The end of tape?

I fail to see the logic of your comparisons, and, if I get the gist of your message and tone, you're trying to lead me into debate over the merits of CD vs. vinyl and I'm not biting. If you want to take a statement and use it only in it's absolute definition then fine, so be it. Vinyl is not dead, but go ask the record execs and the struggling artists who want to make it big and sell millions what format they're going to use to reach a large audience. Hint: it ain't vinyl. And, my poor Beagle, if you really believe that 99% of music released today sucks, then my heart truly goes out to you for you know not what you are missing my friend.

 

Sure you do. If stats show 94% of the population frequent McDonalds on a regular basis as opposed to only 4% who dine at posh restaurants every day, does it mean fine cuisine is dead? If there was a drive through for these fancy places and the price of filet mignon was the same as a Big Mac, would the numbers improve? Sure they would.

No, I am not going there.

I know that. But the format is not dead. CD may die before vinyl does. As Captain Beefheart quipped "If you're alive, how can you be dead?"

The other 1% is great. Does one great album out of every 100 released seem so far fetched? Think about it.

 

No, but it sure is a hell of a lot more expensive and inaccessable for most!

 

I never was a cassette tape fan either...the size of the tape was too small and the music too compressed to fit the tape.

What I will miss someday is reel-to-reel tape. I still have my TEAC A3300 reel-to-reel and decided to hook it up and listen to some old LPs that were recorded (I used to record the LP after it's first play onto the tape to keep a "clean" copy of the LP)...Those were the good old days!!

I was really suprised by the dynamic range and the richness of the music...flowing easily from one note to the other. It was really FUN to watch the VU meters dancing back and forth.

Funny, I have a mini-disc recorder and player in my car. IMHO, the mini-disc is the closest thing to the cassette tape in the digital age. The record levels are automatic, so no need to fuss with the record levels. The recording is perfect everytime...but I don't care to take the time to record anymore. Where did it go? Sad...very sad.

 

And a 94% market share for the CD proves my point that, as far as the numbers are concerned, vinyl is dead. The format is holding on to less than 1% of the market share. It is surpassed by the cassette even, which is dying a slow death.


All vinyl's released are not in that list, not even close. Many don't get on the Riaa list. For example here in Sweden lives around 9 million people. Last year vinyl sold around 100 000 new vinyl's. Do you REALLY believe that USA with over 250 (?) million people, buy's only 5-6 times more LP's than Sweden's 9 million? I think that this has been discussed before, not even close are all vinyl's coming in those list.

If you look in audio magazine like TAS, Stereophile, etc you see that those nr are NOT correct. Vinyl is coming back more and more.

For example, let take the numbers I wrote about in this thread from England. Not all vinyl's are coming on their list too, but of the ones that did came on it last year, there was 2787 different albums. Let's take a CRAZY low pressing number on all of them, let say they are only pressed in 500 copies each. 2787 * 500 = 1,393,500 vinyl's!
Let's take a more likely number, at least 1000 copies. 2787 * 1000 = 2,787,000 vinyl's.
That's 2,1 MILLION more vinyl's that in USA according to those numbers. Those numbers ARE NOT CORRECT.

-Mattias Karlsson-

 

I think you have a point, but if in fact those vinyl numbers are correct, I would bet the house that all of those numbers are audiophiles and record collectors such as most of us here in the forum. None of my friends and family have bought vinyl in over 10 years. I hardly buy it anymore; new that is. We don't get much here in Calgary. A couple of years ago I purchased the Beach Boys - Pet Sounds 180 gram stereo vinyl that Capitol released. Most of the vinyl I buy these days is used, and that obviously wouldn't show up in those numbers.

I have never been a real big fan of cassettes. Maybe I was spoiled as a recording technician in radio and got to work with all those gorgeous Studer and Revox 1/2 track and 4 track machines, the A77s, B77s, PR99s. Oh and I must not forget the old Ampex and ATR 2 track machines. Sweet.

