[madmonkey]

What bite rate would be equal for same sound quality ?

 

[gimmeheadroom]

Depends on the tape and the deck. High end setups can sound remarkably good with metal tape and a dbx box. Low end setups can be like 64 kbps... too many variables to say.

 

[madmonkey]

Reminds me of my teens buying tdk metal tapes

 

[gimmeheadroom]

There you go

 

[madmonkey]

Good times back then most my tape decks came from the dumpster lol had many niche e decks most only needed a new belt.

 

[mnp75]

FWIW, have been listening recently both cassettes from early 90s and MP3s from early 00s – and can tell you that the cassettes sounded way better than I had thought would be possible, meanwhile the MP3s sounded mostly absolutely hideous.

Guess the cassette technology was pretty much “ready” in early 90s even to the extent that regular consumer gear produced decent sounding recordings. Most of the stuff I listened recently I had recorded with my home equipment as a teenager, so for sure nothing too fancy. Listening was done on a vintage mid-70s Technics, which in turn is pretty damn good.

Whereas the early noughties compression algos were not really yet quite there and bitrates were low due to the crappy bandwiths everyone had back then. Really clearly audible digital artifacts a-plenty in those files.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

I agree with that, seems to me some of the codecs for MP3 back in the day were not very good.