I still have shelves full of LPs and CDs. But I gave several boxes of cassettes to my grand daughter.
Ancient Technology
- Thread starter Kevin
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Vinyl is actually making a comeback due to audio accuracy. Unlike digital, transitional notes and tones are recorded. CD's are still used by some people people like myself in the entertainment industry because MP3 as a sound source mostly sucks. Admittedly, many can't hear the difference, but many can, and I get compliments on my sound at almost every show. Now thatr computer storage is pretty cheap some are using .WAV or other "lossless" files, which are no where near as bad as MP3s (which were never meant to be anything more than low space sampler files anyway).
Vinyl - Most accurate recording
CD- The very cleanest and clearest of sound, but being digital there aren't the transitional tones.
Dolby Tape - somewhere between CD and vinyl. Cleaner than vinyl, but retains transitions.
.WAV , KAR, .BIN and similar "Lossless" files are close to CD
MP3 Junk files, losing maybe half the audio information, and highly dependent on who creates them and how.
I know, I know. TMI. Apologies in advance. Couldn't help myself.
Vinyl - Most accurate recording
CD- The very cleanest and clearest of sound, but being digital there aren't the transitional tones.
Dolby Tape - somewhere between CD and vinyl. Cleaner than vinyl, but retains transitions.
.WAV , KAR, .BIN and similar "Lossless" files are close to CD
MP3 Junk files, losing maybe half the audio information, and highly dependent on who creates them and how.
I know, I know. TMI. Apologies in advance. Couldn't help myself.
That's what I was going to say... Vinyl is back. I remember listening to an interview with the late Frank Zappa and he made the comment that MP3 was crap and then mentioned some type of digital format that 'they' should have adapted. I'm not a music file person but I remember when a friend got an 8 track tape player for his car... man that was something....but I learned a few years later that radio stations had been using them for years. My first computer used a cassette player and tapes to store information.... some Texas Instruments thing that I think was like 16K bites.
I love music. Thank God that a high bit rate MP3 doesn't bother me in the slightest. Low bit rate or poor A/D conversions drive me nuts. I prefer the "lossy" nature of the MP3 because I have a library of music larger than I would care to carry around on a device, but thanks to streaming, I can pull from my server from any place that has halfway decent internet connection. If they were all "lossless" conversions from A/D, that would not be so easy or fast. Even a "lossless" format can suffer from the A/D conversion unless the source is digital.
IMHO the best music was recorded before digital recording even became a thing so that isn't a factor in the majority of the music I listen to...
As far as recent vinyl releases go, I wonder how many times music has been converted from analog to digital then back again into analog for the pressing.
I was a record collector for years before becoming a Ruger collector. I have about 8000 records in my basement. Mostly 1960s-1980s rock.
Of course, I've also got a brand new unopened box of 5.25" floppy discs. And a couple 8" floppies too. And a 5-platter hard drive pack from a Sperry Univac V77-800. Going further back, I have my dad's reel-to-reel tape recorder and his slide rule. Oh, and his lineman's telephone with the alligator clips and the rotary dial on the bottom.
Of course, I've also got a brand new unopened box of 5.25" floppy discs. And a couple 8" floppies too. And a 5-platter hard drive pack from a Sperry Univac V77-800. Going further back, I have my dad's reel-to-reel tape recorder and his slide rule. Oh, and his lineman's telephone with the alligator clips and the rotary dial on the bottom.
Rat76
Single-Sixer
I've got my Dad's slide rule.
It hung in his classroom until he retired. I also have the normal sized one to match.
It hung in his classroom until he retired. I also have the normal sized one to match.
This new technology has it's advantages. With Apple Music, I have 7423 songs downloaded on my phone, all music I've liked for over 45 years or more and still adding to it. With Bluetooth I can listen just about anywhere. And I tossed more than my share of tapes that had been eaten out the window of my car back in the day!
Rotary dial phones used to be the leading-edge technology of the future.
^^^Just like electric cars are now.
My wife says I'm a junk hoarder- I can't seem to throw anything old away. I've got old film cameras, some Iconoflex models with accessories. Sony disc cameras. Polaroids. Flip and wedge cell phones. Slide rules, pen sets, salesman's sample pens. Transistor radios, portable tiny B&W tv's, boxes of collectibles from mostly the 50's-70's. My wife calls it junk. I call it my savings account.
I still use film cameras. Why? Because future generations will never see the digital images we are creating now. The problem is media changes. How many still have a computer that can read 5 1/4 inch floppies, or retrieve information from data tapes? VHS players are getting scarce, and Beta even more so. Do you still have access to information stored in original Windows platform, or even Windows XP? How about an M2 memory card?
Anything that is not either a film picture or printed out on paper will disappear from the family treasures and history.
I do, too.
caryc
Hawkeye
Many years ago, I belonged to a club that sent me the whole series of Gunsmoke one tape at a time. Unfortunately they were video tapes for a VCR. I still have them but I don't even have a VCR player anymore.
I do enjoy digital pictures. I have printed out my special pictures. Like most digital photographers, it seems like you take 50 pictures to get the one perfect one.
caryc
Hawkeye
One can buy a 5 1/4" floppy drive for a USB that will work.
I know what you are saying and do wonder if you are correct. Unfortunately only time will tell. Photography is my favorite hobby. The only saving grace is the existing file formats. They work across platforms and if a new format comes out, in theory there should be time to migrate to the new format. Considering it's better that is.
But yes, for a long time I used WordPerfect. And for a while, Microsoft Word could read a WordPerfect document. Now they cannot. As far as that goes, modern day Microsoft Word can't even read Word documents from 15 years ago.
this has been a strange life with the technology changes over the last 50+ years. I was a photographer in high school and would have never come close to guessing what has occurred. I have something like over 40,000 photographs in the cloud and over 180 videos on YouTube ..... if I thought about it too hard I think my brain would melt.
outlaw_dogboy
Single-Sixer
I was in a class taught by an historian in my church last year. He pointed out that back in ancient times, technology was largely static; things wouldn't change for hundreds of years. Sometimes even over a thousand years. Now, in just over, what, 150 years, we've gone from riding horses and driving horse-drawn carriages to sending cars to the moon (lunar rover). It's no wonder things seems crazy nowadays. The technology from when my dad was born went from the phone that the operator had to connect for you to place a call, to you being able to place a call yourself on a rotary phone when he died at 62 y.o. Technology in my 58 years has gone from being able to make my own connection on a rotary telephone to call across the county, to carrying around in my pocket a telephone+atlas(with real-time traffic)+weather radar+translator+encycopledia Brittanica & World Book+camera+video camera+television plus hundreds of other things, all in one device about the size of a 4-cigar case, and less than half as thick.