I only ever used cassettes to make compilations and to transfer albums onto, so I could listen to them in the car. I wasn't one for borrowing other people's records or the library's and taping them. I have enough music in my own collection to keep my ears buys for years. I have a nice early 1980s Nakamichi player and I've always received compliments from people when I've made them tapes, at how good they sound. I can only think of 3 times in my life when I actually purchased a cassete. In all cases the cassette version was different from the LP. So I needed both formats.
1. Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense
2. The Cure - Standing On The Beach / Staring At The Sea
3. Japan - Assemblage
The Talking Heads cassette had different edits of some songs. The Cure and Japan, "hits" packages were much longer on cassete. The Cure had 12 additional songs, all b sides. (For The Cure collection you actually need all three formats, as the CD had 4 other songs above and beyond what the cassette version did.)

I agree with a couple of earlier points.

1. Denon made great cassettes in the late 1980s/early 1990s. Also Fuji made a nice tape in the early/mid 1980s.

2. Bring on the CD-Rs. One of my new projects is to pull out compilation tapes from the 1980s, take the track listings and make CD-Rs of them. The only issue is the tapes were mostly 90 minutes or in some cases 105, with the Denons. I either have to shave 10 minutes or so to fit the comp on CD or as I've done in most cases, I add bonus tracks to the CD-R. Tons 'o' fun.

Has anyone tried the recent 90 minute or 99 minute blank CD-Rs? I'd be curious to find out if your burner handles the full disc and how your CD players handle them.

Thanks for the article Steve.

 

Most new vinyl is sold to mobile DJs; most of the new releases that come out on vinyl are in the rap and hip-hop genres, plus most new techno, mix albums and non-mainstream reggae as well; 12-inch singles remain a big part of the vinyl market. (I have even seen bootleg 12-inch singles of recent hit club songs that were never officially released as singles.) So it's more that just collectors and audiophiles.

The numbers may be low because a lot of vinyl is sold through stores that aren't hooked up to the SoundScan system. It costs money to do so, and some of these mom-and-pops don't have a high enough profit margin to justify it. And others don't want to be bothered running everything into a computer and having to have everything bar-coded. I buy almost all my vinyl from places outside the SoundScan mainstream.

As I wrote in a newspaper article in 1994, "Vinyl is not dead. It may be on life support, but it's not dead." And that was the year after arguably the worst year for vinyl, 1993. Vinyl will be in the marketplace longer than pre-recorded cassettes.... who would have thought THAT 15 years ago?

 

On the shure website, the advertising for their cartridges seem aimed at D.J.'s.

You can buy the most popular DJ cartridge allready mounted on a technics headshell, for quick changing (if you have a technics turntable). The headshell one comes with a 78 needle too.

Spherical stylus is the same as conical stylus, right? Hope so, I put the M44-7 on my juke box.


http://www.needlz.com/

 

Tim has provided a great tip for those looking for new vinyl. Look in places outside the SoundScan mainstream. SoundScan is hooked up mainly in places such as chain music stores, department store chains such as Wal-Mart, Target, K-Mart, etc.

 

First, those 90= minute blanks are not worth it. They are unstable and most software and VERY few burners support them, and NOT with the manufacturer's blessing!

I have taken songs from my tape comps, but have rarely ever taken a whole homemade comp tape and transferred it to CD-R as is.

 

I tend to agree with you on this point. Heck, I recently started buying vinyl after I got around to finally getting a turntable again, but I don't buy close to the amount of LP's that I do CD's and when I do buy them, it's mainly for collection purposes not as my main playback format. Most of the ones I buy, I buy the CD, SACD, or DVD-A of it as well, and they are mainly audiophile pressings or, if they are general releases, they tend to be imports and limited editions anyway. I would say that maybe 1/8 or 1/16 (if that many) of the releases I buy are actually available on vinyl as well as CD.

 

What I find interesting about the numbers on my original post on sales in the first 6 months is that vinyl just will not go away. Despite it being difficult to find new vinyl releases the sales numbers have actually increased over the last few years supported by a small but fiercely loyal group. I also suspect increased "DJ" numbers.

