still using cassette tapes

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Fancy equipment? No. Back in the early 80's I had an all in one music centre. A nice one, mind, it had a recording level knob.
Fancy tape? At first all I had was the cheapest of cheap tapes given to me by my stepfather, I think he did it as an insult, looking down his nose at my choice of music. They sounded bad then, they still sound bad. When I got money I used to get the best TDK I could afford.
I must admit though, I haven't been listening to them with much concern about the quality, it's just been fun to hear this stuff after all these years. I would rate the sound quality as "not great, but so what", "better than I expected" or "wow, these things still play".

that puts it in fine perspective at first i had a crappy old sears silvertone [sounded more like a tarnished tintone if ya ask me anyways it's cassette deck had crappy heads and dodgy tape movement, wow and flutter made everything sound sour, and the highs rolled off above 4k, and it hissed like a snake. i tried an experiment with one of the early chromium dioxide tapes [the silvertone was made to record only type I tape, with no adjustable bias/EQ] and recorded an album with it, and the [playback] reproduction was hiss-free and sparkling. that mystified me, as the quality was so poor with type I.

that is a very healthy way of looking at it, perfectionist me would be mentally more sound IMHO if i had your forgiving philosophy.

I have a 15-year-old car, and the CD player is shot, so it's either listen to music and commercials (life's too short to listen to commercials... so I'm still listening to (erm) stuff from the late 80s and early 90s...sigh.

you could try one of those all-in-one CD players with an FM transmitter built-in, plug it into the cigarette lighter and tune your FM radio to hear the CD player.

Are you saying you still got a cassette deck? If so, cassette adapter is a life saver, only about 10ish dollars, good purchase, plug in anything with a headphone jack into it.

Otherwise, if you got any amount of cash at all, a new car head unit is a good purchase and it's honestly not hard to install those things. New car head units are sweet, the one I had in my Supra was 160watts max, so not too powerful, only $80, though. It had a built in HD radio tuner, SD card slot, flash drive slot, both for playing mp3s, line-in, and mp3 CD playback, too. I kinda sacrificed power a bit buying that head unit for the features it has, but it was worth the money easily, especially for the HD radio. Tons of extra stations on it, like one of the pop music stations in the area for example, has an entire station just for club music without commercials. The like, variety rock station here just has an entire station full of uninterrupted commercial free classic rock. Seriously, new tech like that is wonderful stuff. And mp3 CDs, flash drives, fun stuff.

If you get a car where an idiot cut the wires to the stock harness and you got no radio, it's harder, as you gotta go look up the wiring diagram online or futz with the wires yourself til you find power, ground, memory, and speaker wires, but yeah. Otherwise, you go to Walmart, spend $8 on an adapter so you don't have cut your stock wires up and you can put the stock radio back in the car when you sell it, and then just connect the colored wires on your radio to your harness.

For me, what I've done on a few cars for temporary radios, right, if you go to a junkyard, most of them will sell you a name brand cassette head unit for like no money. I bought my cassette Pioneer and JVC head units for about $7 each. Then get a cassette adapter, you got better sound quality than stock usually, for no money. Used, though, a CD deck without a line-in will be about $20-30 bucks.

Just saying, installing those things isn't magic or even terribly hard. No need for an "expert" to do it, and most "experts" are just silly cocky teenagers really.

Nope. I tend to ditch the old stuff and go with the new.

(clicky!)anybody here remember [or even hear of] the Sony Elcaset? or 8-tracks?

I actually have a cassette player with some cassettes still lying around but I never use it though. I still have some old VHS tapes lying around too, might watch some as some of them were good movies I could see.

Every day brothah! I friggin' love VHS and Cassettes, BECAUSE they are inexpensive and I'm too cheap to buy a $5 DVD.

RIP old technologies, may they find repose in a kind sheltered climate-controlled environment free of abuse. they served acceptably well during their time. the japanese have a hare kuyo [shinto needle shrine] for broken old sewing machine needles, which rest in vats of soft tofu, venerated and prayed over by shinto priests in appreciation of their long and hard service to their owners. there should also be a old-tech shrine for old cassette decks and 8 tracks and such, where they will be gently used and listened-to and venerated and prayed over and appreciated by annointed nerds and geeks like me.

I must admit, in years gone by the tiniest crackle on vinyl, or hiss on tape would give me something approaching physical pain.

i still expend lots of time expunging such noises from my collection of old recordings. it is a very involved hobby of mine, very nearly a compulsion.

Yes, I still use cassette, always have done. always will do. Analogue sound is the best! To me digital sound is crap and it has never suited my ears.