also, CD players are usually modular and can be easily replaced by cassete players or more modern equipment, whereas antique vehicles from the 70s and 80s had the cassette players integrated on the dashboard.
@@bigchungus7050 The 80s was well into the life of the audio cassette and by then they were about as good as they were gonna get. A direct line of audio is much better than transmitting over FM, especially if you don't own a 500 dollar(or more) broadcaster.
"While this is completely and totally useless, it is at least mildly interesting." This sentence describes upwards of 50% of the things I spend my time thinking about or doing.
I made one of these as a kid. I saw one in the store, and could see through the package that it was just a read/write head. So I took a read/write head out of a broken tape recorder, and wired it to the chord from a pair of broken headphones. Took the ribbon out of a cassette, crammed the head into it, and ran the wire through it. Worked perfectly.
@@mechanomics2649 Not only did it happen, it was so simple, anyone with a basic understanding of wiring could do it with just basic instructions. The hardest part these days would be finding the parts.
I very vividly remember the dark period of cars between ~2006 and ~2010 where they’d mostly gotten rid of their tape decks but hadn’t yet added aux jacks. Stuck with CDs for the life of the car.
I added an aux jack to my 2006 Nissan Altima head unit by splicing into the connection from the CD player assembly to the main board. I used a switched jack so the CD player still worked when the aux cable was unplugged, but I was thrilled to be able to use a tiny MP3 player instead of rotating through burned CDs.
Even my dad's like 2013 car doesn't have an aux jack, it has blue tooth, and a usb and freaking composite inputs for the tiny little screen. I mean the bluetooth works fine but I rather just use an aux cord so I don't have to fumble with setting up or connecting to bluetooth. I wonder if cars will start ditching the aux jack now phones are getting rid of them, hopefully not haha.
One of my first 'hacks' was when I lost my own adapter as a child. I ripped the head out of an old walkman, did some surgery on a set of headphones, and glued it all into a real cassette. I never had any sort of feed spool mechanism or anything but it still worked perfectly! Totally forgot about my shenanigans until you reminded me today! Thank you!!
So. Many. Jokes at start! 😂 But, seriously, as a person who still uses one of these regularly because I'm the proud owner of a 20-year-old truck that I maintain and keep running... May I ask how many people have ever tried the Bluetooth versions of these? Perhaps a future video could solve the mystery as to why EVERY SINGLE BLUETOOTH CASSETTE ADAPTER THAT HAS EVER EXISTED IS HORRIBLE AND UTTERLY NON-FUNCTIONAL. 😠 I realize one appears in the video (before I started typing this comment) but I've now tried at least 5 of these and every one has sounded like an Emerson stereo playing inside of a college dorm bathroom. It's quite the boggle.
I have experience with only the one in this video which came from the exotic lands of Walmart and... it's been fine? Though I've not used it much at all, frankly (if you hadn't guessed I bought it for the Figaro) but when I have it sounds totally fine to me! (edit): I should add that the Figaro's right speaker is dead, so I haven't heard what the right channel sounds like yet! But the left seems totally fine!
@@DeviantOllam 7 years is quite a while for Bluetooth and mobile things. Especially in terms of getting it to work at all. Probably. Some stuff is still just as painful, but some is actually better than a while ago.
But add some real pedals (doesn't matter what effect) before it. Adds to the kvlt. @@AGTR98 (I like that we're brainstorming black metal toan on a 2 year old comment).
I hope I’m not the first person to notice the “international hand sign” for CD Walkman, deep-cut TechDiff reference. Makes me love this channel even MOAR.
hey! i was just explaining to someone how these work yesterday! people don't believe me when i tell them my favorite feature of my car is the tape deck, but with a small investment of $5, i can play just about any song i want through my car's stereo system. not bad for a car that's almost old enough to rent a car itself!
So back in the day when we were listening to our favorite music on cassette tape, no matter the genre we were always listening to metal lol. I'm so glad everyone likes my corny joke.