As far as cassettes go, it was only a few years ago that casssette had a pretty even split with cd.

 

True, but then so is buying a Porsche or BMW but neither of those manufacturers are teetering on the brink of collapse or on "death watch". That's the point I was trying to make. Some people won't be 'forced' to buy Hyundai or Honda the way music lovers were 'forced' to buy CD's in the late 80's.

 

That's a good point, and when you think about it that way, it's pretty good. You see, sometimes these discussions are enlightening. The only thing is, I would estimate the quality releases these days to be a higher percentage than 1%. I would put it more around 15%. Maybe because I listen to so many different kinds of music and do so much investigating of new artists or new releases and take so many blind chances on music or artists that I never even heard of that I just perceive there to be more good music out there than there actually is. Who knows?

 

Have you tried them yourself?

 

No. Actually, it's from everything i've read, and knowing how CD-R works, I wouldn't bother with them. Why, if many players can't play them, and most rocorders and the software can't burn them?

 

Why not try them out and see for yourself? I haven't seen much regarding how they perform *either* way.

 

Of course, there is the Nakamichi "Dragon" cassette deck, which
1) (for recording) contains tone generators and settable level and bias for each channel for each tape type, and
2) (for playback) automatically adjusts the playback head to match the azimuth of any recorded tape, in both directions.

However, as impressive as it truly is, even a Dragon can't make the typical cheapo high speed duped prerecorded cassette sound good.

FFF

 

I'd heard from someone that 90 minute CD-Rs will usually work well in the player they were burned in, and likely other computer drives, but would not do well in a home CD player. Plus, not all burners can get the true 90 minutes out of the CD. (I once read a chart that showed, by brand of CD-RW player, how much actual time you could get on one of those extended length CDs.) I should buy a couple at the next computer show, just to experiment.

Vinyl? I get a lot more thrill out of spending a day driving around to every used vinyl shop in the area, looking through bins, reading the jackets, coughing up the dust, and having a great time of it. Can't say I"m patient enough to look through the CDs and cassettes at the same shops--it's just not as much fun. I do glance over the R2R tapes on occasion, though. But nothing beats browsing vinyl...CDs just seem to be so generic and shrink-wrapped in comparison.

Hasn't anyone mentioned the 8-track here yet?? Now THERE was a tape format to be reckoned with! The reassuring kerchunk of the machine changing tracks, the hiss, the familiar songs split in the middle or shortened...can't beat it. Never owned one until earlier this year, having picked up a cheap play/record deck with Dolby. (Like THAT would help!) Just a curiosity for the collection, and the last of the analog formats (except for Elcaset) that I had yet to experience. And in what other format can you buy a box of 44 jazz 8-tracks for just under 10 bucks...WITH shipping??

 

Hmmmm, i'm a music lover, and I didn't feel forced to buy CD. I wanted to.

 

Well, I couldn't do that if I tried. As I stated before, *almost* no US commercialy available burner supports them, and *very* few types of software supports them. I have not even seen ads for the blanks.

The fact that they have been available for over a year and you have heard nothing about them means something.

 

Amen, brother! Welcome to the forum!

 

Right now you have no house!
I would say that most vinyl releases ARE rock and DJ stuff like Techno etc.
Most of the new albums I want ARE released on vinyl.

Well, I don't know what kind of music you are listen too but I think you are missing a lot of vinyl releases, because many of them are not so easy to find. They don't even say in the advertising that the album is also released on vinyl. For example, did you know that the first 2 Spice Girls albums are released on vinyl!!!!
I would say there are more released on vinyl that most people would think

 

Thanks!! Hmmm, just looking around the room here, I see a lot of nitpicky posts about sound quality, reminiscence of the old days, talk of vinyl and dead tape formats, some cool engineer dude named Steve....MY KINDA PLACE!

 

How do you know your hardware/software wouldn't support them unless you tried? Have you talked to others with the same hardware/software that you're using and asked them about their experiences with these blanks? Just because something isn't "supported" doesn't mean it won't work...