Before the arrival of recordable CDs, dubbing music compilations onto cassettes was a slow, laborious process. Especially for audiophiles. I spent much time sourcing for good tape decks, aligning the head azimuth, tweaking the recording bias/sensitivity, lusting after the high-end Nakamichi machines, and buying the most exotic formulations of Chrome and Metal tapes from TDK, That's and Sony. It took so much to get so little out of those flimsy acetate strips (Dolby HX, Dolby-C), careful setting of recording levels, adjustment of record and playback azimuth, calibration of the deck's electronics to the tape's sensitivity and frequency response characteristics to avoid Dolby mistracking or other sonic anomalies. The music sure sounded good, but searching and cueing through songs was a boring process. Mold and fungus seemed to accompany the hobby, and even my most expensive tapes were affected if I didn't dig them out for a round of playback every few months. Granted, the intense and continuous study and exploration of cassette tape-recording technology was kinda fun and rewarding at times, but I was glad to see it all become moot.

Never, never, never! I still have every LP I ever purchased. The record companies love suckers who re-purchase their catalogs again and again and again.

Sometimes there's just an emotional a link between a person and the medium, just as there is with the content. I have CDs that I may not listen to often, but I can pull out, and remember if they were a gift from a friend, or if I bought them at a concert, and I might lose those memories if I digitized my collection.

My CDs are staying put! Why go back to vinyl?

I have about 300 vinyl LPs, dating from the '60s, '70s, and '80s. I play them on a vintage Thorens/SME setup. I just love listening to my collection, and I’m glad I never gave it up.

I do not think I have any cassettes now. That was an awful format! I am also giving away remastered CDs where I can find the original issue CD or a good vinyl copy. Some of these remasters are just terrible and were never meant for hi-fi systems! I would be pleased to see original, unadulterated digital files become widely available for download.

Yes - only some old tapes, but I do wish I had access to them on occasion. Still, with downloading, it is pretty easy to re-compile what I discard.

Give up CDs? To be replaced by what? Apart from the occasional SACD release, what else is there, of sufficient quality to replace them? I'll happily rip my CDs and place the rips on a music server, or use with something like a Squeezebox, but there's no way I'm throwing away the original CDs!

Well, it was tapes, but my ratio of "other" to records has never been very large. When I dunped tapes, it was as much the content (Junior high fare like Journey, Foreigner and Joan Jett) as much as the format's limitations. Then, as an early adopter of CDs, it only took me about 2 years to see the light and I dumped whatever I had bought up until then and replaced each one with vinyl.

I still have all my old vinyl, CDs and cassette tapes. I have several now very valuable vinyl recordings but I almost never play the vinyl however but still regularly play the tapes and CDs. The CDs are the best medium of the three. The vinyl requires maintenance I don’t give it and the tapes keep breaking.

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