What's wrong with Mp3? All cyber machines fail eventually, most of them fail in lots of small ways before they go. While I haven't tried pricey MP3, I have put 200 into cheap low cost Mp3s that failed one by one in just weeks.
Like a Steam Car of the 20s. with a room that's an elevator that could go at 100 mph outrunning the usual automobile in the 20's, it seems that "the final days of an old technology are always better than the first days of a new".
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For saving more money, or me, good old cheap audio works best. You may see these 1g chips they advertise to have 40 hours of sound. But a usual hour of CD sound has about 500 Mg so the total is just 4 hours, so the cost per hour with SD is much higher. You can buy 10 times the memory on cassettes, and even listen to blank cassettes in silence if you'd like peace and quiet with your solid gold ears! I never tried this with Mp3!
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Certainly cassette portable audio has no little AAA's you have to charge in 15 or 20 minutes of listening, AA's in Walkmans last weeks and don't lose all my memory if I drop the machine, now I remember! The AAA's in all my Mp3s I bought were so bad I had to leave the battery compartment open and often the off on didn't work so the only way to boot down was to disconnect the battery from the outside..
And what about flipping through the songs, this is no easier with Mp3... All I bought had just numbers of each track and you had to flip through all the tracks between to reach your song, start to finish. This is not good if you have 100s of tracks, and the only features that were definitely improved were random order of the songs and that you could find out faster what was on by skipping through the tracks with the sound bite. These aren't really that much of an advantage, a song is a song, whatever the order, and earplugs and a bit of patience solve the bad parts of the tape like grandma turning off her hearing aid if the preacher was bad sometimes! Actually this may be better because research has proven that rest between when you learn like in college improves memory. If the memo is too easy to acess it may not be as well learned.
This may like when they remove stop lights and build a traffic circle and the number of accidents goes down, they think this is caused by people making more effort to be cautious when they have to make some labor to achieve a task. And in Sweden when they went from driving on the left to the right, it's believed accidents were reduced too because of more labor. So during the time when the memo is on already heard, if the listener plugs in ear plugs worn around the shoulders with a strong twine all the time instead of hearing the other memo they can instead be memorising the higher quality memo with both rest and power learning.
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This about continous access to ear stops is good for sleep and a good bark stopper too, I wear smooth earstops most of the time so if the volume goes up by accident for a second while I listen it won't damage ears for the rest of my life. Black shoelaces make good cord you never lose them so you can have solid gold anytime day or night, it's easy to wear them if you never lose them. Mine were a bit tough to tie, I tied them and then would sew the frazzles. They say the damage caused by constant loud music may show up years later without evidence before and if you listen to a song without all the sharp notes it sounds pretty good. The EU is considering sound limits on Mp3's.
Actually you get two or more songs from the same song if you listen at more than one volume and with the earstops in and out, more tunes when you save the absolute most!
If you like the sharp sound because you like music a lot it may be of value to alternate between listening with the plugs in and out to give your ears more of a rest at any rate. Continuous listening is not recommended by experts.
Thus cassettes for now in 2008 are as good as Mp3's ...
What if you have a great collection of old cassettes you don't want to let go of?
The main problem for long term use of cassettes is being able to find all your songs, particulary recent songs or memos, often the most valuable.
There is a way I've devised to find out what's on all my cassettes, this makes them much more of worth. My method is to take the cassettes of a given type, say music from a given year, radio shows of a given type (comedy, drama, language, wit college, music, current conversations/improvs and more) and tie them together in batches with a strong narrow twine like nylon upi can get at the discount store. The twine is across the top (opposite the audio tape) and then taped to the cassette with good more silent tape (light tape general area, heavier tape so stronger to seal the ends) and added in a line the same way to another cassette beside it you'd like in the batch, and then the one line and cassette repeating so you have a batch of say 5. The only drawback is it's a bit more labor to insert and remove the cassette or to flip it around from side to side (auto reverse reccommended). The main problem I had with cassettes that made me stop listening to shows like radio shows or good sounds I missed a lot was I had so many cassettes, when I would record one, I'd put it with others in storage and they would be absorbed in the giant pool of the cassettes. The only way to find the one I was looking for was to either sort the whole batch (a real labor once a month) or do without the info or songs I'd like to find. When you have this you have the main problem of cassettes solved for large numbers of audio memos and with this overall you have a better value than Mp3 remember the money and better sound is in this picture..
