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Cassette Logic: technology that never dies but is already dead

https://www.differentshelf.com/cassette-logic/
15•seductivebarry•2d ago

Comments

seductivebarry•2d ago
An essay about how a thirty-year-old mixtape led me to think about technology, memory, and the strange persistence of things we’ve already declared obsolete.
wrs•5h ago
Thanks. Digging out my shoebox of college mix tapes right now.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF•4h ago
People are real quick to declare things obsolete without thinking about Pareto frontiers.

Tapes and floppies are "obsolete" if you don't have to worry about malicious controllers embedded in flash media or hard drives.

Paper is "obsolete" if you don't have to worry about cost per square inch of displaying static information, or about running without batteries.

SoftTalker•5h ago
Surprised a 30 year old cassette is still playable without falling apart. Maybe I should try some of mine.
lttlrck•1h ago
They are surprisingly durable. I have a tape I made in 1990, it's followed me across continents and been in cardboard boxes, basements and attics. It still plays flawlessly.

Not wanting to push my luck, I archived it. On Minidisc.

I have quite a large CD collection. Two albums from the same era are unplayable due to oxidization, same band Banco De Gaia, pressed at the same plant in the UK too.

Razengan•5h ago
You mean undead? Zombie technologies?
id00•4h ago
A few years ago I've bought an old cassette deck, ordered a few cassettes on discogs.com (some of them 30+ years old) and even recorded a few mixtapes myself. There is a long forgotten strange feeling to hold a physical media with music. Like it gives it weight...

And surprisingly, the quality is not too bad for my non-audiophile ears. Especially if you go beyond Type-I cassettes

chestervonwinch•3h ago
> Especially if you go beyond Type-I cassettes

Yea, I use Type II cassettes to record on my Tascam 246. I did an experiment where I recorded a track I made digitally to tape and then back into the DAW. I A/B'd them and struggled to differentiate. That being said, I have used some really poor quality Type II tapes, where the difference was obvious.

enobrev•2h ago
I grabbed a cheap one for my 5 year old with some blank tapes. I remember how much I loved recording my voice, or the TV, and eventually LOTS of radio. Tangible media has more weight than just the physical object. Especially in something as durable as a cassette.

It comes in bursts but when he's into it, he has a ton of fun, The manual nature of it is confusing for him (he's used to instant gratification), like waiting a few seconds at the beginning of the tape so he can record, but something about a cassette makes the whole process easier to explain and, I hope, to understand and visualize.

steveBK123•4h ago
I’ve actually started getting 90s-00s era vinyl for some electronic music I used to listen to.

A lot of mixes and singles are unavailable in electronic form. Or maybe they were until they weren’t Anything can disappear in an instant on streaming platforms.

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