became nostalgic for the sound, DAWs and samplers turned every artist into a crate digger, and getting a small vinyl run pressed became accessible for indie bands.
Only cassette is even cheaper, players are still cheap and plentiful, and it's incredibly easy to DIY. and transport around.
So it's part meme, part practicality and novelty for DIY, and some legitimate nostalgia for the aesthetic and sound.
Want to get into them? Knock yourself out, collecting dead formats is fun. But don't be a fool and pay more then a buck or two an old tape.

>>127284372 (OP)
Meme, if you're gonna collect physical media make it CDs.

>>127284372 (OP)
It's the most based format, don't listen to the squares shitting on it.
It's occasionally cheap, fun to use, abundant, and you can even use it as an instrument.

Post collections

>>127289574
>3 copies of the bible
Whats the story?

>>127289694
Gospel of John
Acts of the Apostles 1:1- 15:29
Acts of the Apostles 15:30 - Romans 3:10
Romans 3:11 - 1 Corinthians 9:17

>is consumption soul

>>127289867
Ah that makes more sense

>>127290125
There's no source for happiness left. Birthrates are down, prices are up, and the only thing we have to be happy for is buying new stuff. It's better that the stuff we're buying is cheap and recycled, like used media. Just whatever provides dopamine without spending too much money.

>>127284489
This is the way
Although it's getting rough out there

Real niggas are listening to music on wire now

Do not listen to shills. Cassettes are peak sovl.

>>127284372 (OP)
they suck

>>127284372 (OP)
"vintage sound"

you don't need it.

>>127291192
This. I’m 37. Never married. Above average looks and a decent job in marketing. It’s over for society. People are lost and I’m glad I got to grow up in the last fumes of the pre-internet/iPhone era. It’s a trinket economy. When basic milestones in life like getting married, having a family and owning a home are dead so is human desire and hope

>>127292379
Hey man don’t forget about waking up everyday and hearing how AI is going to take your job all the way from doctor to janitor!

>>127292379
It's so shit.
Over 32 years for me of this crap now. It's like I was never supposed to exist.
I have no idea what keeps me going. Cowardice?

>>127284372 (OP)
Just do vinyl

>>127284372 (OP)
Meme unless the aesthetics of how you listen to your music play a big part of the experience for you