Resurgence of Older Technology

[Rollingstart]

I still play my Sega Genesis/Megadrive with the original cartridges I got for my birthday 93-98. Unfortunately the original TV I had is dead and gone, but I was able to get a decent CRT for pretty cheap. I also have a Sega Dreamcast and PS2 that still works. My Sega Saturn bit the dust back in 2017, RIP bb.

As much as I love playing the original cartridges, I have no problem with emulation. It's astounding how close it is these days, especially for the 2D stuff. Emulation is a literal miracle, and the fact that MAME exists is enough for me never to have to buy any new games; I'm too busy gittin gud at all the arcade games I didn't have enough tokens to git gud at back in the day.

 

[Razzle Dazzle]

I still play my Sega Genesis/Megadrive with the original cartridges I got for my birthday 93-98. Unfortunately the original TV I had is dead and gone, but I was able to get a decent CRT for pretty cheap. I also have a Sega Dreamcast and PS2 that still works. My Sega Saturn bit the dust back in 2017, RIP bb.

As much as I love playing the original cartridges, I have no problem with emulation. It's astounding how close it is these days, especially for the 2D stuff. Emulation is a literal miracle, and the fact that MAME exists is enough for me never to have to buy any new games; I'm too busy gittin gud at all the arcade games I didn't have enough tokens to git gud at back in the day.

Segata Sanshiro approves.

 

[InsufferableCynic]

Yes. So much of this kind of thing is people wanting to tinker with gear. When a smartphone does everything you lose out on being able to tinker with all these different hardwares and gain some knowledge in the process. I guess I'm talking about hobbyists.

I feel like the issue with smartphones isn't that they "do everything". Raspberri Pi's also essentially do everything as a full single-board computer, and yet people use them for all sorts of DIY projects all the time (which they are designed for).

I feel like it's more that Smartphones are locked down and controlled. Nobody does anything interesting with a smartphone because you literally can't. Software wise you can install custom roms, app stores, etc, and do some cool stuff, but hardware wise, you're basically fucked.

The only advantage I can think of with tape is that it's portable, so that you are able to express what a hipster you are to the public.

Versus Vinyl, sure. But even compared to CD it's pretty lackluster. It can't compete at all against an mp3 player, even an old 2GB one from 20 years ago.

mp3 is fine for most people. Bluetooth is fine for most people. I have spent a lot of money on audio hardware to learn this lesson.

I'm cool with that. I don't want it to come across like I am judging people or calling them idiots for buying tape. I am mainly against old-tech elitism which I see all over the place, especially among audiophiles, and there are absolutely people who are jumping on the "audio tape actually sounds really good" bandwagon.

 

[punishedgnome]

I honestly don't understand the resurgance of tape.

I sort of get Vinyl (even if it makes no sense), because good quality vinyl can sound quite good, almost as good as a CD (anyone who says they sound better is objectively wrong, please read about redbook CD audio), but tapes - even ferro chromium tapes - generally sound like crap and need Dolby Noise Reduction (which fucks the sound) just to be listenable without horrible hiss.

Old technology is making a comeback because new technology is often soulless, impossible to actually own, or screws us in other ways. A lot of it is bloated and unusable. But there are MUCH better formats for music than tape, so in this case replacing the new with the old makes no sense.

By all means explore tape because it's fascinating and interesting, but make sure you don't fall for the meme.

It's 100% nostalgia.

I still play my Sega Genesis/Megadrive with the original cartridges I got for my birthday 93-98. Unfortunately the original TV I had is dead and gone, but I was able to get a decent CRT for pretty cheap. I also have a Sega Dreamcast and PS2 that still works. My Sega Saturn bit the dust back in 2017, RIP bb.

As much as I love playing the original cartridges, I have no problem with emulation. It's astounding how close it is these days, especially for the 2D stuff. Emulation is a literal miracle, and the fact that MAME exists is enough for me never to have to buy any new games; I'm too busy gittin gud at all the arcade games I didn't have enough tokens to git gud at back in the day.

For some reason, I find emulation so depressing. I will use modded systems, flash carts and even the occasional clone console, but there's something about sitting down to a raspberry pi loaded with 28,000 games that depresses me. I think the uncomplicated experience of the console instantly booting up and the clunky click of flipping to power button, etc is just an essential part of the experience for me. Like, I have an Anbernic handheld that is objectively better than my modded Gameboy Advance with an EZ Flash cart, but it collects dust while I play my Gameboy Advance all the time.

