For Herbert von Karajan, Digital Tape was “a medium after his own heart.” I can’t reference that, and nor does it matter for the reader who that person is. The point is, we were supposed to “get” digital tape as an evolution over standard tape — the tape that the ones among us born before 1980 listened to. We never did. “A digital recording ... represents the latest development in the field of sound recording and will make possible an exceptional brilliance and transparency of sound.”

But even if you've never seen a tape cassette, you must ask: Is the CD an improvement over tape?

You’d probably say Yes. After all, it’s an evolution, right?

There we go. When the CD first came out, I was all excited — and disappointed when I listened to my first CD at a friend’s place. The setup cost a couple of lakh in today’s money. I was bold enough to ask my friend, “So what’s so special about the CD?” He was embarrassed; he’d spent lots of good money on this thing.

“Well... you can forward within a few seconds… you can select tracks...”

And that’s it. About 247 people in the world realize that the tape-to-CD transition was all about convenience. The rest of the billions still believe CD is better because it’s an evolutionary step.

I checked it out. I got a CD and a tape version of the same composition. The tape is much better — I might even say 10 times better. The CD removes most of the treble(!) and reduces the impact of the bass.

But the entire world transitioned from tape to CD! Why?

Because CD drives were inbuilt in Wintel machines?
Perhaps.

Because they wanted to sell us CD players and Discmans?
Perhaps.

And then, digital tape, which never took off. Digital tape digitized beautiful sounds on tape; CD just digitized everything, and destroyed the sound.
If you were born around 1990, none of this will make sense to you. No problem. Just slip your iPod earphones on and go on imagining you’re listening to good sound!

Tags : Digital tape, Digital recording, CD players, CD drives