Fascinating, I always assumed it had a small loop of tape that was continuously re-recorded, but that would probably wear out quickly and needs twice as many components.
I just picked one up from an op shop for a dollar, hoping there was tape inside, hoping to rig up some sort of cheap and easy tape echo. My dreams are slashed, but not dashed yet.
That unit provided the best sound per dollar than any other device I ever purchased. From the 70s to today. Sweet analogue signal. Thanks for keeping it concise.
It’s so funny that there was even a Kickstarter for this. Most of us slightly older people were glad to be done with those things once and for all. I _was_ a cassette fan, back when I could obtain good (used) decks but couldn’t afford CD players, but I never saw a car cassette deck that was all that great and once I moved to CD changers in the car, I didn’t look back. Now I just stream from my phone in whatever format I want with my subscription account to listen to what I want. No desire to go back for nostalgic purposes. Not in my car, anyway. Though I never gave up tube radios and turntables at home. Not that I’m old enough for tube radios to have been “in” during my lifetime, they were just some of the first things I repaired as a kid (my grandparents’ old console tube radio) and I always thought they were neat. But never gave up vinyl as I already had a lot of it and some things I like were never released on anything but 8-track, cassette and/or vinyl and given the choice, I stuck with vinyl for those recordings. Many of which still have never been digitized by anyone except end users. Was always able to pick up neat tabletop tube radios cheaply that I kept around and used as they always sound great. I have a radio alarm clock one that still works fine. Had an early stereo FM tube radio from the 50’s that paid my rent one time when I was hard-up for money. Current projects are an eeeearly 1926 Bosch Cruiser tabletop tube radio (six massive tubes in a large wooden case that requires “A” and “B” batteries - “farm” batteries as many people didn’t have electricity yet; still need to build a custom power supply and speaker converter for it) and a 1947 New Zealand radio in a nice wooden tabletop case that doesn’t work at the moment. Both are shortwave / broadcast (AM) radios that I’m anxious to get working and utilize. Anxious to see the “magic eye” tuning indicator tube working on the 1947 radio. So maybe I am the same as the millennials that like playing with cassettes and things, just slightly older lol. But I do actually utilize these things for primary listening, those that work. Only modern thing I have is a Sonos Play:3 speaker and my iPhone. I work in IT and hate most modern tech, especially those creepy things that talk to you and spy on everything you say. Get them out of your home! lol And for goodness sake, disable Siri!
I remember when I was like 15 I built one of these from a set of old headphones, a cassette and a tape player just to prove to my brother it was that simple...
When I was about 14 I used an old cassette player head, a stick, some hot glue, and some magic to make an adapter to fit my 8-track player to play CDs from a Discman.
Second that ... he's one of the very few youtubers who manages to walk the extremely fine line between science and entertainment without one getting into the way of another.
How so? Most car CD players post 2000 have some form of aux input, through either the front or rear or in the case of factory radios, wired directly or patched into the cars loom somewhere. Not to mention that almost all CD players have better amps/output power etc.
@@JordyValentine I had a 2005 honda accord, it was even the higher end one and it did not have an aux cable, had to spend $100 for an adapter that plugs into the stereo and I also had to take apart the entire center console to add my own aux cable. so yeah I'd have to agree with Kova.
@@JordyValentine I want you to name me 5 cars in the early 2000s that came with an aux jack stock, obv cant be a parts bin head unit. Also most standard audio equipped vehicles have a factory amp capable of about 25w, it does not take much to drive 4 paper cones
Re: The MP3 cassette player thingy. It was called the romeMP3. I remembered it too and about a year ago went on a Google binge to look for it. It's a full regular MP3 player. But you can put it into a cassette player and it will actually play. Even rewind and FF will perform as expected.
