VOA标准英语2008年-Adieu, Audio Cassette Tapes
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Recently, the New York Times ran an obituary1, but not about a person. The paper said good-bye to an old friend: the audio cassette tape. |
| The audio cassette's problematic and delicate tape easily tangles2. And its analog3 format4 makes it less crisp and clear than its digital successors |
If you're into music, cassettes were dead and gone years ago. Compact discs, which are sturdier, have higher fidelity5, are stackable, and slip easily into CD players, took their place. New automobiles6 don't even have a slot in which to play cassettes any more.
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| Most new cars' dashboards don't even have a slot for cassettes any longer |
The Times delayed notice of the death of audio cassettes, it said, because they retained some favor as a medium for audio books, and for quick and easy family recordings8.
But new and tiny handheld audio devices that can hold hours of music and several books at a time have become the coup9 de grace for cassettes.
That's no surprise to those who have kept up with audio technology. But this line in the New York Times story jumped off the page: None of Billboard10 [magazine's] Top 10 [music] albums last week were issued on cassette, though half were released on vinyl, which has been resurging.
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| Who would have predicted that vinyl phonograph records would come back into fashion? Some people love their sound, even over pure digital recordings |
Cassettes are dying, but flat, cumbersome11, vinyl phonograph records are surging back to popularity? How is that possible? The fact is that more than 1 million vinyl albums were sold in the United States last year because people have re-discovered the tactile12 pleasure of handling old-fashioned discs. Others swear the sound is richer than a CD, and many recording7 artists are releasing new vinyl albums.
But there's no great pleasure in shoving a cheap plastic cassette into a machine or untangling its flimsy tape when it gets wound around a spindle. The sound is hissy, not rich. No one that we know of is putting out new music albums on cassette. And with all those digital audio players showing up in readers' hands, it seems the idea of releasing audio books on cassette can now rest in peace as well.