 

[Orlando Smooth]

I honestly don't understand the resurgance of tape.

I have an old friend from high school who's made a bit of a name for himself in the ambient music world and released some of his stuff on tape. I asked him why, since I am somewhat of an audiophile who thinks tape is the worst form of physical media. The answer was enlightening; apparently it's far cheaper and easier to get a tape production setup going when compared to CDs, let alone vinyl. So it's appealing for random artists who have very little money to put into starting up a physical media production process, because you can spend a couple hundred bucks to get a proper run of tapes and then if no one buys them it's not really the end of the world. As such, fans of indie scenes end up accumulating tapes and therefore have an understandable attachment to them because it's often the only kind of physical media you can get for those artists.

Tapes are trash for quality, and anyone who says otherwise is objectively wrong, but when it was explained to me like that it made sense in both an emotional and financial sense.

 

[Some_porcupine]

Tapes are trash for quality, and anyone who says otherwise is objectively wrong, but when it was explained to me like that it made sense in both an emotional and financial sense.

i thought they last longer and that they sound more "genuine, real (grains...)"

 

[InsufferableCynic]

i thought they last longer and that they sound more "genuine, real (grains...)"

What's more genuine:

Having a more grainy sound that "adds texture", or

literally reproducing the original waveform exactly using mathematics?

I can understand liking the graininess of tape for personal or aesthetic reasons, but in terms of sounding "genuine" and "real", that's a hard no. CD's reproduce sound exactly as it was recorded, tapes don't, making their sound objectively less genuine.

 

[Some_porcupine]

I can understand liking the graininess of tape for personal or aesthetic reasons, but in terms of sounding "genuine" and "real", that's a hard no. CD's reproduce sound exactly as it was recorded, tapes don't, making their sound objectively less genuine.

even if it was recorded on the tape, in studio?

 

[Orlando Smooth]

even if it was recorded on the tape, in studio?

Pretty much any worthwhile studio nowadays is basically 100% digital, but even in the past when they did record stuff "to tape" it was not the kind of tape found in cassettes. Reel to reel tape is way, way, way better than cassettes... and is also insanely expensive.

 

[InsufferableCynic]

Pretty much any worthwhile studio nowadays is basically 100% digital, but even in the past when they did record stuff "to tape" it was not the kind of tape found in cassettes. Reel to reel tape is way, way, way better than cassettes... and is also insanely expensive.

EVEN IF they did literally record to cassette tape, every reproduction would introduce a decrease in quality, as it's essentially being recorded to tape twice, whereas a CD would reproduce the sound from the original tape exactly, so even if they used cassette tapes in the recording process, they are still a bad option for music reproduction and distribution in terms of sound quality.

 

[manpaint]

I don't get the sentiment in his threads. First, dosen't most audio track on CDs stored in mp3 format? Although I did not experience all the shiny storage media you guys are talking about (i.e vinyl), I did play a lot with audio compression while making games.

Despite having hyperacusis, I cannot tell the difference between a bog standard level-5 MP3 and a OGG vorbis file. In fact, I converted a huge portion of my audio library from ogg to mp3 for better compatibility.

The only instance of me realizing audio compression I can think of was with Club Penguin. As with most flash games, audio was compressed as hell. Years later, some people managed to dig up the original audio master and those just sounded so terrifying and alien to me.

Now this is obviously due to nostalgia and Club Penguin being a browser game. Unless I was fucking around with Foobar2000's MP3 compression setting and setted the MP3 at a very low level.

In fact if anything, I think audio quality has actually increased. I remember REALLY don't liking the way audio sounded in Final Fantasy 7 Remake. I was like "wtf, the music sound so raw" (granted those were straight from the ROM, so maybe they sound better in-game).

 

[InsufferableCynic]

I don't get the sentiment in his threads. First, dosen't most audio track on CDs stored in mp3 format?

No. CD is a proprietary format and is essentially "raw" audio.

Despite having hyperacusis, I cannot tell the difference between a bog standard level-5 MP3 and a OGG vorbis file. In fact, I converted a huge portion of my audio library from ogg to mp3 for better compatibility.

OGG is just an open-source reimplementation of MP3, from before MP3 was open source. It's a largely pointless format now.