Yep, I got one close to 20 years ago, and to this day I still think it's the coolest gadget I ever got, hence why I still have it. It amazed me how you could use the controls on your cassette player or car stereo to pause/RW/FF just like it was a normal cassette or just hit FF/RW for 1 second to switch tracks. At school I just plugged in ear phones to use it as a normal mp3 player and after school I had my favourite tunes playing on the car stereo with it. I can't describe how awesome that was at a time before portable music was commonplace. Here's the one I got at the top (and still have). I think it was around $200 at the time. Best money I ever spent. www.stereo2go.com/topic/index.php?content_oid=304301014311174157&board_oid=193392314111653483
I had one back in the day and it used a very particular kind of external media card.. still have the card, but i cant seem to find the player :( it was indeed awesome tho!
When he said: "the two heads get real personal with one another" I sort expected him to continue: "And this is how tape-recorder heads are made." I'll see myself out.
so long as the use masks and santize their **ahem** cootchie-coo'ing parts.. they CAN get personal. SARS-Cov-2 doesn't pass on in -seminal fluid- electromagnetic currents.
When I was 12 years old - I had a cassette stereo with a broken tape drive and a walkman with only tiny headphones. But I wanted to hear my music loud. When I learned electromagnets from the encyclopedia - I just placed one headset unit over the head in the stereo, hit "play" both on walkman and stereo - and (surprise!) made the stereo play the music from the walkman without any cable connection between devices (I just had no appropriate cable those times). Of course, it was mono. But I was happy about this trick in my twenty)
this just makes me want to try making an adapter with a small fast-switching LCD and another laser motor just to follow the laser around, you know. Just because. The dumbest adapter ever, where you have to leave the door open on the player for it to work.
I discovered a similar trick putting my phone speaker to the strings on my electric guitar. Back when phone speaker volumes were very low and most didn’t have earphone jacks
@@zsin128 pick ups are basically microphones, but normally they are passive, they need another electric field to disturbe them aka the strings, i was wiring my guitar and if strings doesnt have a conection to groudn the passive pick ups will not pick up the vibrations, so when you make the strings vibrate to the speakers, the strings transfer the vibratiosn to the pick ups.. but theres also active pickups wich are microphones and can pick up all noise
The first time I saw this thing in a mail order catalog in the early 90s, I was totally sure it was a scam. Because how the hell would this work, it’s ridiculous! To make things even more confusing, those catalogs had a contest where you had to find the one hidden fake made up product hidden in it. I was sure this cassette thing was it.
It feels like every time I start to think about how a random object I suddenly remembered works, either an old video or new video of his appears on my front page without me looking it up or talking about it like he knows I wanted to know how it worked
Upvote this so my dude will see it: "mixxtape" from "mixtapeboss" is the MP3 player-cassette tape. It's a modern version, but I had one that had a replaceable battery, 14 years ago.
@@BertGrink I actually had that one back in the day. Sadly my car stereo was too smart for the fake tape technology so i could only use it as an mp3 player. It was pretty neat, but be warned, it didn't work with SDHC cards and the battery was useless after a year of forgetting about it. I question whether they bothered to update the tech.
I remember when i was looking to buy my first car, I specifically chose a car with a tape deck over a cd player just so i could use one of these. The devices work surprisingly great as long as you played with the volumes on the device and the car.
"While this is completely and totally useless, it is at least mildly interesting." Hilarious, and kind of a great mission statement for the channel. I just discovered your channel, and I love it so much.
I could use that knowledge to digitize any cassette with only a cassette recorder and a smartphone. Not saying it's the best way, but now I can do it with the resources I already have.
My first car had a CD player with no Aux jack in the era of Ipods... I hated the thing because I had tons of music on my Ipod and could not use it. I always wished the car had the original tape deck so I could use one of these. The radio station things just suck in cities.
I once used one of these in an old, massive stereo with an 8mm microphone hooked up to a 8mm->3.5mm converter and a male to female converter. Jankiest setup of all time but it WORKED and it was legendary. Still remember the band and I hauling this massive stereo system from the late 80s into a 16 year old girl's birthday party in 2014. Absolutely comical.