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This batch method makes it easy to find your current memos by numbering each batch with numbers and then naming each cassette of each batch say with date or A Z. Once you write down all that's of worth elsewhere like in an A Z in a book you can always find where any song or verbal document on any cassette is by the general to exact cassette number to letter, and you can also then be more precise by making a line where the the wheel of the rolled tape is on the outside like with ink and a small number or name on the cassette beside this line to find the song or words if it's important to know and you haven't written the words out in your booklet that goes with that batch of cassettes. They're both grouped by batches and types of document, it's more than 5 times as fast to find your memo even if Elvis was the author.. And you can code them with stickers like stars, gold and silver stars always solid gold and silver music, silver stars, language.. use color coded tape on the tip and top of each batch of five twined cassettes. Naming them has good worth too, when I was recording FM music I'd number each tape with year and month and hour if the same AM FM with numbers like no other, and if you do this you can put them in order from old to new. Another old method I used before I used the nylon twine was to put labels on the side of a high shelf above my TV and these were A to Z so I hoped to sort them well. While this was better than just putting the audios in a box, eventually the memos were random even if not as often so this still took sorting and it was tough to stack the cassettes without them falling. The cassettes are 5 times as easy to sort with rubber bands and more stackable using the A2Z index on the shelf and this in combination is another good way to find the twined cassettes especially if they are recent memos. The rubber band is most useful if you often listen to just one of the tapes at a time in the batch like I do to learn math intensively, audio is much faster and deeper to learn words if used in question and answer form. Without the twine and color code to them fast just like with the Mp3 discs it would be much tougher to find them so they would be not worth nearly so much for this.
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Why not use your computer to store your audio? My Windows XP is slowed down a lot and storing on broadband audio sites costs a lot, and the main problem is about pressing the wrong button and all the memos go zonk to cyber space. I have at least two non computerized document types (books like My Comedy Machine and the audio cassettes) so if my computer goes down I won't cry for hours all month. Warren Buffet (el richo) says moving to more types of business doesn't make much sense, with this at any rate you should be as wealthy as the neighbors in Malibu who listen to cyber sounds!
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To improve this about the batches of cheap cheap memory you can make booklets (modular clip on is good) and tape them to each batch say at the starting line of the batch of your cassettes where you can always start to go through the whole song batch by 80's song, or 90's. I write memos in the booklets about what's on the tapes except the start of the first words for each joke so I can have a fast summary of the best of the cassette without taking an hour to listen to it if it's of worth once it's in memory. To make an easy memory marathon in the memo for the audios like to remember comedy to memorize, comma the letters in batches of say five and read them like forward and rewind or repeating each letter more than 1x and the moving ahead slowly but more surely to exercise my brain with easy memory exercises. If the radio show doen't have a lot of comedy mostly, I listen to the radio with the recorder at hand, when I hear a good joke (a good way to know is if it's memorable and makes a good impression on you) I record on the cassette without wasting my time on the whole show, it's condensed, most radio shows are with few jokes per minute, why waste my comedy being serious?
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This is cheap (my wokman costs about 5 a year not counting rechargables and cassettes). And it's more reliable than MP3. I've had just two tape failures even with cheap tapes in 15 years, and the cassette wokmans are droproof. The lowest price tapes would tear up, but above 37 cents per tape the tapes are good. With cassettes "being now on the way out" you can get high quality cassettes at sites like closeout or other old audio sites at the cost of cheap ones 10 years ago.
