It sounds fun but reminds me of my recent foray into cassette culture where I rediscovered that while I love everything about cassettes and making them, I had forgotten they sound like crap haha.
I’m currently into making CDs.
I’m currently into making CDs.
Unfortunately all the cassette mechanisms (and cassettes themselves) manufactured and sold new today are complete garbage. And the old ones need a lot of (physical) maintenance to get back into spec.
Digital Show & Tell from Monty at Xiph
> Those of you who have used analog recording equipment may have just thought to yourselves, "My goodness! That sounds like tape hiss!" Well, it doesn't just sound like tape hiss, it acts like it, too. And if we use a Gaussian dither, then it's mathematically equivalent in every way. It _is_ tape hiss!
> Intuitively, that means we can measure tape hiss, and thus the noise floor of magnetic audio tape, in bits, instead of decibels, in order to put things in a digital perspective. Compact cassettes... (Monty holds up a tape, then glares at it and flips it over in his hand) ... for those of you who are old enough to remember them, could reach as deep as nine bits in perfect conditions, though five to six bits was more typical, especially if it was a recording made on a tape deck.
> That's right - Your mixtapes were only about six bits deep, if you were lucky. The very best professional open-reel tape used in studios could barely hit - any guesses? - 13 bits _with_ advanced noise reduction.
Hiss is variable, too. When calculating the low end of the range from the background hiss, do we consider a -80dB hiss above ~2000Hz affecting the "bit depth" more than -80dB hiss below it? The hiss is nowhere near white noise either, so some frequency ranges are more affected than others.
Now, whether the store-bought tape from the 90s was recorded well, that’s a different story.
https://audiochrome.blogspot.com/2020/12/cassette-tape-measu...
I find some charm in the lo-fi sound, if I wanted hi-fi sound I would just record something digitally for basically free, so I don't see the point of chasing the dragon of ultimate cassette sound quality.