Last month, a self-proclaimed music snob – I’ll call him Ewan – mocked me when I offered to expand his musical horizons by making a mix tape for him. “What is this, 1991?” he chided.

Later, an acquaintance ridiculed the mix tape in my car. Apparently, when real music fans were in grade school, they never lunged for the record button on their radios during nightly countdowns. Real music fans have always had CD burners at their disposal.

With Ewan, I was able to regain some credibility when I told him about my parents’ record collection. Records are cool. They’re vintage. So why are cassettes scorned when they are just as functional and evoke as much nostalgia as records?

Sure, there’s the whole sound quality issue, but the sound on a carefully made mix tape is almost as good as the source from which the music was recorded.

Plus, what tapes lack in sound quality, they make up for in durability. You can’t safely toss a naked CD or record across a room to your friend. The slightest mishap with either form of disc could cause permanent damage to your favorite song.

The structure of tapes is more fun and convenient than that of CDs. When I gave Ewan his new tape, he put it in his pocket – not so easy to do with a CD.

I bet MacGuyver could get out of countless predicaments with tapes. He could use them to wedge doors open. He could take one apart and use the ribbon as a rope or whip. All he could do with a CD is use it to slice off his enemy’s limb, or maybe pick a lock.

It’s been done.

A tape’s shape is also perfect for exercising. Serious runners look down their noses at Walkman joggers, but for those of us who sometimes run merely for an excuse to get outside and listen to music, Walkmans and perfect mix tapes are necessities. With them, the music doesn’t skip with every bounce, and they are much easier to carry than those tire-sized sports CD players.

Then there are the mechanics of creating a mix. Not everyone can make a CD. First, you need a computer with a CD burner. This sounds expensive and destructive. Next, you need to have a plan for getting the music onto the computer, either by copying another CD or by downloading. I used to download songs almost every day. Then sparks started flying out of my hard drive and the people at tech support said it would explode if I didn’t get rid of my music.

Even when the odds are beaten and a CD is successfully created, there’s usually something wrong with it. Often, it won’t play on certain sound systems.

Car stereos and CD players more than a few years old have a tendency to hurl burned CDs back at their owners. I’ve never come across a tape player that refuses to play homemade compilations.

Buying CDs is completely different. Obviously, when buying an album, CDs are much better for numerous reasons, not the least of which is the big picture.

But when a well-intentioned music fan of the future offers to put together some kind of MP3 compilation, and a music snob asks, “What is this, 2004? Couldn’t you make an MP330?” I want to be the cool old lady down the street who not only inherited all those records from the mid-twentieth century, but who has the most incredible collection of vintage tapes in town.

Rachel Merton is senior in English. She can be reached for comment at [email protected].