Notices by Thomas 🔭🕹️ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io), page 9

@stfn tbf it’s probably safer when you experience a crash

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/116018676305019428

There’s people who spend like idk $500,000 on audiophile equipment; they could likely hire a band once a week on the the profits of investing the money instead.

In summary, if you want great audio quality use:

- Vinyl records
- CDs
- Well-recorded cassettes
- Super Audio CDs
- Audio DVD and Blu-ray
- Lossless digital files
- Lossless streaming
- DAT
- DCC
- Minidisk (some variants)
- high bitrate compressed audio files
- hire a live band

@gjmwoods @rotnroll666 my favorite is the tuning dial on the big chonky receivers, never has there been a user interface more satisfying to use

@julf did you bother to read my post

Because I constantly hear myths about the good old compact cassette:

1. They can sound as good as CDs
2. They don't wear out
3. You can't use a pencil to wind them
4. You can go to specific tracks automatically
5. You need to carry around extra batteries

I will elaborate below:

1. Sound Quality

Many higher-end decks can record cassettes on metal tape with various Dolby noise reduction settings; especially the combination of metal tape and Dolby S will make tapes that are pretty much indistinguishable from listening to a CD.

Even normal or chrome tape with Dolby B (around since the 1970s) will give great results; likely indistinguishable from a CD when played in a car or while out and about with a personal player.

Some extremely high-end tape decks produce better than CD results in some regards (for example some Nakamichi models go to 26KHz+ with frequency response, while CD are inherently limited to top out at 22KHz).

It's true that the dynamic range of CDs is much better than either vinyl records or tapes. However, unless you're super into classical music there's likely not much music for which this truly matters, as 99% is mastered to use much less dynamic range than provided by any audio media format. (If you're super into classical music you probably want SACD or other high-res lossless sources anyway, not CDs.)

2. Yes, it will wear out mechanically but you will wear out mechanically before it does. Please watch VWestlife's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dgJ4hRHBiw

3. European and American pencils are too thin to engage the cassette reel cogs. (You'd need to get a Japanese pencil. People mostly used BIC pens for this purpose which have the right thickness.)

4. Most (nice) decks and personal players from the early-to-mid nineties onwards have track skip features (e.g. Sony has AMS, Automatic Music Sensor), which allow precise winding to a specific track.

5. My late-90s Walkman has seventy-eight (78) hours of playback on one (1) single AA battery.

Anyway, the main reason why I like them is they're fun to use and recording them is very deliberate instead of algorithms selecting music for me. :)

@europlus astounding how some people use their precious little time

This is not a PC Card (PCMCIA) despite being the exact same size, it’s a memory expansion.

At current RAM prices this should be worth a million bucks by next year!

Sending emails about updates can be great!

But:

1. Do not send incomprehensible emails to cold lists
2. If possible, remove people from your email list when they haven’t interacted with you in years
3. Unless you’re Coca-Cola, in any email you send there should be a one-liner to describe what your app or business does

Especially awesome to get emails about a new version of an app you tried for 5 minutes 10 years ago and neither the name of the app nor the email subject or body gives even the slightest hint what the fuck that app does

RE: https://untrusted.website/@mr_daemon/116014135934042813

@xinit not just yet 😅

@julf @vfrmedia @elithebearded I had a record warp because I accidentally left it somewhere the sun could shine on it for a few hours 🥴

@gjmwoods @rotnroll666 chonky boy

I have this deck (made 1975–77)

@joshsusser what about the ones that are still in the machine and the one on the side table in the hallway

@_the_cloud so some types of tape you can drive harder, which in turn means less noise and more dynamic range—but I need to figure out what makes sense for the tape I have :)

@rmi so I think it’s burl roble (Argentinian tree?), there’s people who sort of “spruce up” (pardon the pun) old turntables

@battlecoder very nice! it’s hard to balance that region… I did a HDR a while back which I need to go back to as I’m not happy with it

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/116015792702941028

Recording successful! At least for a first try, I’ll probably read up a bit on recommended recording levels for various cassette types; plus I might use lossless hi-res instead of records as source, might need to for things I don’t have on vinyl anyway

Haven’t recorded a full record to tape in a long ass time

@phredmoyer rapid tests had always had extremely high false negatives and who’s gonna check on that everyone is doing it?

so no

if you want to keep people safe at a conference you need to have mandatory masking and ideally extra air filtering

you can’t shortcut your way to this