u/Rombonius

Recently got into the hobby and was just wondering how to navigate what's worth buying for actual listening vs. what to avoid.

For example, some early 80s stuff I bought sounded like trash, while some XDR copies sounded great; and for modern releases all the stuff from Shadow Kingdom has sounded pretty bad, but is this the case for all current labels making cassettes?

- do any current labels produce good sound quality or are they all mid? Anyone bought from HRR?

- for 80s tapes, are there any rules to avoid or seek out? Are Cobalt or Chromium tapes always a lock to be better?

Didn't see this posted about by anyone but a few days ago Mike Wead revived his old band Hexenhaus (last album was in 1997) with a facebook update

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02LimvWfKp55MCazb3VbCzYAPfZ7TUtneX2Tx9bNYFQvL8BsrFfKntg31nAu1tCtsGl&id=100066667384137

He was planning a new album in 2016 but in late 2018 abruptly cancelled work on it. Seems, like Lex Legion, King's guitarists need other outlets

Right now it's just a vague image of a new logo with 2026 below it, but last year they put out reissues of the original albums so things have been kicking around

https://preview.redd.it/frr6wk599o6h1.jpg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d9daa6e8bebe3ea5cb9b2d007cd2c256c43d30b8

Obivously this could be done by sticking the album cover on the shelf above my record player. But what's the fun in that when you can build a Rube Goldberg machine to do it automatically for you. Now, instead of just going in to my Sonos, my turntable forks the audio out to a Raspberry Pi. When I start playing a record, a few seconds later it shows the track, the album art, and the tracklist for that side.

https://preview.redd.it/f7kha9qi6t3h1.jpg?width=5712&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5a2823044acd2c0f5e5c810e2de19b6b5c656939

The turntable signal gets split so it goes to both the Sonos and a USB audio interface plugged into a Raspberry Pi. The Pi Shazams the audio every 12 seconds, gets the result and populates the kiosk. If Shazam misses, I can identify the track manually. Once I do that, it fingerprints the audio to a database so the next time it uses that instead of requiring me to manually add it.

It also follows the Sonos, so if I AirPlay or stream from the Sonos it'll show that too.

Required components:

• Raspberry Pi and a screen
• USB audio interface (I used a Behringer UFO202)
• RCA splitter
• Sonos with line-in

Discogs is optional but makes the art and tracklists match your actual pressings and helps with specific album identification. Otherwise it pulls from MusicBrainz.

I thought this was going to be a pretty straightforward build when I started and every time I put a new record on, I found a new issue. J Dilla - Donuts was picking up samples, American Football albums are all eponymous, my two YPAA albums have different tracks per side, Drive My Car is on three different albums I have... it felt like every record I played was a new edge case. But that's the fun.

The full write up and code: https://github.com/schuettc/now-playing

came out on Friday, pretty faithful cover