Battle of the Formats
One night, as I dug through an 8-track player's insides, trying to blast its potentiometer with some contact cleaner, I stopped and asked myself: Why do I own this garbage? What is the point of spending my time and money collecting these dead formats when any song I could ever want to listen to is available for free digitally? I had to satisfy my curiosity and justify my collections, so I sat down with an album and listened to it across all five formats it was released on: vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD, and digital.
The album in use during this experiment was Kansas’ Point of Know Return—a staple of any prog-rock fan’s collection and the only album I already owned across all the mediums in question. So, after listening to this album five times in a row, how did the different formats stack up?
I took on vinyl first, trying my best to approach it objectively. Vinyl has always held a special place in the music community, but in recent years, this has spread to the casual listener. What was once a preference has become an accepted fact: records can’t be beat. Vinyl offers a warm, full sound complemented by an undertone of fuzz. The crackle of the needle weaving through the grooves patches the gaps between tracks, pulling the album together into a single piece of art instead of a collection of songs. There are some minor inconveniences with the format: old needles will grind up your discs, you’ll have to get up and flip the album over halfway through, and the records themselves are delicate, liable to warp or scratch if you’re not careful with them. When considering the ease of access and sound quality, though, you can look past these flaws and see why vinyl remains a favorite.
Next, I tried out the 8-track, my favorite of the five formats. 8-tracks have a muddy sound, like the blown-out speaker of an amplifier that’s seen the inside of a few too many dives from behind a chain-link shield. Metal sounds incredible on 8-track, and I imagine grunge would as well; the growly tones of these genres are bolstered by the groan of an 8-track tape. Unfortunately, prog-rock doesn’t sound quite right this way. It takes most of the bite out of the music, leaving it guttural and bassy. The organ loses its huff so much that you could confuse a B3 with a Casio—a tragic fate when the Hammond is carrying the track. If you’re a vinyl person, you’d probably dig 8-track as well, though the format only works for certain genres.
I went for the cassette next, but I didn’t even make it through the entire tape. Cassettes are a special format in that they are widely loved—even I own at least fifty of them—despite being absolute trash. I have never picked up a vintage deck that didn’t need some kind of maintenance before it could be used. The tapes themselves come unspooled, get dirty, or otherwise just wear out. I used my best player for this project—one that’s only a few years old and in immaculate shape—to ensure that I didn’t have any quality loss. Even with the best deck available, the album sounded like it was being played through a Pringles tube. The violin in “Point of Know Return” sounded like it was being played in reverse, and the guitars were tinny and dull, like they were 100-dollar smashers with decade-old strings. Every single cassette I own was a waste of money, but I’m going to keep buying them anyway.
Next, I listened to the album on CD. It’s important to note that the CD version of Point of Know Return is a remastered edition, not the original, so the tracks don’t sound exactly the same as the previous three formats. The CD isn’t as warm as the others; it’s shallow but crisp. The 8-track sounds like someone recorded the audio live in the room with the band, but the CD sounds like the music was made on a computer without the use of any real instruments. It’s a format best for parties—the loud, precise tone is perfect to dance along to. I wouldn’t recommend it, however, to the home listener looking for the ideal music experience. It’s a solid format, but if you want the best, CD is beat out by vinyl and 8-track hands down.
Finally, I listened to the digital cut, which was also the remastered 2002 version of the album. CD and digital are the same in almost every facet, but one difference I noticed is that digital sounds like the instruments are fighting each other. It wasn’t something I had ever noticed until listening to all of these formats one after another, but now that I’ve heard it, I can’t ignore it. Since there is so little fuzz in digital releases, you can pick out each instrument from the track clear as day. This makes it sound as though the musicians are playing against each other, each trying to be the lead on the track. This would be fantastic for audio engineers or music students who want to study the way a song works, but when you’re trying to enjoy the tunes, it kills the mood. Maybe I’m just an old head ragging on what’s new, but digital is the fast food of the formats: quick and convenient at the cost of quality. It still beats cassette, though.
This project has given me a new appreciation for what drove vinyl back into the mainstream—and it also ruined digital music for me. I’ve become more fond of my 8-tracks, now listening to them so often that I’ve worn out two copies of Machine Head in the last week. I already knew cassettes were a waste of plastic, as any self-respecting collector does. I also found an excuse to dig out my CDs, which fell out of fashion sometime when I was in high school.
If you asked me now which format to get yourself, I’d have to say vinyl. Records can be bought in most stores nowadays, they require some maintenance, but they sound great no matter what you’re listening to on them. I’ll always choose an 8-track first, but I can’t say it’s the best—the tapes are prone to being eaten by their players, and they only sound good playing certain kinds of music. Maybe in the near future, we’ll see an 8-track resurgence like we did with records, and they’ll work all the kinks out. Until then, however, I recommend you keep spinning your vinyl; it will never go out of style.