I can run the phono thru the deck, this gives extra gain at the slight expense of the resolution. The turntable has better dynamics and detail and soundstage, tape sounds more natural.
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Tape was an imperfect medium that degraded the sound. You may like that particular flavour, but it cannot possibly be an improvement if accuracy is the criterion. As a demonstration that it is indeed an alteration (and hence degradation), tape sound can be emulated very accurately in plug ins. See here, for example: https://www.waves.com/plugins/j37-tape#butch-vig-billy-bush-j37 Another way to investigate this is to do muliple passes of the copying: make a copy of a copy of a copy. After a number of generations there is nothing left worth listening to. |
I find cassettes generally sound very musical, rich and natural. By comparison CD generally sound thin and bland and "uninteresting." Oddly, perhaps, I find cassettes that are digitally remastered sound quite good - very analog and detailed with better dynamic range than their CD counterparts in many cases. Case in point - Kind of Blue digitally remastered on cassette is very dynamic, detailed and lush. It appears cassettes went out of style and production just about the time overly aggressive dynamic range compression reared it’s ugly head for CDs, later on for vinyl. |
Those who like cassettes may like compression - a more punchy sound. Cassette will definitely compress good vinyl. Good vinyl can have as much as 70dB dynamic range on the outer edge. Cassettes never exceeded 50 dB. There is no need to feel ashamed that you prefer lower quality compressed audio - a lot depends on the quality of your playback system - compression in a modest car audio system usually works great and this alone probably lead to the success of cassettes (walkman and making your own compilation tapes are other factors). Of course from a sound quality perspective cassettes were a big step backwards. |
- 164 posts total