Comment on At some point, kids watching older cartoons will no longer understand why putting a thermometer under a desk lamp was a way to skip school.

• rtxn@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I grew up with analog audio, and still have most of my dad’s late 70s “high tech” equipment, about a hundred vinyl records (mostly 33s with a few 45s), and several boxes of audio cassettes. Given the chance… I wouldn’t go back. That era had some severe issues that we just had to deal with because it was the best that contemporary technology could offer.

  • Magnetic tapes have a finite shelf life. If not stored in a dry and cool place, the polyurethane tape absorbs moisture, which ruins the binder and the ferromagnetic coating falls off. Eventually the tape itself disintegrates.
  • Magnetic tapes are susceptible to mechanical damage, they naturally stretch, and they can scratch if the rollers are dirty.
  • They are also obviously vulnerable to electromagnetic fields.
  • Playback quality is strongly dependent on the recording equipment, the magnetic medium’s quality, and the playback device.
  • Even though the compact cassette is the icon of media sharing, copying is never 1:1 and always incurs a loss in quality.
  • The best achievable audio quality can’t physically reach the quality of most digital recordings because of the granularity/resolution of the medium and the noise introduced by the pickup and amplifier circuits. The same is true for vinyl records: the superior audio quality is just a myth.

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• ToastedRavioli@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  In the theoretical sense, digital sound files have over double the potential dynamic range of the best cassette tape or vinyl. CDs are better, but still well below what can be done with digital files.

  The issue is that most digital formats are so compressed that they end up with 1/10th the dynamic range of a cassette tape.

  So its more like analog is “better” only because we need to improve storage and up/down speeds before we can truly enjoy how much better digital can be compared to analog. Its just not practical yet

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