I actually built one of these when I was in my early teens. Literally just wired a head from a broken walkman an glued it inside the tape. Worked perfectly
@starshipeleven as much as I love tech I can agree. There's a magic when you can visualize what's actually happening versus "this little blob does everything"
You know, that cassette bluetooth adaptor actually makes having a car with a cassette player more useful than a more recent car with a CD player. If your car has a CD player you have to buy one of those bluetooth FM transmitter things, which kinda work but are also a pain in the rear, especially when you drive to a new city and have to find a new blank frequency.
The worst for me are cars that have these CD players, think to include an *Actual AUX* port, but don't actually put that port on the front of the panel. Looking at YOU, Ford and your 07 Focus head unit....
@@DFX2KX lol, I had 2 ford freestyles. Both included an aux connection jn the back of the radio... but didn't use it for an aux port. One used it for the DVD player in the back, and the other just iddnt use it for anything at all.
Ah the good ol cassette aux adapter! Back in the late 90's I installed an MP3 player in my car for a cross country road trip (this was back before most people even knew what MP3's were). I literally put a desktop PC tower, CRT monitor, and keyboard in the back floorboards of my car and wired it to my car stereo with a DC to AC inverter lol. At the time, it was one of the largest collections of music to ever be access in a vehicle.
OF ALL THE PLACES TO FIND A CITATION NEEDED REFERENCE 😭 I mean, Tom's Hell Adventure does show that they're related so it's not _that_ surprising, but still.
That bluetooth adaptor is pretty damned cool. I wonder if its possible for the motor in the tape deck to turn a mini dynamo fitted in the casing, so you don't need to remove it to charge!
I remember wondering this as a child... I remember imagining a loop of tape, somehow getting a perpetually updating and erasing the recording on the loop of tape, lol.
6:03 reminds me of the time I plugged some headphones into a microphone jack, and spoke into the headphones. It actually worked as a (very crappy) microphone.
For me it was the opposite, I plugged a Mic into an earphone jack and I could faintly hear audio coming from it. It opened my eyes up to a whole new way I looked at tech.
Yeah, I did this back in the nineties when playing around with mod-files. It was glorious! I could sample myself saying silly stuff, and play around with it in a mod-editor. Microphone? Oh no no no, that wasn't readily available back then...
6:09 As any ZX Spectrum player will tell you, it's not useless. You can easily record your BASIC programs with such an adapter into an audio file on your phone.
@@maximecollet30 Magnetic tape is not _groovy_ because it doesn't have _grooves_ like a record; it's _particular_ because it has _particles_ of iron oxide. At least that's how I understood it! (In case you're not familiar with the words, "groovy" means great, exciting; "particular" means special, distinctive.)
@@maximecollet30 The pun is more easily caught by a boomer. Alex is quite young to use "groovy" instead of "noice" which makes it just a little bit funnier. I've seen enough of his videos to know that he's steeped in the culture grandfather's era - which is approximately my age.
@@StevieDrama I used to be a fan of them, not a juggalo but a fan since their wrestling days, but Shaggy said that scientis LIE... for me turned a song that was spiritual in to ignorant bs.
You're the kind of nerd i'd love to spend an afternoon talking about weird stuff that nobody else really pays much attention to. Love your content man, keep it coming!
In my high school in the early 2000's someone figured you can break open a headphone earpiece and put the magnetic speaker on the cassette head in the boombox and do the exact same thing, amazing
I was always so baffled about how these worked (but to be fair, I didnt know how casette tapes in general worked). I'm so surprised by how simple it is. Awesome video idea and great explanation.
When I was a kid, I had a second hand stereo with an 8-track player. But I had a portable CD player. So I had to use an 8-track tape adapter and then put the cassette adapter into that. It was like Sonic 3 plugged into Sonic & Knuckles plugged into a game genie plugged into a genesis.
Yo I heard you like adapters, so I put an adapter in your adapter, and adapted your adapter for your adapter with your adapter in it so you can adapt your adapter to your adapter with your adapter.
