Redbook Keeps Surprising

oregonpapa

" ... I like to make cassette copies of some of my favorite vinyl LP’s and play them in my car ... especially on road trips. Am I violating copyright law in this instance?"

This is not nearly so complicated as some here seem to want to make it.

For your own personal use, you can make copies of copyrighted material that you own. You cannot distribute those copies, regardless of whether you charge a fee for them, or whether you give them away.

@oreganpapa you still make cassettes???? You have a car that has a cassette player? That’s downright quaint!

Cleeds ...

Yes, I have a low mileage 2005 (just turned 64,000) Lexus LS 400 that has a Mark Levinson sound system in it. You should hear how it sounds when a really clean vinyl record is recorded onto cassette and then played back on a good car system like the Mark Levinson.   Nothing "quaint" about it really. Nostalgic maybe, but not quaint.  Just as a point of interest, I have a cassette recording of a live broadcast of a piano/cello duo that I recorded off of my FM tuner years ago. That darned recording sounds like the cello is in the car. No joke.  

CD players from Mark Levinson, Vitus and Accuphase do very well, never disappoint. Happy Listening!

It is legal to copy any music to a tape since tape manufacturers pay royalties per foot of the tape.  Same is the case when you copy to "Music CDR", that is slightly more expansive (because of royalties) than plain CDR.

As for copy vs original sound - copy might sound better since ripping software can read the same sector multiple times.  CDP cannot do this, working in real time.  Samples under scratches (along the track) will be:  <4mm will be auto corrected, 4-8mm interpolated, >8mm lost.  CDP might change the sound by interpolating a lot of samples on scratched CD. By ripping you can "refresh" scratched CDs.  On the other hand CDR and CD might behave differently in CDP (different reflection) while computer servers might introduce jitter.

oregonpapa

" ... I have a low mileage 2005 (just turned 64,000) Lexus LS 400 that has a Mark Levinson sound system in it."

Very cool! That car is only barely broken in!

"You should hear how it sounds when a really clean vinyl record is recorded onto cassette and then played back on a good car system like the Mark Levinson. Nothing "quaint" about it really. Nostalgic maybe, but not quaint.

I can imagine that it sounds fantastic. In the cassette era, I had various high end car cassette decks in my cars, and they sounded great. A standout was the Nakamichi TD-700. That was a terrific unit.

@oreganpapa, I didn’t intend for my "quaint" remark to be derogatory. I’m sorry if you took it that way. But recording cassette tapes from vinyl - which I’m sure was once common for many of us - now just seems ... quaint. But that’s a nice thing!