Slashdot Mirror
13-Year-Old Trades iPod For a Walkman For a Week
BBC Magazine convinced 13-year-old Scott Campbell to trade in his iPod for a Walkman for a week and see what he thought. Scott thinks the iPod wins when it comes to sound quality, color, weight, and the shuffle feature. The Walkman, however, offers two headphone sockets, making it much easier to listen to music with a friend. My favorite part of the review is, "It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equalizer, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette."
About giving him an 8 track cartridge tape ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereo_8
At least, there is only one side to those. I still remember listening to Pink Floyd "The dark side of the moon" and "Echoes" while cruising in my car. Even today, when I listen to it on more modern media, I still remember where the sound track would cut for a few seconds in the middle of a song in order to allow the player to change tracks. They did a fade-out in the middle of a song in order to make it sound more appropriated... ;-)
8-tracks came before 4 track mini-cassette :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_Cassette
For those who don't know 8 tracks, the tape is arranged in a endless loop so it was impossible to rewind the tape ;-))) I still have an 8 track recorder in the basement somewhere, I used to record my own tapes ;-)
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
And you didn't need iTunes to put music on it.
I guess they're durable as long as you don't listen to them much. The mere act of playing a cassette degrades it. And then there's the sound quality issue. Comparing cassettes favorably to mp3 is one thing, but to CD/DVD? Seriously?
Either he writes well or I was an idiot when I was 13.
?
I didn't read the article yet, but did the reporter give the kid a manual for operating the Walkman? If so, the kid could have resolved some of those issues by reading it. If not, then I understand his confusion. CD's have been the standard for physical media since the early 90's, and manufacturers probably stop making cassette tapes for new albums when he was 3 or 4. CD's are, after all, one-sided.
Perhaps it's because I'm quite bright, but apart from the metal switch, I never had any of those questions when I first picked up a tape deck.
Maybe because tape decks were in common use when you were a kid, and you saw them being operated?
I'm not sure it's fair to call kids "spoiled rotten" because they see the superiority of current technology over what was in use years/decades before they were born. Kids may have a hard time imagining life without iPods and the Internet, but many young adults have a hard time imagining life before TVs and telephones were in every house. Many of us have a hard time imagining life without electricity, automobiles, or indoor plumbing. Insofar as this kid is spoiled, we're all spoiled.
I don't see why not. There's only one official way to use a rotary dial phone. Dialing by fiddling with the receiver "off hook" switch was a pain, and only for those cases where you had to make a call when somebody put one of those locks on the rotary dial.
It's not at all physically obvious why casette tapes should have "sides". The answer is in the physical property of the media. The speed with which the magnetized tape passes the head determines the strength of a signal. One of the trade offs of the technology is that higher speed and overall tape length. Having two sides to the tape allowed the overall tape length to remain manageable while doubling the capacity of the cartridge.
Likewise with the "metal" button. His guess was actually quite clever, and not too far off the mark. "Metal" here is a ridiculous piece of jargon; all tapes use metals or mixtures of different metal compounds bound to a plastic substrate. "Metal" tapes have a mixture with different recording and playback characteristics than the older iron oxide tapes. How the hell is anybody supposed to infer that from a label on a button?
Judging from the picture, they game him a beat up old tape player. It's no wonder it didn't sound so good. He was quite observant to note that some of the sound problems he heard were a result of weak batteries driving the motors, which might be worse on an old device. The quality of the tapes he used could also be an issue. Old, worn out tapes would sound bad, and new tapes that weren't recorded properly in the first place could have problems too.
Back in the day, a really good "walkman" type tape device with a decent set of portable earphones and a good quality tape could actually sound acceptably good. Maybe not audiophile quality, but then again you'd be taking your life in your hands to walk around with anything "audiophile quality" on conspicuous display. Even today people listen to their MP3 players using earbuds. I would say that a portable tape player with everything in tip-top shape and a pair of decent over the ear earphones would give an iPod with stock earbuds a run for its money in terms of sound.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Man this is just wrong. Yes, tape has a higher fidelity than your standard 128 kbps mp3. But not for long. You'll lose most of the highs from ambient electromagnetic interference over the years, unless you store it in a lead box or something.
Depending on where that MP3 is written, after some number of years the cassette may sound bad and the MP3 might be unplayable.
I wouldn't exactly call them durable either. You've never had a tape eaten by a bad deck? Or a little brother that decorated his room with the tape?
It's also very easy to damage a CD. It's easily scratched, CD-Rs don't like sunlight (and UV rays) and degrade faster than a tape. Tape, eaten by a bad deck can usually be saved. A broken CD cannot be fixed, however it's likely that the cassette you sat on contains a tape that can be moved to another shell.
I've got 80 year old 78's
I have one record that's 94 years old :)
Anyway, cassettes are usually more durable and last longer than CD-Rs.
The cassette doesn't have artifacts on sibilants, but then again it doesn't really have any HF at all, so if, for example, you were listening to a compact cassette recording of an MP3, the HF artifacts would probably go away, because the cassette simply doesn't have the response to capture those frequencies.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
I'm relieved that the majority of technological advancement happened before I was born..
Aw, that's cute. We'll see what he says when he's forty and he gives his kid an iPod to play with.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Perhaps it's because I'm quite bright, but apart from the metal switch, I never had any of those questions when I first picked up a tape deck.
Yes, you're very smart. Pat yourself on the back.
Best part, you can use them to trade music with your friends, just like the Metallica guys did before they got famous.
The cake is a pie
It's not the writing style of an average 13 year old, but the average 13 year old, or even average much older person doesn't get to write articles for the BBC.
The problem with your comment (and I'm not picking on you, just stating a point) is that most people today who would burn a CD probably have another copy of the data at home. So, the tedious effort of repacking a tape just to play it again (I know I've had the pleasure of doing this....) is actually quite substantial when compared to smashing a CD-R of your favorite music and then spending all of 5 minutes burning a new copy.
I still have yet to convince my wife that she should not use pressed CDs in her car. First, they can be stolen. Second, as you state, a scratch will destroy them. One of these days she may learn her lesson on this - I typically don't care for the type of music she'd buy to listen to in her car, so I typically won't grab her CDs and put them out on our media server.... oh well.
Karnal
You know, not everyone from your generation did that. Just because this particular kid doesn't do that kind of stuff, it doesn't mean kids these days are not interested.