$1500 is more than a little pricey, but this is a fantastic idea.

Nekkoru wrote:

Oh you just did not say what I think you said. Underground punk sounds terrible when not on tape. Honestly. And if you know how to care for your tapes, they will last FOREVER AND EVER!

If underground punk sounds terrible when it's not on tape, that means that underground punk sounds terrible. Analog tape (And records, for people who think records sound better than CD's) creates an approximation of the sound wave being recorded, whereas a digital recording like a CD is the exact sound wave. Basically, CD's sound exactly like the band did (after mixing and stuff) and tapes sound approximately like the band did. The only advantage of tapes is that if you record stuff louder than the maximum volume the tape can store, you can get some cool distortion effects, whereas digital media gives you digital clipping, which is pretty painful. And not like "oh, that's so bad it's painful", like literally painful to your ears.

ged1928 wrote:

Dr. Jeebus wrote: Nekkoru wrote: Oh you just did not say what I think you said. Underground punk sounds terrible when not on tape. Honestly. And if you know how to care for your tapes, they will last FOREVER AND EVER! If underground punk sounds terrible when it's not on tape, that means that underground punk sounds terrible. Analog tape (And records, for people who think records sound better than CD's) creates an approximation of the sound wave being recorded, whereas a digital recording like a CD is the exact sound wave. Basically, CD's sound exactly like the band did (after mixing and stuff) and tapes sound approximately like the band did. The only advantage of tapes is that if you record stuff louder than the maximum volume the tape can store, you can get some cool distortion effects, whereas digital media gives you digital clipping, which is pretty painful. And not like "oh, that's so bad it's painful", like literally painful to your ears. Although you are completely correct about tapes, the fact of the matter is that a CD is a compressed rendering of a recording, whereas a vinyl record is an uncompressed rendering. The main disadvantages to a vinyl record have nothing to do with its sound quality, which is unparalleled when properly maintained. The disadvantages are in its size and fragility. That, and people don't take care of their shit, so the quality *does* degrade through scratches and residue within the grooves. Any audiophile will tell you that a virgin, 180-gram vinyl record doesn't compare even to a 20-bit SACD.

Well a CD is compressed in that it samples at 44.2KHz allowing for a maximum pitch of 22.1KHz (I might be slightly off cause it's been a while since I dealt with this stuff), that's also roughly the limit of human hearing. The wave is indeed compressed by removing the overtones that we can't hear anyway, but for the range of human hearing the wave is still identical. The overtones may or may not have a slight effect on how we actually hear the sound.

As for records, it's a replica of the original wave, overtones and all, so indeed it's not compressed, but it's still only an approximation of the original wave and not an exact duplicate.

Well since we've completely derailed the thread, let's just agree that the blu-ray/VHS player is awesome.