The audio quality with this is absolutely indistinguishable from any other medium. Maybe an audiophile could nitpick in some fashion but it’s extremely crisp, especially in the controlled acoustic environment of your vehicle. My Acura has a stereo that is notoriously difficult to replace, so I just use one of these.
Not really, because of the deemphasis EQ in the tape preamp and the heads are most likely never properly aligned. Good enough for a simple car stereo, though.
When I was a kid I made one of these myself simply wrapping a “replacement” head with a square tube of cardboard so the two heads just plug together (My player wasn’t fancy enough to care if the tape is moving or not). It worked great except for being a bit bass heavy. So yes same exact head type works - no special head needed.
I had one of these in a MK4 Golf GTi so I could keep the original radio and keep all the dash lighting the same red colour. Cost about £25 and worked way better than I expected. Hid the wires so everything looked neat and tidy.
@@ReiHinoSenshi I wonder if one of these could be designed to use the rotation of the spools as a means of recharging it's battery. I don't have any idea if that could supply enough power to actually recharge it but if it is possible someone should do it
Weirdly enough, if I'm not having a Mandela effect moment, there was a time in the 80s to 90s when cd players became a thing that aux jacks started appearing on cars, only to disappear when cd players were introduced. It kind of blew my mind, since I thought aux jacks started when mp3 players became a thing.
I've wondered if there would be an efficient enough circuit that the turning spools could power/charge the Bluetooth tapes so you don't ever need to charge it yourself? 🤔 More importantly, I wonder a lot about where you get those fantastic t-shirts!?
...that's actually a really good idea! If you have a relatively constant power input from a tiny brushed DC motor or whatever attached to the mechanism between the turning spools, you could probably ditch the battery altogether and go for something like a few capacitors and a power regulator instead, since you're doing more smoothing than storage of power. However, I don't know how much 'drag' tape decks are rated for -- if you get too stiff/powerful a generator, you might wear out the tape deck or trigger some kind of jam-detection feature for all I know.
Yes... I'm thinking about the same thing as you, maybe just add some gear so that the output of the spinning spolls is a little bit faster, probably we can also add some sensors to the tape's spools so that the adaptor knows when the cassette deck play/stop the casette, and sends back the Bluetooth signal to whatever device it is to stop/pause/play the playback, so whe don't need to turn off manually the casette adapter and our phone to stop/start playing the songs
I’m saying to myself, “well we would need one now with lightning or USB C” and immediately he says “we now have bluetooth versions of these” and I’m like... “oh...” lol
One thing he didn't mention was that the tape contains 4 separate audio channels. Two for left and right audio channels when the tape is on side A, and the other two for when you flip the tape around to side B. The head only aligns with two of the channels, allowing you to flip the tape around to hear different music.
I just last month finally got rid of my 2001 Merc Sable, and my only regret was forgetting to eject my faithful cassettepter from the deck before it was hauled away. That thing served me almost as long as the life of that car. From yes, an actual walkman, to a diamond rio pmp300, and through 4 iphones.
I had a friend in high school that had an 8 track player in his car, he was able to daisy chain an 8 track to cassette adapter, cassette to aux/cd player - it worked.
I remember when I was 11 in the late 2000s, my PC speakers broke down, I used this and my fathers boombox to game with sound again and thought it was absolute magic. thanks for the video
7:27 The Cassette MP3 player you mention was featured in the Techmoan video "Car Stereo Tape Adapters - 8-Track to Cassette to MP3", about halfway through. =)
Found a link to an original (2005) review: www.dansdata.com/dah220.htm it was the 'MobiBlu DAH 220'. It looks like someone has tried to sell a modern recreation, and a few people have made their own home made versions over the years too. EDIT I looked harder and found an even earlier one from 2000: the-gadgeteer.com/2000/03/28/romemp3_review/ the 'RomeMP3'. It had a whole 32MB (yes kids, thirty two megabytes), and must surely be the earliest. It uses a Parallel port, not even USB (which was an option at the time)! I think this is the one I remember (it's in the garish fake silver that apparently we thought was cool back then).
