Originally Posted by against_the_grain

This is what pains me the most. Back when nearly everyone bought vinyl, well cassettes came out. They really started catching on in the early to mid 70s, but not so much as a 'replacement' for vinyl. Most everyone I knew STILL bought records and made there own tapes, few I knew bought those shitty pre-recorded cassettes. Then in the later 70s, some 'audiophile' pre-recorded cassettes started coming out, but the sound was STILL inferior to vinyl or even your own copied cassettes, so long as you used a high quality tape like Maxell UDXL or TDK-SA or the like.

So cassettes, amongst my peers, were used purely for convienience-portability. NOT as replacement for vinyl. Most people STILL played records at home on their GIANT systems. The late 70s was the ERA for BIG stereo systems !!!

What irks me about todays 'convienience' is that it IS taking over. The majority of music that's available and downloaded is crappy mp3 128 bit quality. Some will do the 192kbps, but this rate stilll compares horribly with the 1411 kbps quality of manufactured cd's.

So yeah, cd's came out in the early 80s, they didn't have scratches and surface noise, but generally weren't as good of sounding as vinyl initially. Then in the 90s and nowadays, remastering makes cd's sound damn near as good as vinyl, maybe not QUITE, but very, very close.

The mp3 format, that IS becoming the STANDARD, not just portability, is the FIRST TIME in history where sound quality is going down as a mass means of playing music. By the time cd's took over vinyl, their sound was pretty darn good....but 128, even 192 bit sound is SHIT !!!

So eventually, as vinyl has become an audiophile hobby...so will full file cd's. I don't mind NEW things, so long as they don't take over older formats, especially higher quality formats.

Pity to those who embrace mp3 sound. And many don't HEAR the difference nor care.

THAT's the sad thing about how things are going.

Personally, I won't miss cassettes, even though they were the THING to record shows with in the 70s, 80s etc....but now we have DAT or even micro cd recorders for that.

Still though, nothing yet beats the sound of pristine virgin vinyl on a great system with a great stylus and needle. EXPENSIVE !!!!!