U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017
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Last year, cassette album sales rose by 35 percent to 174,000 copies sold.
The second Guardians of the Galaxy film’s companion album, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2: Awesome Mix Vol. 2 led all cassette albums in sales in 2017, with 19,000 copies sold. The Nos. 2 and 3 sellers were the first Guardians soundtrack, with 15,000 copies, followed by the Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Mix, Vol. 1 album with 5,000. (The Cosmic set is the soundtrack to the animated TV series.)
https://i.imgur.com/sExCUhH.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/cpLFTdv.png
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@el_heffe so basically it's all Guardians of the Galaxy gag tie ins and literally everything else is so low selling it's statistical noise.
55k units between an the GotG products, and every other product in the category sold a maximum of 5k units each to total around 119k.
You can hit those sales figures based strictly on old farts and collectors, without even needing ironic hipsters.
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@weng Soon enough, if they haven't already, idiots will start buying cassettes en masse, using words like "warmth" to justify why they think it's better.
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@hungrier said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@weng Soon enough, if they haven't already, idiots will start buying cassettes en masse, using words like "warmth" to justify why they think it's better.
Probably the same idiots who are currently buying vinyl albums, at double the cost of a CD.
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@hungrier said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@weng Soon enough, if they haven't already, idiots will start buying cassettes en masse, using words like "warmth" to justify why they think it's better.
Trust me, it's already happened. I can tell without even going to an audiophile forum.
But if you want the best sound, you have to make sure you get a tape player that has a solid gold reader. And if you ever use a pencil on the reels, you might as well throw the whole thing out. It's garbage after that.
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I can't wait until the hipsters return to the mono wax drums from 1890 or whatever.
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@el_heffe said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
vinyl albums, at double the cost of a CD.
That used to be the other way around, but I suspect most who buy the vinyl albums don’t remember those times, nor the reasons people started buying CDs instead despite the higher cost.
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@mott555 said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
I can't wait until the hipsters return to the mono wax drums from 1890 or whatever.
Well, turning the uncut cylinders out on a 3D printer would be pretty easy...
Filed Under: I probably shouldn't be encouraging this sort of thing, should I...
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@gurth said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@el_heffe said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
vinyl albums, at double the cost of a CD.
That used to be the other way around, but I suspect most who buy the vinyl albums don’t remember those times, nor the reasons people started buying CDs instead despite the higher cost.
What was the 80s word for hipsters?
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@gąska said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
What was the 80s word for hipsters?
They weren't born yet.
The good old times
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@gąska said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@gurth said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@el_heffe said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
vinyl albums, at double the cost of a CD.
That used to be the other way around, but I suspect most who buy the vinyl albums don’t remember those times, nor the reasons people started buying CDs instead despite the higher cost.
What was the 80s word for hipsters?
People were more worried about Yuppies in the 80s.
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@timebandit then who was buying those overpriced CDs?
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@gąska said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@timebandit then who was buying those overpriced CDs?
Yuppies.
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@scholrlea said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@gąska said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@timebandit then who was buying those overpriced CDs?
Yuppies.
*looks up*
yup·pie
ˈyəpē/
noun informal derogatorya young person with a well-paid job and a fashionable lifestyle.
So, hipsters.
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@el_heffe said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@hungrier said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@weng Soon enough, if they haven't already, idiots will start buying cassettes en masse, using words like "warmth" to justify why they think it's better.
Probably the same idiots who are currently buying vinyl albums, at double the cost of a CD.
I have an audiophile for a roommate, and he did this for a bunch of albums. Apparently the difference is audible when you have a gigantic speaker like his, since it's analog sound instead of digital.
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@gąska said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
What was the 80s word for hipsters?
Probably the closest thing would be "beatniks," although the term was a bit out of fashion by then. "Hipster" was actually in use, but it meant "cool person" rather than the modern connotation.
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@pie_flavor All sound is analog, definitionally. You can't hear 1s and 0s.
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@pie_flavor said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
I have an audiophile for a roommate, and he did this for a bunch of albums. Apparently the difference is audible when you have a gigantic speaker like his, since it's analog sound instead of digital.
If your digital sampling rate is at least 2x the upper bound of the range of human hearing, this is not true; any soundwave we are capable of hearing can be reconstructed with fidelity indistinguishable from the original waveform. I don't remember what the theorem is called that demonstrates this, but I recall that it's been scientifically proven. Audiophiles may claim otherwise, but they would not be able to tell the difference in a properly-administered blind test.
