I've bought way more new releases on cassette this year. The reason:

1. The price of vinyl no longer justifies it's value
2. CDs still suffer from the effect of the loudness war, though this is slowly improving
3. Cassettes aren't as good as vinyl, but they offer better dynamic range than CDs at a less expensive price

Someone will wander in and shout, "But specs!"

Specs don't matter when mastering compromises them. And I have data to back this up!

Here's a comparison of all the songs on the album Will of the People by Muse:

1. Vinyl
2. Cassette
3. CD

Now what do you notice? The vinyl and cassette have more dynamic range. They're similar, though not exactly the same.

The CD on the other hand is bricked.

This is not due to the spec of the media, it's due to deliberate mastering by audio engineers.

This is the truth about music media formats in 2022:

1. CDs have the best spec but the worst mastering—doesn't justify the price
2. Vinyl has the worst spec but the best mastering—doesn't justify the price
3. Cassettes have better spec than you think, and the best value in terms of mastering—does justify the price

Caveat: all of this depends on your equipment. But point still stands.

@atomicpoet worried about longevity of cassettes though, seems the most prone to wear & degradation over time... Unless you're just using them to rip to digital ;)

@whatabouttheken This is why I buy all my cassettes from Bandcamp. Whenever I buy a cassette, I get access to lossless FLAC versions of the album.

Problem solved.

@atomicpoet oh shoot that's amazing. Then you can even burn your own CDs! 😆

@whatabouttheken Sometimes these FLACs are better than CD quality. A good many of them are 24-bit.

This is why I keep a dedicated DAP.

@atomicpoet @whatabouttheken But they'd probably be mastered the same as a CD, I would think. 24-bit is great for recording, but I wouldn't think it is useful as the final format.

@acjay @whatabouttheken I find that, in practice, there usually isn't much of a difference. Nevertheless, the transfer to 16-bit is an extra step. And dithering can be screwed up.

On CDs, this is a requirement.

But on modern audio equipment where even cheap DACs can go to 192 kHz—way beyond human hearing—why bother?

As someone who genuinely loves music, I'd rather we get the closest experience to a live experience as possible. Although there is merit to studio tinkering.

@atomicpoet @whatabouttheken I would think the mix down to 16-bit is a one-click thing at this point. But I'm not a mastering engineer :)

At this point, I don't think bit depth or sampling rate are what holds up back from life-like sound. It's stuff more like reproducing a spatial sound field that you can inhabit.

But I'm probably just salty over the way audiophile culture sometimes sells stuff on specs that don't matter.

@acjay @whatabouttheken If you like the notion of spatial sound, have you tried SACDs with 5.1 channel surround sound?

@atomicpoet @whatabouttheken I haven't. My listening habits are way more pedestrian than my knowledge, haha. I took a class in grad school on spatial audio, and it turns out there's way more to it than 5.1. (I honestly thought going in, what more is there to say?) But turns out 5.1 is really designed specifically for cinema. Have you ever looked into Ambisonics?

@acjay @whatabouttheken I've casually looked into it.

Unlike CDs, SACDs use a different read mechanism.

CDs use PCM, which is what most digital audio uses to sample analog signals. The bitrate tends to vary.

SACDs use DSD for digital encoding. All signals are 1-bit but have a sampling rate of 2.8224 MHz.

My home theatre supports SACDs, and the surround sound experience is eye-opening.

Here's the Wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Stream_Digital