Does anyone use/need a (music) cassette deck these days?

[guids]

My dad still has an 8 track at his shop, but he has some sweet ones. Blues brothers, queen, clapton, so Ill pop one in once in awhile.

[Rick Nebiolo]

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i'm just glad i dont have to shell out an unnecessary amt of funds > $100 for a car stereo w/ input jacks for the ipod.

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The car I'm getting next year from my friend has a 6 CD cartridge player so I probably won't bother with an iPod input. I'm not sure the convenience of an iPon/iNano outweighs the degraded sound.

gf and I both have 8gig iNano's. Most of our music is ripped from my CD collection using Exact Audio Copy and converted to MP3 at an average 190 VBR bit-rate or so using the LAME back-end (I do know about some new stuff, I just didn't realize how useless my old stuff was [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] ).

I bought the inexpensive basic cables to hook up the iNano's directly to both the living room and bedroom stereos (for fun showing new songs in the living room and to easily play my latest "bada bing" mix in the bedroom). Anyway, the living room stereo is half decent and we can really tell the difference between the same song using MP3s and the .wav file the original CD.

~ Rick

[guids]

List of songs on Bada Bing mix pls.

[Rick Nebiolo]

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List of songs on Bada Bing mix pls.

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I'm not at home so I can't export the list from iTunes but gf is starting to get into the blues, especally the straght blues (without any element of swing).

Favorites seem to be blues by Robben Ford, Roy Buchanan, Duke Robillard and at least one of the guys named Albert. Tonight I have some stuff by Joe Bonamassa for her to check out.

I do know she's played Roy Buchanan's live version of "Down By the River" about 500 times on her iNano (my computer is her mother ship so it counts the plays on my iTunes) so it's nice if I can manage to hit the right note when that one's playing.

So I guess when I said "Bada Bing" I didn't mean to imply it was all Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra type stuff (although that can be pretty good too).

~ Rick



PS If I can remember I'll export the list and post it by tomorrow.

[guids]

Your wife likes to do it to the blues? does she have a sister?

[cow_phunk]

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[ QUOTE ]
i'm just glad i dont have to shell out an unnecessary amt of funds > $100 for a car stereo w/ input jacks for the ipod.

[/ QUOTE ]

The car I'm getting next year from my friend has a 6 CD cartridge player so I probably won't bother with an iPod input. I'm not sure the convenience of an iPon/iNano outweighs the degraded sound.

gf and I both have 8gig iNano's. Most of our music is ripped from my CD collection using Exact Audio Copy and converted to MP3 at an average 190 VBR bit-rate or so using the LAME back-end (I do know about some new stuff, I just didn't realize how useless my old stuff was [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] ).

I bought the inexpensive basic cables to hook up the iNano's directly to both the living room and bedroom stereos (for fun showing new songs in the living room and to easily play my latest "bada bing" mix in the bedroom). Anyway, the living room stereo is half decent and we can really tell the difference between the same song using MP3s and the .wav file the original CD.

~ Rick

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ripping in vbr should cause very little differences in audible quality. screw w/ the settings and you'll find something that's gonna sound real close to the cd. the problem is people who take the mp3(lossless), convert to wav, rip it, then convert it back to mp3 somewhere else. lossy>lossless>lossy is a huge quality degradation. i'm hard pressed to believe you're noticing a major difference on a home system, like really hard pressed. if you are rip at a higher rate. i went through the lossless phase, its not worth the hassle.

edit: btw, you're probably going through the standard headphone out jack, which is gonna cause a loss of quality based on your wiring.

[Ray Zee]

went from cars in the 60's that had 45 and 78 record players in them. thats right an album spinning in a case under the dash. to 8 track tape players. both of which sucked. then on to cassette tapes. well with a good player like a nacamici you get better sound than any disc as the highs and lows are what they should be.
i still have vehicles that take tapes and listen to them and still have two players, a nacimici and a yamaha, hooked into my home system. the tapes i have had for up to forty years and still sound great. will the new disks still be even playable then.
alot of my cd disks work great for hanging in the limbs of fruit trees and scare the deer away.

[Phat Mack]

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...we didn't have iTunes back then, kids...

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I think the real sick divide on 2+2 is those of us who actually owned and used eight track tapes!

I'd bet it amounts to less than 1% of registered users.

~ Rick

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Here's a quiz for the children on the forum. A few years ago, I owned a 1958 Buick, and drove it when I took out a girl in her early 20s. She looked at the dashboard, which was chrome and looked like a cross between a spaceship and an espresso machine, and then asked if should could turn on the radio.

I said fine, she turned it on, waited a few seconds, and turned it off. I asked her why she did that, and she said, "It's broken!"

Wtf? Why did she think it was broken?

[Rick Nebiolo]

[ QUOTE ]
ripping in vbr should cause very little differences in audible quality. screw w/ the settings and you'll find something that's gonna sound real close to the cd. the problem is people who take the mp3(lossless), convert to wav, rip it, then convert it back to mp3 somewhere else. lossy>lossless>lossy is a huge quality degradation. i'm hard pressed to believe you're noticing a major difference on a home system, like really hard pressed. if you are rip at a higher rate. i went through the lossless phase, its not worth the hassle.

edit: btw, you're probably going through the standard headphone out jack, which is gonna cause a loss of quality based on your wiring.

[/ QUOTE ]

In both rooms I bought a $4 cable that goes from the headphone output on the iNano and splits to RCA type jacks (red and white plugs). In the bedroom stereo (with a cheap $100 Technics stereo receiver) I originally plugged the cable into the phono jack on the receiver. That sounded bad so I switched to the tape input which sounded better. In the living room I have a decent Harmon Kardon receiver and I plugged the similar cable into the auxiliary input on the receiver.

In the living room I just retested a clean sounding song on a CD against the same song played through the iNano that was converted to .mp3 using EAC/LAME. It's hard to A-B since you need to fiddle with the volume controls to equalize volumes (I'm sure you know that louder usually sounds better unless the components or source isn't' close in quality).

After trying to equalize the volumes and listening for a few minutes I would say it's close.

Also from your edit above I assume your saying that the more expensive iDock type devices for connecting your iPod to a stereo use the USB connection on the iPod and this sounds better than the headphone jack.

My original comparison listening probably didn't equalize volumes well and may have used some cuts that were ripped at 128kb using inferior software.

~ Rick

[Rick Nebiolo]

[ QUOTE ]
List of songs on Bada Bing mix pls.

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We planned on refining the 5 star blues playlist last night then posting it for you but my computer sub-woofer sort of blew up so we didn't get a chance.

I do know she/we like some of the following cuts best:

Duke Robillard
Album: Blue Mood
Link to Amazon samples: http://tinyurl.com/2qp7uu
Fav cuts:
- Love Is a Gamble
- I'm Still in Love With You
- Born to Be No Good

Albert Collins
Album: Collins Mix: The Best
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2veq69
Fav cuts:
- Tired Man
also likes "Blues for Stevie" but I can't find the link right now.

Ronnie Earl:
Album: The Colour of Love
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2q99bv
Fav cuts:
- 'Round Midnight
- Mother Angel

Roy Buchanan:
Album: Sweet Dreams
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2ssexg
Fav cuts:
- Five String Blues
- Turn to Stone
- Down By the River (live)

Anyway, stuff like that works for us. Gotta go, still might post a blues mix later or in another thread.

~ Rick