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@benjamin-hall said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@pie_flavor All sound is analog, definitionally. You can't hear 1s and 0s.
All sound is digital, because Planck's length
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@masonwheeler said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@pie_flavor said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
I have an audiophile for a roommate, and he did this for a bunch of albums. Apparently the difference is audible when you have a gigantic speaker like his, since it's analog sound instead of digital.
If your digital sampling rate is at least 2x the upper bound of the range of human hearing, this is not true; any soundwave we are capable of hearing can be reconstructed with fidelity indistinguishable from the original waveform. I don't remember what the theorem is called that demonstrates this, but I recall that it's been scientifically proven. Audiophiles may claim otherwise, but they would not be able to tell the difference in a properly-administered blind test.
Nyquist-Shannon Sampling Theorem
Technically it has some limitations that make it squiffy, but then again most music only has appreciable range of frequencies (~12 kHz, well below the ~20 kHz maximum, which most people can't hear). So 44 kHz sampling rates are more than plenty. And even if they're not, Nyquist folding affects the upper bands first, which have very low amplitude. And intensity is quadratic in amplitude (small squared is tiny), and hearing is logarithmic in intensity (so only large differences in intensity are noticeable). So yeah. Not going to hear a difference even if you do lose a tiny amount of information at the highest frequencies.
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@gąska said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
All sound is digital, because Planck's length
When we do warmups at the dojo I attend, one of them is this thing called a "plank stretch". You go up on your toes and forearms, keep your back and legs straight, and hold that position without moving. It gets very tiring very quickly.
One time when Sensei said it's plank time, I pointed out to him that in physics, Planck time is the shortest interval of time it's possible to have. The other students agreed that they would like to do it that way!
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@benjamin-hall said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
Yeah, that's the one. I knew it had something to do with Shannon's work on information theory, but the exact name escaped me. Thanks!
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@masonwheeler I wanted to call it the Nye theorem (remembering only the first syllable), but ended up googling it and bodging around until I found it. I used to do lots of Fourier transforms (from whence it springs), but haven't for a long time.
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@masonwheeler said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@pie_flavor said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
I have an audiophile for a roommate, and he did this for a bunch of albums. Apparently the difference is audible when you have a gigantic speaker like his, since it's analog sound instead of digital.
If your digital sampling rate is at least 2x the upper bound of the range of human hearing, this is not true; any soundwave we are capable of hearing can be reconstructed with fidelity indistinguishable from the original waveform. I don't remember what the theorem is called that demonstrates this, but I recall that it's been scientifically proven. Audiophiles may claim otherwise, but they would not be able to tell the difference in a properly-administered blind test.
That doesn't stop people from buying 192 KHz sampled audio that might actually sound worse than your run of the mill 44.1 KHz audio. While we're at it, why not make TVs that deliberately emit accurate amounts of UV radiation? If I can't get sunburn from my LCD panel then the picture quality isn't nearly high enough.
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@masonwheeler said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
One time when Sensei said it's plank time, I pointed out to him that in physics, Planck time is the shortest interval of time it's possible to have. The other students agreed that they would like to do it that way!
/r/thatHappened
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@masonwheeler said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@pie_flavor said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
I have an audiophile for a roommate, and he did this for a bunch of albums. Apparently the difference is audible when you have a gigantic speaker like his, since it's analog sound instead of digital.
If your digital sampling rate is at least 2x the upper bound of the range of human hearing, this is not true; any soundwave we are capable of hearing can be reconstructed with fidelity indistinguishable from the original waveform. I don't remember what the theorem is called that demonstrates this, but I recall that it's been scientifically proven. Audiophiles may claim otherwise, but they would not be able to tell the difference in a properly-administered blind test.
And does an album of that fit on a CD?
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@pie_flavor See @Benjamin-Hall's explanation above, that 44 KHz (CD-quality audio) is more than sufficient for that.
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@masonwheeler Well, I can hear it.
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@pie_flavor I was just reading how what we perceive is greatly affected by our preconceptions. If we want to hear a difference, we will, even if there isn't really one (or if the difference lies elsewhere).
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@benjamin-hall That's what I thought, so I had my friend do both without telling me which one was which and I could pinpoint it easily.
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@masonwheeler said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
One time when Sensei said it's plank time, I pointed out to him that in physics, Planck time is the shortest interval of time it's possible to have. The other students agreed that they would like to do it that way!