One problem with portable audio is often the jack for the plugs which wear out and lose the wire connection before anything else tears up so no sound and the machine is not playable, just because of the darn connection. To save the wokman of any type from the plug failure a good method is to buy earplugs they sell with a wire in the bundle you plug between the wokman and the audiophone, this second wire can be plugged into the walkman wire and cinched to it and then to an amp like a bigger sterio (I got one at no cost at a yard sale with and amplifier and big speakers.) or to audiophones. To make it so the plug won't wear out my wire is plugged and unplugged between the amp wire and the wire to the wokman instead of in the machine each time you may want to jog or walk, or when you flip the cassette over to the other side, this makes the number of times the machine is plugged and unplugged much reduced saving it for many more moons of music in the roomwah. If you leave the Walkman on a shelf plugged up to the sound booster and don't move the plug much you have lots of good music and will save you 100,000's of rich..
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To flip to the other side I used enough line between the cassettes to make it so I could simply flip it once in one direction to cross the line, and then untwining the same loop in the opposite direction to listen to the other side using no more than one loop so it won't tangle. More than 5 cassettes will tangle. To batch them during use I use large clips and modular clips are of value, for example when you are recording from one cassette that's not as much of value as another which has a higher level of information, like e.g. condensing a talk show in your own words when you sing!
A problem at first was about the line I was using, it's broad enough when I clamp the door of the cassette machine to throw the tape heads off, and this jams up the tape so I lost a few cassettes at first. The solution is to move the lines further down to nearer the hinge of the door of the cassette machine when you load or unload the cassette, this allows the heads to stay aligned. These are the only cautions about this method.
To store the clipped and lined cassettes while listening so they are not too loose to handle I tried Zip Locs, these were too small and clutzy, like Santa Klutz, the advanced method is a foam bag I got with my Sony Audioearz, it's 8 by 7 and it holds about 5 cassettes well, this black bag unifies by beauty and makes it much easier to walk around while holding on to memories, just wrap around your hand with the machine and memory inside. No doubt this only is good for one batch of cassettes, but I often listen to just one type of music at a time, and buying a number of these for the most uses of worth (one for music, one for learning, one for comedy) you may stay busy with just these for so long the small amount of labor needed to change them more infrequently is no problem. And this use of bags and nylon line is a lot cheaper than buying the clip in cassette holders that you see in some libraries that seem to have the volume up too high cost with the marms shushing rather loud.
This cheap cassette twine method to find your audio memos is portable, even so your wokman will wear out sooner in jog mode because of the plug losing the connection when you're walking around or changing the tune so you won't be a gold prospector and cheap both, most audio will wear out sooner if you walk around, ther's not as much portable HD Wide Zoom Dish Stations as high resolution FM!
If you see those books you buy where you snap your cassettes in and out for storage, the batch of 5 method is much cheaper, the books would cost 500 for the cassettes I have, and thousands for more, and your cassettes may not stay nonrandom without more sorting. So in truth, like the A2 Z shelf memo method I tried on my way to this method, it would still be incomplete even at this price. E.g. I thought of buying zip locks and taping them in looseleaf binders to organize my cassettes, but they eventually were more random as I used them, and I wouldn't always know where the binder is even if it has 30 cassettes.
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While these are some of the 8 ways I tried in my evolution to this method of using twine to sort the cassettes, some of these early methods are of worth to use with the batch method, e.g. the program memos, rubber bands to keep them neat, color coding at the tip and top with tape, and an A2 Z index on a high shelf to find the most important audios (especially the ones of this month or hour), and the rest in boxes by type and so on.
All cheap audiophones are not the same, I tried cheap 2 to 5 dollar audiophones for years before I realized that Sony around the ear headphones for 20 are better because they last indefinitely instead, my current Sonys are 2 years, for the same cost the cheap ones would cost just be for 12 months, because they would always tear up in about a month, so about 1/3 of the time I would have no phones unless I lived "live" at the BBB reunion concert! The only problem the Sony phones have even if they are much more durable is that I stepped on them by accident when the first two pairs smunched, this can be solved by always putting on a high shelf or loop out of the way when not in use instead of leaving them around the room. Even if you don't crunch cheap phones they use cheap wire so they tear up and the best value are the Sony's because you don't have to go to the store to buy a new set half the time, so I'll have sound in both ears.
