I remember how as a kid I used to be a very intent and serious listener to music. If I ever put on a cassette, the only thing I would do for as long as the music flowed was just carefully listen to it- no room for anything else.
Extraneous noise distracted and irritated me immensely and that’s why I would shut the window, not wanting outside sound gaining entry. Also, the fan was switched off since it was a major source of annoyance for me. All this was okay during winter, but sweltering summers made me pay the price dearly! I would sweat; something that didn’t bother me much-though it was a matter of great concern to my folks.
The other thing that bothered me was the inherent ‘hissing’ property of all audiocassettes. No matter how great the recording, turn up the volume and you’ll surely be introduced to that supremely omnipresent hissing. I so wished we could have recordings that could completely do away with this anomaly. Dolby-B Noise Reduction was a vestigial solution to the malady. Cassettes so proudly flaunted being DBNR enabled!
CD’s answers my prayers, though I had to wait for many years. The audio quality now is so much superior to what cassettes could afford. Ironically, though, I’ve now begun to sometimes miss all that background hissing. So when the I buy CD’s that bear recordings originally made in the pre-80’s era (AAD or ADD format), I do manage to catch a hint of all that hissing I’ve inadvertently grown fond of.
Hissing is nostalgic. Sort of brings authenticity to vintage audio.
Extraneous noise distracted and irritated me immensely and that’s why I would shut the window, not wanting outside sound gaining entry. Also, the fan was switched off since it was a major source of annoyance for me. All this was okay during winter, but sweltering summers made me pay the price dearly! I would sweat; something that didn’t bother me much-though it was a matter of great concern to my folks.
The other thing that bothered me was the inherent ‘hissing’ property of all audiocassettes. No matter how great the recording, turn up the volume and you’ll surely be introduced to that supremely omnipresent hissing. I so wished we could have recordings that could completely do away with this anomaly. Dolby-B Noise Reduction was a vestigial solution to the malady. Cassettes so proudly flaunted being DBNR enabled!
CD’s answers my prayers, though I had to wait for many years. The audio quality now is so much superior to what cassettes could afford. Ironically, though, I’ve now begun to sometimes miss all that background hissing. So when the I buy CD’s that bear recordings originally made in the pre-80’s era (AAD or ADD format), I do manage to catch a hint of all that hissing I’ve inadvertently grown fond of.
Hissing is nostalgic. Sort of brings authenticity to vintage audio.
Comments
We always here everything along with some background sounds.Hissing is a good thing and pops and clicks of an Electrophone are incomparable to the flat soundstage of a compact disc.