IS there a vinyl wanker in your office? Leaves at lunchtime and comes back with a square bag and a smug expression? Extol these musical formats over his:
Brown wax cylinder
You simply haven’t heard Meet The Beatles until you’ve heard it in mono on brown wax cylinder. The soft wax means it deteriorates after a dozen listens which focuses the listener on absorbing fleeting moments of artistic connection. It’s the antithesis of that most heinous of crimes: putting music on in the background.
Cassette
Cassettes have a higher range of frequency response which means their replication of beautiful tinny sounds is unmatched by other formats. The hissing noise is because life was so much more hissy in the 80s. Winding mangled tape back in with a pencil is a tactile experience that lets us almost taste the blood, sweat and tears of the studio.
Compact disc
Vinyl wanker still not getting it? Shut him down with two little words: dynamic range. CDs have the best sound quality, you don’t have to keep switching disc and they are going for a quid a dozen in charity shops right now. Especially if you like Snow Patrol.
MiniDisc
With ATRAC digital compression, read-write functionality, durability and mystique, MiniDiscs are the sexy format. Try handing his office crush a mix-disc in front of him, filled with her favourite songs in pristine digital clarity, and you will see a man schooled.
A ancient hard drive filled with three million illegally downloaded mp3s
Lossless file formats are shit. Mp3s use adjustable bit rates to dispense with nonessential elements of the recording can be dispensed with, saving your hearing for important things like television. And an old hard drive with a sweep of indiscriminately downloaded shite will provide all the pre-2014 music you could ever wish to hear.
Your phone
You can listen to whatever album you like on the bus. F**king beat that.