Cassettes to record radio music and shows can be made just as good as Mp3 and much cheaper than listening to a big cassette recorder by using a larger recorder to record off both AM and FM for good sound quality (audio science proves cassettes have better sound quality than Mp3 If the recording is high quality, walkmans to listen with are well known to be as high quality as a medium priced machine, Consumer Reports says they have "suprisingly good sound", mine sound much better than mp3's.). The big recorder may cost perhaps 70 dollars and I use mine for recording music. The heads of all cassette machines wear out and become oxidized at the same rate, I needed a good recorder for sound quality and the cost for the recorder is "one time" (mine's in good shape after 15 years). Once you buy the recorder you always have good quality sounds and a good copy machine for just the cost of the cassettes and you only have to buy a big recorder for higher sound quality once in 20 years not once in 2 if you do most of your listening on the smaller machines. ..
You may remember how good a preprogrammed recording sounded on your cassette Walkman while your own recordings like with a cheap machine sounded not as good. The reason is while the music recorder has to be a bit higher priced, the walkmans can be cheap to play the sound, they last as long as the big machine for playback of all audio documents but like me with the 200$ in Mp3s you save a fortune and with high sound quality than if you played all your songs to listen on the big machine which has the same lifetime as the walkman, if that same lifetime is used for recording only or mostly and the player more often for listening only, since the players are much cheaper, you save a lot more.
To optimize better yet, for voice recording either of radio or my own creative words, I bought a cheaper, though still good for voice recording cassette recorder so the big recorder is used just for music and some dubbing, conserving it just for higher quality audio like music. The players are all for listening, the bigger recorder is for music, and the cheaper recorder is for speech recording so the big one is saved for music alone. If you're a musician you can also buy a second hand high quality digital recorder, I got a Minidisc Recorder with the highest sound quality for my own sounds of music and then make cheap copies for listening to my own songs. I don't listen to the minidisc for the songs themselves to save the MD because it cost 200 new. Now a good used on goes for 40 no doubt.
Thus the worth of over Mp3 of using cassettes in batches is, it's cheap, it's drop proof (safer too no high voltage inside like MD), the machines are much more reliable than Mp3's I've tried, the sound quality is better for cassettes than Mp3, the batteries last much longer with each charge, sooner or later all computers fail, smaller Mp3's are easier to drop, and so on, and also compatibility, the memory is cheaper, and the audio documents are easier to find. I think while it may be more worthwhile in 20 years Mp3 is way overrated as they are here in 2008.
Why not use CD's? Even with random play and how you can skip through the tracks, they're more expensive, and you can't tape them in a line like cassettes, so to find your data on CD's you would have to flip through the entire heap or continually sort them (if CD's were in a box like floppies they could be found in batches like this, I actually got his idea for cassettes from floppies in cohesion with the cosmos to find the best ones with a tab, the inventor says this would be a useful improvent for DVD's or CD's.). And CD and DVD recordable has the problem of "volatility", there's risk of losing your 10 years of data at one time or misplacing the DVD itself, and all cassette machines read cassettes at low cost. You may have noticed there is much more problem with the security of your digital documents. My mother lost half of a book she was writing because she forgot her password, maybe she's just overqualified, she knows a lot more words than math! Almost any digital document can be lost at any time in cyber space or the bit bucket. You learn from machines like chess computers, if there's any risk of a great loss by one move like this or audio at any time while you're recording, the machine or us would make the most sure and take the most time and energy to try to solve and stop the move. DVDs that can be easily recorded it seems may be easily erased like by the accident of the TV's magnetic field, so cassettes are more of worth about volatility.
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