The Vinyl Revival : A Game of Luddites?

[cronus]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34667380

Why is hi-tech Japan using cassette tapes and faxes?

Japan has a reputation for being fascinated by robots and hi-tech gadgets - a nation at the forefront of manufacturing innovation.
But the technological reality in many offices is strikingly different.

This is a country that uses people to do the work of traffic lights and where big-name companies running 10-year-old software is the norm.

There are even tape cassettes for sale in the ubiquitous convenience stores for office use, along with fax machines - remember them? Even tech visionaries like Sony still use a fax.
"Japanese companies generally lag foreign companies by roughly five-to-10 years in adoption of modern IT practices, particularly those specific to the software industry," says Patrick McKenzie, boss of Starfighter, a software company with operations in Tokyo and Chicago.

"The pace of development is glacial."

(continued)

[Brian Peacock]

They're just lettting the rest of the world do their beta testing for them.

[surreptitious57]

There are even tape cassettes for sale in the ubiquitous convenience stores

I use cassettes for I grew up in the era before digital and so therefore I find them very practical indeed
So old technology should not automatically be discarded simply because it has been replaced with new
I read paper books and use an analogue phone and do not drive a car and I am absolutely fine with this
For me technology must only be acquired for functional purposes and not as a must have status symbol

[Hermit]

I use cassettes for I grew up in the era before digital and so therefore I find them very practical indeed So old technology should not automatically be discarded simply because it has been replaced with new I read paper books and use an analogue phone and do not drive a car and I am absolutely fine with this For me technology must only be acquired for functional purposes and not as a must have status symbol

I grew up with reel to reel tapes. For functional reasons I finished up with digital recording media. Now I'm looking at setting up a NAS based jukebox for both audio and video discs, also for functional reasons. It'll free up a lot of shelf space and make selecting music and film more convenient.

[cronus]

I'm waiting for the wax-cylinder clique to come out of the closet now with all these revelations.

[Rum]

I think it is daft. Old vinyl LPs are nice as objects in themselves of course and their covers became almost an art medium in their own right (CD covers never did it). But to pretend that the sound is better is silly. Even if vinyl was capable technically of reproducing sound more accurately, the inevitable scratches and warping soon resulted in a deterioration.

I have an old pile of LPs in the attic. I suspect some of them are worth a bit now too, but I bet they are warped to hell.

[Svartalf]

the sound is different, if not better, plus CD sound can be worse if the sampling is too narrow.