The only instance of me realizing audio compression I can think of was with Club Penguin. As with most flash games, audio was compressed as hell. Years later, some people managed to dig up the original audio master and those just sounded so terrifying and alien to me.

Many old games have this problem

Now this is obviously due to nostalgia and Club Penguin being a browser game. Unless I was fucking around with Foobar2000's MP3 compression setting and setted the MP3 at a very low level.

MP3 can either sound great or terrible depending on your encoding settings

In fact if anything, I think audio quality has actually increased. I remember REALLY don't liking the way audio sounded in Final Fantasy 7 Remake. I was like "wtf, the music sound so raw" (granted those were straight from the ROM, so maybe they sound better in-game).

Music has definitely improved (at least in terms of sound quality) ever since we got larger hard disks and games could take up multiple gigabytes. You're lucky to find anything below 256KB mp3 nowadays at a bare minimum.

 

[LostintheCycle]

Music has definitely improved (at least in terms of sound quality) ever since we got larger hard disks and games could take up multiple gigabytes. You're lucky to find anything below 256KB mp3 nowadays at a bare minimum.

Most places people are playing music they are using Spotify. The quality is abysmal on Spotify.

160kbps has somewhat of a difference but not too terrible, but if you're reaching down to 96 you are getting an audible difference in audio quality.

 

[InsufferableCynic]

Most places people are playing music they are using Spotify. The quality is abysmal on Spotify.

I was mostly talking about in media - games, movies, etc, the sound quality is generally VERY high compared to the good old days.

And yes, Spotify absolutely sucks. I honestly don't understand why anyone uses it.

 

[Emmy Fitz]

I started collecting vinyl in 2011 and got a Crosley for Christmas that year, the next two years were full of collecting boomer records from the swap meet for $1-5 a pop. I had over 200 at one point before cutting down. It's insane how expensive they've gotten; I haven't collected in years because I desperately need to upgrade from my now 12 year old all-in-one turntable but damn, do I love the look, feel, and smell of a classic gatefold.

I started collecting CDs about a year ago and am having a great time, they're dirt cheap and do sound better than streaming. Sound system in my room and a portable player for working out.

I also have a 120 GB iPod exclusively for vaporwave.

 

[WKYK]

I fixed up a broken record player i bought at my book store a few years ago and have been using it since, I highly recommend this to anyone else who wants to get into records. In doing this I saved money and got to learn about the technology used for playing records, which is really cool. Plus it's nice to have a unique player as opposed to literally everyone I know having either a Crosley or ATLP60x

I also wanna talk about PSP's for a sec, because I love them so much. My only other experience in the handheld gaming realm is a 3DS and IPhone, so I'm no expert on all there is out there, but PSP's are amazing. You can customize the home screen, upload music, watch videos, surf the web, and emulate a ton of games if that's your thing. I have a white PSP 3000 that I got in highschool, I riced it with a touhou wallpaper and loaded it with odd future songs lol, makes me really nostalgic. I've been thinking of making an effort post about PSP's for a while so I'll continue my thoughts in that whenever I have time to make it, but yeah highly recommend PSP to anyone who wants a customizable, fresh experience on portable gaming.

 

[manpaint]

I also wanna talk about PSP's for a sec, because I love them so much. My only other experience in the handheld gaming realm is a 3DS and IPhone, so I'm no expert on all there is out there, but PSP's are amazing. You can customize the home screen, upload music, watch videos, surf the web, and emulate a ton of games if that's your thing. I have a white PSP 3000 that I got in highschool, I riced it with a touhou wallpaper and loaded it with odd future songs lol, makes me really nostalgic. I've been thinking of making an effort post about PSP's for a while so I'll continue my thoughts in that whenever I have time to make it, but yeah highly recommend PSP to anyone who wants a customizable, fresh experience on portable gaming.

Do most website still work on the PSP? I know that once upon a time, most website under the sun worked on the 3DS, but encryption certificates and stuff eventually changed making the browser unusable aside for niche sites.

 

[WKYK]

Do most website still work on the PSP? I know that once upon a time, most website under the sun worked on the 3DS, but encryption certificates and stuff eventually changed making the browser unusable aside for niche sites.

I honestly never used that feature myself so I can't say, but I plan on looking into it soon so I'll get back to you on this. I would assume most sites wouldn't work but I'm curious if I can get people's neocities sites to work on the PSP, most of them are just html css and js so I feel like there's a good chance they would load.