Does anyone still listen to tapes?

Originally posted by robbie

I'm poor and taking umbridge to slowly updating my music collection onto cd.

Tape => Wavelab => dbAMP => Ogg Vorbis.

I have baat 150 tapes (numbered and with an image on each that make a larger image, one picture for each 'wave' of recordings). coz the quality of the cassette player the cassets come from, I have good quality recordings that make good Ogg !

i listened to tapes on my old hifi unfortunately when i was out some low life broke in to my house and stole the stereo which was quite funny has the cd player didnt work and only one side of the tape player worked.the best bit that worked was the speakers and they left them lol.

they also took a tv which was on the floor ready to be thrown out has that didnt work either so they had an hard nights work all for nothing doesnt it just make ya laugh.

but have now gone on to cds which are much better

I prefer analogue so I only listen to tapes

Well tapes,records,VHS tapes and 8 tracks...... In my opinion NOTHING BETTER than analogue!!

Tape used to be my main means of listening to music. Used to walk the streets of Sheffield listening to them thirty years ago. Put a decent amount of cash in to a nice piece of Aiwa portable player... then one day a half life nicked it, (twit didn't take the battery compartment or the bespoke charger unit.) and all my HiFi. Got the HiFi back, but not the tape player. CD was around, but just not as portable. Low life got 100 days community service and denied taking the tape player.. but got caught red handed with the rest.

However, things changed. Most of my tape collection has now been digitised. Yes, in, "real time," as DaveM put it. I've spent a while moving through music and vinyl has returned from obsolescence. I'm currently using a pair of Beyerdynamics DT 990 Pro phones, listening to a Little Dot 1+ valve amp (rocking a pair of Mullard valves) which is playing digitised copies of vinyl. (current track is Madness, "Dust Devil") - I digitise to FLAC. (you could have endless arguments over what format to digitise in. A great subject to start a fight down at the local.)

Tape will likely never come back like Vinyl did, because of the hiss. Properly cleaned vinyl is a pleasure to listen to. My ears are currently in the late 40's and I can't tell the difference between vinyl and CD. (until I hear a pop!) But the hiss on tapes is... well... I could rant on about technical stuff and the capabilities of the human ear... but the fact is that all this is down to what you enjoy listening to.

When I was a teen, I had the single to Bruce Willis, "Fun Time," and then I bought the LP. I scratched that, so bought the tape. Played it so often in the car that it stretched and broke, and then I ended up with the CD.

I still have my three head tape deck and I'm down to a case of about 40-ish quality Chrome tapes that I mixed back in the day. Used to record off radio. But I'd rather vinyl, CD or FLAC rip. I do use MP3 for the car player, purely because there's no way I can hear quality music over the roar of the engine :-D

I am trying to track down the AIWA player I used to have, however. They are like rocking horse droppings. More to heal the emotional wounds of the burglary 30 years ago than anything, though. It would be good to wander the streets again, like I used to, listening to the mix tapes... 'cause the hiss doesn't count for anything over the sound of the city.

I am with you MSKnight. Analogue is great as in LP records but the cassette tapes were dreadful quality even when using decent quality tape. I use a Rega Planer 3 turntable and it will compete with £1000 CD players.

I listen mainly to radio/Spotify through a decent soundcard and this is better quality sound than CD.

To the OP, don't bother replacing your tapes just get a decent sound card and sign up free to a streaming site. No hiss.

garage rock / punk bands have been self-releasing stuff on tapes for years, I think partly for nostalgic and aesthetic reasons. In fact, did they ever actually disappear at all?

I'd rather have a demo tape than a CD-R any day of the week, ditto home-made comps... but I get that it's not really a rational or logical call.

Robbie,

I still have a large collection of tapes that I still listen to. I occasionally listen to them on my Walkman.

Not human audio, but there's still a massive market for buying 8 bit computer games on tape and loading them the old fashioned way (and waiting four minutes for them to load).

Just come across this thread, Yes I listen to tapes I have hundreds mostly Comedy take from the Radio starting in the late Fifty’s early Sixties onward copied onto reel to reel tapes then to cassettes for easy listening in the car, when the car had a cassette player that is, now confined to my work shop player but still searching flea markets for hidden gems mostly lost Navy Larks and others that Aunty Beeb wiped and like vinyl cassettes are coming back.

Not human audio, but there's still a massive market for buying 8 bit computer games on tape and loading them the old fashioned way (and waiting four minutes for them to load).

I still have dozens of c64 tapes

Just come across this thread, Yes I listen to tapes I have hundreds mostly Comedy take from the Radio starting in the late Fifty’s early Sixties onward copied onto reel to reel tapes then to cassettes for easy listening in the car, when the car had a cassette player that is, now confined to my work shop player but still searching flea markets for hidden gems mostly lost Navy Larks and others that Aunty Beeb wiped and like vinyl cassettes are coming back.

I think the like of 'Round the Horne' ('Cor..ain' he bold, ain he BOLD !') are out there.