Timeline for Why can so little digital information be stored on a cassette tape?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
20 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 14, 2022 at 12:00 | comment | added | user2284570 | @JoelFan I was speaking about the signal in terms of distorsion of course… | |
| Jun 13, 2022 at 19:09 | comment | added | JoelFan | @user2284570, not sure how to compare them. Tape has inches and modems do not. | |
| Jun 11, 2022 at 14:38 | comment | added | user2284570 | @JoelFan do you mean more distorsion than on a phone line (56K faxmodem)? | |
| Dec 4, 2020 at 11:02 | comment | added | Laurent Duval | I have updated my former way-too-short answer with references on the most recent records in size and density (non commercial yet), to the latest (August 2020) Fujifilm announcement at 400TB and 224Gbit/in² density | |
| Dec 4, 2020 at 0:54 | answer | added | Matt | timeline score: 0 | |
| Oct 14, 2020 at 1:46 | comment | added | JoelFan | @Fat32, We are saying the same thing. The only reason you can write a "1" or "0" to a cassette tape and read it back reliably is because you are taking up a relatively large amount of tape (when compared to analog audio recording) to record a tiny amount of digital data (1 bit). You are trading tape space for fidelity. 75 inches of cassette tape can either record 10 seconds of acceptable-fidelity audio or 375 characters (about the size of the OP's question) of acceptable-fidelity digital data. The difference in data density is staggering. | |
| Oct 8, 2020 at 14:31 | comment | added | Jason Goemaat |
4- If tape is so bad then how do they store Terabaytes on it? It's like comparing writing a novel on a roll of toilet paper or in a large notebook... The medium and sizes are different. Toilet paper isn't optimized for writing, likewise audio cassettes are optimized for analog recording, not digital.
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| Oct 7, 2020 at 5:52 | answer | added | Olli Niemitalo | timeline score: 8 | |
| Oct 6, 2020 at 15:29 | comment | added | Fat32 | @JoelFan Yes a single bit error may crash the digitial computer but a predictable distortion is quite acceptable than an unpredictable noise or parameter variations. Digital transmission and storage has the main advantage of being noise and distortion tolerant. So everytime you write a logic "1" or "0" into the medium, you write something different, but at the end, you can recover it perfectly (unless there 's Huuge noise or distortion, in which case you can still use error-detection and correction). That's the fundamental reason why analog systems are replaced by the digital ones. | |
| Oct 6, 2020 at 7:17 | comment | added | Martin Rosenau | The 300 to 2400 Bauds were used for systems using "normal" audio equipment (such as an audio cassette recorder). Such equipment is optimized for music and contains filters (I suspect band-pass filters) to improve the sound. These filters do not allow high baud rates. Not using cassette recorders optimized for music, much higher baud rates are possible: About 7 kBauds using 1980s home computers. And Wikipedia mentions (more) modern devices able to store 60 MB on a cassette - which should be more than 100 kBauds. | |
| Oct 6, 2020 at 5:04 | comment | added | JoelFan | All the answers can be summed up simply as: you are neglecting the factor of "distortion". Audio has a somewhat high tolerance for distortion, limited by what the average casual listener will tolerate. Digital has zero tolerance for distortion. So you're comparing apples and oranges. If you digitally encoded audio from a cassette, using a jack into an encoding device, you'd have practically no chance of getting an identical digital file from 2 different playbacks. But that's what you're assuming in your question. | |
| Oct 6, 2020 at 0:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackSignals/status/1313267789575135232 | ||
| Oct 5, 2020 at 18:25 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Oct 5, 2020 at 18:15 | answer | added | Laurent Duval | timeline score: 1 | |
| Oct 5, 2020 at 17:04 | answer | added | Fat32 | timeline score: 5 | |
| Oct 5, 2020 at 15:15 | answer | added | hotpaw2 | timeline score: 4 | |
| Oct 5, 2020 at 12:51 | vote | accept | Pouria P | ||
| Oct 5, 2020 at 10:45 | answer | added | Marcus Müller | timeline score: 47 | |
| Oct 5, 2020 at 10:27 | review | First posts | |||
| Oct 5, 2020 at 11:20 | |||||
| Oct 5, 2020 at 10:21 | history | asked | Pouria P | CC BY-SA 4.0 |