It is true that the sound quality of a CD or decent (192 kbps & up) MP3 has better sound quality than a cassette tape… however, the sound quality of a new LP or a reel to reel is STILL better than a CD… even after all of these years. I’m not making this stuff up. Ask any recording expert and they will tell you the same thing. If you have a really old CD made in around 1986 or 1987, you may see a small notice stating the limitations of the sound quality of a Compact Disk. The dynamic range is still wider on high quality analog & nothing gets “lost in translation” due to encoding sound into 1’s & 0’s

Pick up one of those 40 pound stereos made in the 60’s, 70’s or early 80’s and you may start to see what I mean. It’s also true that the thickness of speakers is decreased by 50% every 10 years (ie a speaker from 1970 is twice as thick as one made in 1980). It is a fact that the quality of audio hardware as well as medium has both declined in quality over the years. Some say that is has become more inexpensive… but when you have to buy a new “system” every 2-3 years, is it really?

Most new “systems” (gawd) don’t even have freaking knobs to control the tone, base, balance, midrange, gain, etc. Most do have 100w speakers that can actually handle about 20w and a “super extreme mega bass boost” button though.

The way most of them look has even gone way, way beyond “cheap” or “garish” looking. I guess everyone in the market for new audio equipment wants to remodel their homes into Discos. None of my furniture seems to match bright red & chrome with with extremely bright blue and red flashing lights… and I live in Las Vegas! It’s disgusting. I refuse to own a stereo made after the mid 80’s. Thank god that we still have the option to plug those cheap MP3 players & diskmans into a stereo made for big people.

New audio fails on sound, durability, design, price and in every other area.

OK, now that I got that off my chest… wheeew!

Great article about Walkmans. I found a WM-F46 at a thrift store the other day that was still in the original box for $5! The sound quality of cassettes is slightly less than CD’s but… Walkmans don’t skip & you can record on them. The old ones can be dropped hundreds of times before they break and you can even repair them most of the time when they do.

I Believe Sony’s engineering also took a turn for the worse. I had a WM-GX670 (supposedly one of the “deluxe” models or that was what I was told), which I bought back in 2002. Compared to the TPS-L2, it totally blew it away in terms of features: the transport was fully logically operated (compared to “fuzzy logic” of TPS-L2) had a remote, Dolby, record, AM/FM and auto-reverse, compared to TPS-L2’s hot line. Well, after an accidental drop of about a metre onto carpeted floor, it now refuses to load any tape properly until pressing Play / reverse at least 10 times. There isn’t even a dent on the metal work! I dropped the TPS-L2 loads of times over the years, and I’m sure with a couple of new belts its back in business…