Walkman R.I.P.

After 30 years, Sony announced the discontinuation of making the portable casette player, Walkman...

http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/10/22/an-era-ends-sony-stops-manufacturing-cassette-walkmans/

 

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Today cassettes, tomorrow CD's.

In a couple years, MP3 will be outdated as well.

 

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IMO MP3s are outdated by better formats but w/e.

 

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Who would buy a cassette player and why???

 

Because they will become collectables...

Like record players and 8-track players..

 

So I can play my ZX Spectrum games..

 

Many are now availble as downloadable audio files, the irony is that you play the sound file from a PC to load it into your classic computer.

 

This is why I gave up buying any "new" tech gadget to listen to music, they all seem to disappear within 10 to 15 years and something replaces them. I have just downloaded all music onto a DVD and enjoy free music when I want to. All I need do is just buy a DVD and I can always wipe it out and put more music/movies onto it for free. I know one day DVD's won't be around but I am not out much money if I must dispose of all DVD's I have and switch to the new format.

 

Yeah but I enjoy playing the original tapes, brings back memories.

 

You guys seen the new iPods? LOLs the nano is a shuffle with touch screen wtf :-z

 

Including the Sony Yellow Waterproof Sportsman?

 

Anyone with a large collection of tapes. i still have 60-80 although I don't really use them. In our boat there is only a tape player....

By the way the Chinese still will make Walkman knockoffs, so not to worry...

 

I have read that vinyl is still the best (or was until recently) because it's analog. Which I'm not entirely sure that means relative to digital? But, that's what I have read

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So, I can see keeping the records and a record player for the high quality, but a tape? Is a tape really that good? I'd just download the MP3.

As for: Y Kant Tori Read
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzTNhdO0elM
convert Youtube to MP3
http://www.video2mp3.net/

(I must have missed that pop sensation

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Ironically, the most interesting part of this news is the surprising revelation that Sony still makes the Walkman in the first place. I'd assumed that they quit that at least a decade ago...

I don't think that the fact of being analog is what matters (plenty of crap analog formats out there). But we should note that the CD was not actually intended to replace vinyl as the "premium quality" format - it was supposed to be a replacement for cassette tapes as a portable, lightweight medium with a quality nearly as good as vinyl.

Additionally, digital formats suffered from some problems early on in that the recording and mastering engineers didn't have any experience with the format and so would do things that ended up sounding bad (meanwhile, they had decades of experience with vinyl and tended to make them sound quite good). Not to mention the various technical compromises in consumer CD players in the decade or so until the technology became cheap enough to put quality converters into consumer equipment.

So in the intervening years, CD mastering and devices have improved a lot. But so has vinyl production and recording (both the materials and the cutting), so there's still a quality edge associated with vinyl. The kicker is that vinyl is more variable - you have to spend good money on the high-end records made out of thick, heavy, high-quality vinyl. CDs are much more uniform, and they are also more portable and use digital error-concealment techniques to mask the wear on the media.

Point is that the consumer preference for CDs over vinyl was never a quality contest amongst audiophiles. CD is a format with quality close enough to vinyl for most consumers not to notice the difference, and it's much more uniform, portable, shiny and durable, so consumers prefer it. Once CD playback got good enough to work in cars (am I dating myself by recalling the early generations of cd players that would skip if disturbed even slightly, and the amazement that accompanied devices like the Discman?), it was all downhill.

Cassette tape is generally pretty crap. There are of course variations within that category, both in terms of medium quality and recording techniques, but it all generally falls well short of either vinyl or CD.

Big reel-to-reel tapes used in recording studios are a different story entirely - those are probably the highest-quality audio medium ever devised. It's only very recently that digital recording systems have been able to get close enough to them in quality that the industry has switched over on a large scale (again, mostly for the various conveniences of digital recording - the premium tape systems are still widely prized as the highest quality attainable, though the edge over digital has become very slight).

 

Se la vi

 

Ha... i bout this portabel cassette player (16 dollars) about 4 mounthes ago... its a replacment for my other one i bout about 20 years ago.!!!

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I think a tape is pretty much equal to a compressed mp3, but of course not a reel to reel tape which is much different than a cassette. For recordings mastered specifically for digital i cant see there being a big difference between a cd and vinyl plus the cd is so convenient with pressing a button, searching etc. Most people make these claims not realizing that the first cd recordings of reissued vinyl were just not mastered very well.

Edit: Thats my understanding of all this. But then i suppose its the sum of its total. Most people dont know all the guitars on Def Leppards (sp)...i was too young (around 14yo...cant remember it though) to catch it the first time so i read about it on a site. The biggest Def Leppard album, with photograph etc. used digital processors for guitars and who would ever have known?...No one. This is interesting becuase the recording was analog vinyl.