I'm releasing my greatest hits album on braille.

 

I picked up a dual tape deck for our home stereo this weekend from goodwill. We popped in some tapes and damn did they sound awful. I forgot how crappy tapes really sound.

 

Crappy old tapes and a Goodwill dual Wal Mart special deck will make bad sounds. I do have a vintage Tascam deck and some properly stored tapes which I've dubbed to digital... Sounds very good actually... Most tapes and cheap decks are not in good shape...

Related when I swapped out the head unit I noticed the same speakers actually sounded much better than with the old head unit... base model. So the weak link is not the speakers... Unless of course they've been abused too... But anyway, be prepared for worse audio with the OEM head unit.

 

Many of the OEM speakers by now have dry rotted surrounds unfortunately. As the Harmon Kardon speakers for factory are not half bad.

I was surprised to find the LR3 has a aux input on the backside of the center console.

 

Most prerecorded tapes were very poorly recorded, recording level too low and used poor quality tape/cassettes. In the day recording your own from a new LP and using quality cassettes could result in some very good sound quality.
......

 

Total true. Magnetic tape can actually produce a very high fidelity sound. That just wasn't the typical outcome with mass produced tapes back in the day.

 

The wife just loves her 78's. Looking for an OEM diamond needle replacement source. Want to stay away from BritPart and Terrafirma if at all possible.

 

I know this is an OLD POST; and I am only finding by deep diving for bt options...but I found the fringe topic interesting and I have some insight as to the “why cassettes are coming back”.

First let me say I worked in the entertainment, radio, music business for many years, and the “why” is very important to the industry in 2020 as it was in 2017 when this post was made.

Regardless of the perceived reasons behind CDs in technology aspect...the DMCA was a law instituted to stop bootlegging of music; but the law was specific to CD technology. Prior to the DMCA there literally was no law that prevented people from using their high end home stereos and dual deck “boom boxes” from copying and distributing “mixtapes” and album rips. The SCOTUS determined that once you owned an album or cassette you could do with it however you pleased.

the DMCA treated CDs like a piece of computer software, and you only held a “license” to that disk...not ownership.

I won’t get into all the various means of home ripping of CDs that came about afterwards...it isn’t relevant.

The financial reasons for returning to tape and vinyl are minuscule; there is but a fringe market...a novelty more or less.

but NOW those “new” albums and cassettes being created are covered by an amendment to the DCMA that covers all of those “remastered” vinyl and tape productions created from 2015 forward. Now when you buy one, you are buying a “license” not ownership....and the RIAA can go after those who sell bootlegs from those new products.

this entire subject is actually quite political and covers a wide breadth of information and is a topic I have become very passionate about over the years. If there are any responses to this post I can provide more information...if not, it’s cool.

but, that is the “why”.

doc