Cassettes

Is collecting cassette tapes patrician? They're dirt cheap and almost as fun as vinyl records. Discuss your finds and favorites. Is buying online cheating?

Besides underground/hipster metal this format seems dead, but I'm having a ton of fun 'discovering' albums I wouldn'tve otherwise listened to and playing them in the car and at home while cleaning or cooking. It's so much comfier playing something physical than just streaming it don't you think?

They're patrician for autograph hounds at large music festivals where they could reasonably get 20 albums signed. Especially these days at least half of CD albums are cardboard packaging. And even jewel cases still arent always ideal like if its just some flimsy one page cover insert. The entire cassette cover would at least be slightly more fun.

>mfw trying to think of benefits of buying cassettes
CDs are the far superior cheap format. Cassettes are hipster bait. The only reason to buy one is if the piece of music isn't available on another format.

Which I don't think even exists at least for recent decades with what's legally available. Slsk I assume has literally everything. Every new cassette I've ever seen for years comes with a download code.

My car has a tape deck but no CD player. I could use an FM transmitter to play off my phone but they kinda suck. I got a tape deck for my home stereo for $1 at a garage sale. Sometimes the way the sound quality of a tape has degraded over time only adds to it's aesthetic value. Songs from the Big Chair or Flock of Seagulls Listen for example.

It's also hard to overstate go cheap they can be, I've bought tapes for 10-50 cents that would have cost 20x that on vinyl. Of course there are always the 'I know what I got' sellers who want $25 for a Motorhead tape they will never sell...

I would rather upgrade my car stereo (or just get a car from this side of the year 2000) and use CDs, rather than buy cassettes.

Those are reasons but not inherent benefits. Like if the only thing you had to play albums on was the thing that plays those cylinders.

You're right. The fun part is that I'm listening to a lot of music I wouldn't have otherwise. I've been listening to extreme metal almost exclusively for 10 years or so and I've really been enjoying 80's synth-pop like New Order and Depeche Mode or whatever. I feel more inclined to actively listen to a physical object I've paid money for than one of millions of bands I could instantly hear on the internet. Collecting tapes has greatly expanded my taste in music in a way that some other formats couldn't

Sorry I corrected a big typo

>in a way that some other formats couldn't
Yeah they could. And if it's still just the money then subscribe to streaming. If it's still the exposure then those same services give you that or you could use rym etc.

CDs are boring af and completely useless now we have access to digital files with identical quality (if not superior). When I buy a CD, I encode it, put it in a drawer and never look at it again.

Cassettes are fun to collect, cheap and sound different from the digital version. I also think the dynamic is better and the sound clearer (you can isolate instruments like the bass more distinctly), but it's probably just in my head.

They aren't patrician, they aren't plebeian, it's just a format. If you like collecting them then that's cool. I like them because they're cheap to make and buy. Buying online isn't cheating, bandcamp has so many good artists with tapes, I don't know why someone would deprive themselves of that based on some pretense that it's cheating

I haven't bought a tape in a while but I have a bunch of demos that were never released on CD.
Also have a ton of VHSs of stuff that never saw DVD release.

>I also think the dynamic is better and the sound clearer (you can isolate instruments like the bass more distinctly)
>but it's probably just in my head
Yeah, no shit!

My biggest finds have been New Order - Movement, Type O Negative - Slow Deep and Hard, and Kino - Gruppa Kroovy. I'm holding on to the hope that I'll someday find Boltthrower. I have Wolves in the Throne Room's latest release on tape which is kinda kvlt but also not

> I buy a CD, I encode it, put it in a drawer and never look at it again.
Ironically that's what you should be doing with tapes. I have rare 25 year old demos etc that if I ever do play them again, should only be done once when I upload them. If they get eaten I'm fucked.

I spend a lot of time commuting and driving for work and the options for playing music from my phone in the car aren't great. I should upgrade to a stereo with an aux port but I'm poor and would rather spend $5-10 for a bunch of tapes than the $150 or so all at once. Got bills to pay and shit.

>Type o Negative
Fucking fantastic band. World Coming Down is one of the best doom metal albums of all time.

October Rust on tape is like my Holy Grail, I'm sure if it even exists.

But it sounds like complete garbage when you encode a tape.

I have some reasons to think it's true. Analogic sounds different from digital.

What's your opinion on Dead Again? I've heard mixed opinions on it, but I think it's fantastic. I've also been trying to figure out what the russian(I think) chanting means in September Sun for years.

I haven't listened to it yet

Well, it's their longest album, and I'd say their least gothic. It's mostly split between fast hardcore songs and looooong slabs of crushing doom rifts.
September Sun though is a classic Tyoe O "ballad" that you should check out at least. I highly recomend it.

Learn how to properly rip tapes to PC. You can do it plugging a decent deck (not a shitty cassette to mp3 converter by Ion) on line in and Audacity, which has noise filter you can apply

I only bother to pick up and keep old bootlegs. Everything else is trash. The music deteriorates a lot over time, it's a pain in the arse when the player eats them up and the quality is shitty.

>Is buying online cheating?
WTF are you even asking? Cheating at what?

They're fun to collect, look nice, and i'm a big fan of the tape hiss as an added aesthetic for a lot of genres that seem more prevalent on tape (lo-fi, dungeonsynth). I would never pay above ~7$ for a brand new tape tho besides a few exceptions (Enchantment of the Ring, anything by Planning For Burial that I don't have yet). Thankfully, I got a nice dubbing deck for Christmas so I'm gonna start makin bootlegs of a few albums I want on tape. Pic related is my collection so far
is right. Tapes are the ultimate comfy format.
Is V.Top a good brand for digitizing cassettes? Was given an analog converter of that brand and own a tape of which I have the only copy of/has no digital version that I'd like to convert, but don't want to bother if I have a shitty digitizer

These are my cassettes. I wish that I had more.

recently bought this one

that's pretty sexy.