this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
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No. Cassettes sound like shit. They are a very lossy format. Vinyl actually sounds different in ways that people like. My vinyl collection has nothing to do with nostalgia (I grew up after CDs were on the rise). On a solid system, there's a lot more fidelity in the bass on vinyl.
Cassettes don't sound too bad if you actually have good equipment, which most people nowadays don't (because most can't afford collector's prices for decent decks). I was born in 97, vinyl records were long dead by then. Most people who get into vinyl nowadays actually grew up with iPods (hence the term "fake nostalgia").
Eh... it's pretty much all down to mastering, but vinyl records have a limited dynamic range compared to CDs which makes the bass more pronounced maybe? Not something I've noticed but I tend to prefer clear high end and mid range anyway.
Digital fidelity (sample rate) grows more granular in higher frequencies because that's easier for us to distinguish. (See the Fletcher-Munson Curve from Bell Labs: on a bell curve, we hear best at the frequency of a baby crying.) Think of stair steps that get closer and more numerous over time. That's a representation of the resolution of the sound across frequencies from low to high. I may be explaining it poorly because I moved away from audio engineering toward a different career a long time ago.
Analog has all the information that's missing in between the larger, wider steps. It's not a placebo (didn't say you called it that). It's how digital audio works.
My instance isn't allowing me to upload images for some reason. It had extended downtime the other day, so maybe that's related. Anyway, here's a link to a page with a chart that illustrates what I'm attempting to describe.
Thanks, it's always great to hear the details from some guy who knows his shit
Also, old records (from early in the CD era) had nowhere near the fidelity of modern records. I played a modern record for my father once and he was astounded how far they've come.
In my experience, it's still pretty hit or miss. The smaller indie labels tend to get it right more than the big names.
Vinyl has to be mastered differently (using the RIAA equalization curve) because vinyl is a crap medium. Low frequencies, unequalized, can cause the stylus to jump out of the groove. High frequencies tend to be attenuated. And it's noisy as well, and the noise gets worse over time. The "warmth" afiicionados treasure is mainly harmonic distortion from the amp reconsituting the equalized sound.
See above. Bass has to be compressed in order to be written to vinyl in a way that doesn't damage the record on playback. The amp then decompresses it before you hear it. Compression and decompression do not increase fidelity, instead what you get is a decompressed signal with the same reduced resolution as the compressed signal on the vinyl. In other words, you lose fidelity during the compression process, and information which is lost cannot be put back in later.