As a gen Xer, I never went for MP3s. I'm an audiophile and an archivist, so I only use high-quality lossless formats. FLAC has been my go-to since it came out.
Wasn't a fan of cassettes or VHS tapes because they deteriorated with use, so I had to make and play copies of my 'masters' instead of the originals.
CDs were great, but I wasn't too keen on the mp2 quality of DVDs. Laserdiscs, on the other hand, were fantastic and they didn't deteriorate with regular play (aside from potential oxidation issues).
Love the warmth of vinyl, the large art and liner notes, but it is a flawed medium that also deteriorates with time and use.
Collecting and playing vintage media is fun, but for my library, it's archival mediums FTW.
I used to have a massive archive of live Pearl Jam flacs I got over WinMX 😆
i wonder what happened to them.
Hard drive crash or bitrot I assume 🫂💜
ridiculous thing to store in flac tbh
Laserdiscs were awesome - real 2 real tapes had the quality for me
💯 Unfortunately, tape stretches and deteriorates rather quickly. My first demo was on reel-to-reel. When properly cared for, not played on the regular, but treated as a master and only played to make copies for regular use, and stored in the proper conditions, they have amazing warmth and quality.
I will never forget my original copy of Lynyrd Skynyrd on 8-track where the song stopped abruptly as the sides flipped in the middle of the peak of the solo on Free Bird. Lol...so bad.
I always found MP3s didn’t sound great, even at the higher bitrates. I would always buy a CD over downloading a MP3. I still have a lot of CDs but have them all converted to FLAC now.
Cassettes can sound great with a good tape and good deck to play them. I’ve recently inherited a Nakamichi 480 that was my uncle’s and have given it a good clean and replaced the belts etc. Even though it’s not one of the top model Nakamichi’s it still sounds surprisingly good.
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