I, too, am digitising my collection, although I’m using ATRAC 256, the betamax of digital recording. The sound quality is amazing on a first generation Sony MP3 - a player which did not even play MP3s and which is, in my opnion, the best music player ever made. Why? Here are a few reasons:

- The Sony NW-HD1 connects to the hifi by a dedicated line-out setting (not the earphone setting) and quality is much improved, and sounds much louder.
- I have hooked it up in the car to an old Sony head unit bought for £5 off eBay and I can select all albums and tracks direct from the head unit. No silly FM transmitters required. Sound quality is perfect. It will also display track and album info.
- The unit it is made out of solid magnesium, never again seen on a player as it is too costly to manufacture. Sony subsequently made their players out of cheaper materails such as aluminium.
- Over 20 hours battery life. Battery is easy enough to replace, but after 5 years usage the original is still going strong.
- 20gb hard drive, ATRAC compression using lower memory it is the equivalent of 40gb using MP3.
- Came with its own docking station.
- It has a full readout remote control but you don’t need it as all the controls are in the right place so you can operate through your trousers when in your pocket, and all with one hand.
- It is smaller than a credit card and the lightest unit of this size.
- Has a good graphic equaliser for removing hiss from the transferred cassettes, if needed.
- It just focuses on playing music, with no distracing applications. “Apps”, in my opinion, are like putting cushions on the recaro seats of your BMW - unnecessary.

So good the Sony is, that I have bought 12 of these units, mostly for £30 or less, off eBay! These suit me, as I have no interest in downloading music but for those who do, the unit’s firmware was upgraded to allow MP3s to be played.

But even these do not allow me the flexibility to record a show in the kitchen and then play it in the bedroom, quite as the cassette did. I’m slowly transferring all my cassettes onto the Sony units, but I suspect people these days just don’t record off the radio any more, even though in theory it should be a doddle. Or perhaps (Solar Radio and Jazz FM aside) there is just little worth recording these days?

Having said that, it is not all that different from the tape recordings talked about. Its a simple case of reproducing music free of charge and passing this around. The key difference is converting what is essentially ‘viral marketing’ into sales or some form of revenue for artists. I think the argument (correct me if I am wrong!) is that the ease with which MP3s can be reproduced has devalued music and the listening experience (Digitising music has certainly taken out a lot of the aesthetic side of music which is a shame in itself).

However, speaking from personal experience I would say that file sharing has opened up my ears to a huge variety of music which I would no doubt have taken a punt on otherwise and has definitely led to this ‘conversion’ into sales for artists. In particular, as a student I was not prepared to purchase albums (I simply didn’t have the funds to justify it!) but the ability to download, share, talk and think about an enormous range of music that would otherwise have passed me by has allowed me to develop far wider interests and purchase albums from those I would never have contemplated before. On a number of occasions, I have gone full circle and bought music I originally downloaded! (this is particularly true with albums which are ‘growers’). A try before you buy, if you will.

Perhaps I’m being idealistic? Nevertheless, I do not think the iPod generation should be written off too quickly. And if like me, people are developing a wider taste in music at the same time then all the better.

The days of the Nakamichi sets and the early portable stereo units were fantastic. I had a couple of Aiwa portables, first one in 1982 when I was 12, and the sound was brilliant. Not as flexibile or perhaps as clean a sound as today’s MP3 players, but arguably much, much more exciting back then. The availability of fewer releases, ability to make your own mix tapes, and fantastically engineered products really made this era of technology unique. Visiting a hifi shop or record shop back then was so much more satisfying than trawling through iTunes or going off to Curry’s to buy an MP3 player and plastic dock. In my opinion, that is, or perhaps I am just getting old…