In my opinion, one thing that really sucked about the analog days was listening to tapes. It's a great recording medium, and listening to an actual record is an awesome experience, but damn, cassete tapes sucked, and 8-tracks were friggin terrible. I remember getting a tape deck that could "sense" when songs began and ended, which made fastforwarding and rewinding a much easier ordeal, and I thought that was the coolest thing ever because tapes sucked to deal with. And then there was auto-reverse, because ejecting the cassette and flipping it over was way too much work. That's probably how american got so fat.
I actually love cassettes. I was born in 72, so there was plenty of vinyl in my house from my parents, and I think the first "music" I ever bought was a 45 record. And I remember listening to 8-tracks in my grandparents' car (The Carpenters, mostly!). But by the time I really listened to a lot of music on my own, it was cassettes. So it's what I cut my teeth on. I have a real soft spot for them.
Does a CD sound "cleaner" and less hissy? Sure. But I don't think it sounds "better" really. I dunno ... maybe it does ... but ... really .. who cares?
To me, when I was listening to cassettes in high school, I never thought, "Wow, these sound like crap, and they're so noisy." I was thinking things like, "Wow,
1984 f-in' rocks!" In other words, that was the best that portable music sounded at the time, and ... to me ... it sounded great. It was only after CDs took over that I remember starting to hear about the "crappiness" of tape. And of course, when that first happened in the mid to late 80s, it wasn't just the crappiness of cassettes --- everyone was leaving all tape behind, including R2R.
I was a late convert, and I don't think I started buying CDs until 92 or so. But I still had my cassette 4-track recorder that I used, and, save for a very few short stretches, I've always had one since then (and still do).
To me, I think it's funny when people get soooooooooo hung up on sound quality. I see the same thing happening with TVs. Everybody has to have their giant screen, HDTV plasma bullshit, etc. I still have an old CRT from the 90s, and it works great. I watch a football game at a friends' house in HD, and they say "Look! You can see the blades of grass!" I just have to laugh. Who cares? I don't. CRT TVs were fine for me growing up, and I'll use mine until it dies.
I just think that, at some point, you have to jump off the "I need the best there is" train if you want to keep in mind why you got into it in the first place. The quality and resolution is always going to "improve" and become more life-like, etc. But is
that what really counts? I don't think so. I think what we're capturing (the music) is what
really does. But that's just my opinion.
There are no analog or digital people. I mean, one is not born with a digital disadvantage... they choose that later.
