Cassettes over CDs

I was just wondering, should the music ompanies start naking cassette tapes again? I personlly think they should, tapes are better when it comes to traveling.

Bzzzt! Try again. What you lireallyli want is a new CD player for your car--but get one that plays MP3 CDs. Connection to your iPod/MP3 player is okay, but MP3 CDs are easier to handle, and you can usually put around 200 tracks on a CD. MP3 CDs also aren't prone to skipping much.

On the other hand, cassettes have very fragile magnetic tape inside, and are much more sensitive to heat. I've had several tapes chewed up by car cassette players. Plus they're bulky. It's a lot easier to pack a 25 CD wallet than 25 cassettes.

A MP3 CD? You mean a CD-R? Or..

Yes, a data CD with MP3 files on it. As to portability, no tape player can compete with the smallness of flash-based MP3 players. Get one with some sort of card slot (probably microSD), and you can carry a mind-boggling amount of music. I'd definitely rather have a pile of 1cmx1cmx0.5MM (roughly) flash chips than a cassette any day. You could carry maybe a hundred of them for the same mass/size as one cassette. They don't suffer from mechanical shock, they're more or less immune to magnetic fields, and you don't have to rewind them. As it happens, my car deck has an SD card slot (and a USB port, and it will read media files from DVD-R). I can fill a DVD with MP3 files in a couple minutes, something that would require a hundred tapes and many hours (more likely days) to copy music on to them. Even camcorders are finally starting to move away from tape-based mechanisms now.

Even camcorders are finally starting to move away from tape-based mechanisms now.

Unfortunately the DVD/HDD based camcorders suck in terms of video quality if you want any significant amount of recording time. I'll be preferring miniDV tapes until the digital media can offer better quality and recording time. Of course, the HDD cams are better simply because of the improved recording time at a higher resolution.

Never really cared for cassettes, so I prefer CD's.

Even camcorders are finally starting to move away from tape-based mechanisms now.

Unfortunately the DVD/HDD based camcorders suck in terms of video quality if you want any significant amount of recording time. I'll be preferring miniDV tapes until the digital media can offer better quality and recording time. Of course, the HDD cams are better simply because of the improved recording time at a higher resolution.

I was actually referring mainly to flash-based camcorders, like Samsung's new HD camcorder. As the price of large SDHC cards drop, it's a really nice option. According to the specs, the builtin 8gb holds 90 minutes of HD video (obviously compressed), so 32gb SDHC cards should give lots of room. And you can carry around an awful lot of SD cards without noticing the weight/size. And certainly reuse them many more times than any tape.

Standard CDs are the best in terms of quality. MP3 files take out about 90% of the music and sounds that are "unnoticeable" in order to pack more data in it.

Standard CDs are the best in terms of quality. MP3 files take out about 90% of the music and sounds that are "unnoticeable" in order to pack more data in it.

But it does it in a way that makes it difficult to detect. I'd be willing to bet that on your average car stereo, you won't notice. I know I don't. n.n

Standard CDs are the best in terms of quality. MP3 files take out about 90% of the music and sounds that are "unnoticeable" in order to pack more data in it.

But it does it in a way that makes it difficult to detect. I'd be willing to bet that on your average car stereo, you won't notice. I know I don't. n.n

It depends on the bitrate, of course. You sure as heck notice 96kbit MP3s, they sound like AM radio or something. Now good 320kbit ones, I'd bet the difference is physiologically indistinguishable by the human ear.

If it really, really bothers you that unimportant bits are missing, use FLAC instead. Now if only more players supported it...

That`s amazing guys, of course in my truck and car that now I have a CD player standard, and I really do`nt know much about them.

My first music player was a 4-track and record player portable, when I went in to the military in 1974 my new car had a 8-track, cool at the time but I hated the the track switch in the middle of the song :evil:
Then cassette came along a most welcome improvement, 1980`s CD`s even better, after that I lost track of how things work, and I`m missing on what`s new today.
Thanks for some updates on the newest modes of playing and enjoying music :)

I hate digital music for the most part. A cassette may have hiss, but it has a warm, enjoyable, FM radio sound. I grew up in the 90s with my walkman tape player. I still frequently listen to tapes in my Ford F150 truck. But if you want to do some more work, but get the best sound, yet sacrifice car playback, the best music choice is good ol' Vinyl. My parents were oldies enthusiasts, so they had a turntable. At a young age, I thought the sound was the best. I guess I just had a different ear, but..

Heh. The main thing I remember about cassette was the hiss and having to fast forward and rewind to get to a specific song; I don't miss either of those at all. And vinyl I remember having a fair amount of popping. So I'm afraid that despite growing up with a walkman of my own, I have very little regret that those technologies have largely faded away. CDs and MP3s all sound good enough to these jaded ears, and they have the added advantage of being a heck of a lot more portable.

One thing that I do wish they would stop doing is mastering their recordings too loud. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war for details) Honestly, music needs some dynamic range.