And so that day you did them for a lot longer than normal?
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@boomzilla one day back in middle school, before PE class, we decided to run the usual warmup 3 laps the opposite way (clockwise instead of counter-clockwise) for the lulz. Our asshole teacher didn't like it, and actually counted our first lap as negative one.
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@pie_flavor said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@benjamin-hall That's what I thought, so I had my friend do both without telling me which one was which and I could pinpoint it easily.
The issue with vinyl is, they are often of lower quality. This adds imperfections to the sound that audiophiles like so much. But you know, these are imperfections, they weren’t supposed to be there.
I remember reading an interview with Dave Gilmour way back when, he was asked about digital sound and vinyl. Said he prefers to work with digital. It’s easier, because it doesn’t deteriorate from the moment of capturing. You can do more mixing with it. But I can’t find this interview now, must’ve been about his 2015 album.
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@polygeekery said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
/r/thatHappened
please don't let this become a thing here
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@pie_flavor said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
Apparently the difference is audible when you have a gigantic speaker like his, since it's analog sound instead of digital.
this is the same principle for why they are removing the headphone jack, whith usb C the audio is completely digital but 3.5mm takes the digital and makes it analog so you lose bits and it sounds more brownish and wavy, slightly dim
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@bb36e said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@polygeekery said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
/r/thatHappened
please don't let this become a thing here
We already have it here. It's called front page.
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An audiophile friend of mine did an ABX test to see if he could detect the difference between a relatively high bitrate mp3 and a FLAC taken off the same CD. Sometimes he could reliably tell the difference but even then he couldn't tell which was the lossless rip
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@gąska said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@timebandit then who was buying those overpriced CDs?
People who wanted convenience and a damage-resistant music carrier — that is, pretty much everyone who wanted to listen to music except for the few audiophiles who maintained that vinyl sounded better.
Then later on, that same discussion happened again but with three sides: MP3 vs. CD vs. LP.
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@masonwheeler said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
Probably the closest thing would be "beatniks," although the term was a bit out of fashion by then.
Only about 20 years or so, at a guess.
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@gurth said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@gąska said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@timebandit then who was buying those overpriced CDs?
People who wanted convenience and a damage-resistant music carrier — that is, pretty much everyone who wanted to listen to music except for the few audiophiles who maintained that vinyl sounded better.
Then later on, that same discussion happened again but with three sides: MP3 vs. CD vs. LP.
If I recall (before my time) a CD was 72 minutes at the time while an LP topped at about 45 minutes total. So typically the CD version would have at least one extra track, and you wouldn't need to flip it halfway through.
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@pleegwat said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@gurth said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@gąska said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@timebandit then who was buying those overpriced CDs?
People who wanted convenience and a damage-resistant music carrier — that is, pretty much everyone who wanted to listen to music except for the few audiophiles who maintained that vinyl sounded better.
Then later on, that same discussion happened again but with three sides: MP3 vs. CD vs. LP.
If I recall (before my time) a CD was 72 minutes at the time while an LP topped at about 45 minutes total. So typically the CD version would have at least one extra track, and you wouldn't need to flip it halfway through.
Tom Petty Hello CD Listeners... – 00:25
— Jesús Saucedo
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@bb36e said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
it sounds more brownish and wavy, slightly dim
I've never been able to take statements like this seriously and I'm not about to start now.
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@bb36e said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
makes it analog so you lose bits and it sounds more brownish and wavy, slightly dim
That's laugh as yep
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@pleegwat said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
a CD was 72 minutes
74 minutes. Or one slowly-played Beethoven's 9th Symphony long, rounded up to a convenient manufacturing size.
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@pleegwat said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
If I recall (before my time) a CD was 72 minutes at the time while an LP topped at about 45 minutes total. So typically the CD version would have at least one extra track
Not as I recall, but then I also don’t think I ever compared track listings on new albums that were released as both LP and CD.
and you wouldn't need to flip it halfway through.
Yep, like I said: convenience :)
Also, for artists, CDs were more convenient in that they didn’t need to put tracks with lots of bass toward the front of the album side, because the inner grooves couldn’t usually be wide enough to sound good if there was a strong bass in them.
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@dkf said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
@pleegwat said in U.S. Cassette Album Sales Rose 35% in 2017:
a CD was 72 minutes
74 minutes.
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I always heard 80 minutes of capacity for a CD.