@@phuzz00 I found a newer one called Mixxtape from Mixxim that has an OLED display, touch controls, bluetooth, and up to 256GB of space. It doesn't have gears inside though, so it wouldn't work with decks that detect movement.
Databits did that adapter experiment before Techmoan did. Either it's a huge coincidence that Techmoan used the exact same adapters, or there's been some idea stealing going on!
I actually made one of these when I was a kid. As soon as I learned about how tape heads worked, I figured out that one could be put on the other and transmit sound. I've used tape heads as guitar pickups too.
well shit, I just thought about this today on a whim. here I was thinking I had seen every single Technology Connections video. Now after googling, I think I could totally just take a broken tape player and an aux cable and marry them together inside a disposable cassette tape. I think I am going to try this out. I have all the tools afterall.
I use one of these daily for my 15 year old car - never thought about a new one since I only drive a couple of thousand miles per year, so it only have about 40K right now (sidenote - it's fun taking it to the dealership for "scheduled" maintenance - they have to download the manuals to find out what they have to do on such an old car!). The car has an AUX input but regardless of the shielding of the cable, there is always a bad electrical HUMMMMM with whatever I plug in. So, picked up one of these beauties and it is flawless. The car has premium audio with FM/AM, Satellite, 6CD and cassette and all of my friends that have vehicles without cassette players are jealous of the quality of sound I can get utilizing the cassette adapter. Take my Pandora with me everywhere I go... :)
You need to get ahold of a Ground Loop Noise Isolator. For like $10 you'll be extremely happy not to hear it again! But the other comment was correct, if you charge your phone while playing it'll definitely have the hiss. www.amazon.com/dp/B019393MV2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_MFofFb8QA8XTE
Yeah I remember it was written in the box. Unlike CD walkman, its usually also play MP3 and VCD (its popular format in my country to play video rather than VHS or DVD)
Sony did change the designation to CD Walkman around the turn of the century/millennium. '99 Maybe? Don't know, I owned a 2000 model, but there's this D-E201 that looks slightly older. Well, of course you must know that, I'm writing this so some poor uninformed kiddies like those commenting this will hopefully read it...
Every sony product that played music was a walkman, remember the walkman phones? It's a sony protected name so other conpanies called their portable CD players Discman
I used one of those aux jack adapters for the longest time until I got a phone that no longer had a headphone jack. I wasn't aware they made Bluetooth versions, but I'm not surprised.
Ironically, these made cars with a tape deck more future ready than a car with a CD player.
Not ironically, cars from the CD era are quite less likely to be kept as antiques than cars from the cassete era...
also, CD players are usually modular and can be easily replaced by cassete players or more modern equipment, whereas antique vehicles from the 70s and 80s had the cassette players integrated on the dashboard.
@@caracaes Can I have the CD Player replaced with an Aux input or tape player for 5 dollars?
@@caracaes Cassette adapter is 1-5 dollars.
@@bigchungus7050 The 80s was well into the life of the audio cassette and by then they were about as good as they were gonna get. A direct line of audio is much better than transmitting over FM, especially if you don't own a 500 dollar(or more) broadcaster.
"It's not groovy, it's particular" .... you've outdone yourself, sir.
I had to rewatch a portion of the video after I stopped laughing at that one.
Write! the puns were top notch in this one 😆
Have to agree, that one was pure gold! Or maybe Chrome. Ferric Oxide? Cobalt? Well, either way, 10/10 on that one.
Of course only the type of people who subscribe to this channel would get that lol
Dad joke, pun lvl...over 9000!
"While this is completely and totally useless, it is at least mildly interesting."
This sentence describes upwards of 50% of the things I spend my time thinking about or doing.
For a nihilist, this sentence describes reality!
@@thewolfin Much like the concept of Nihilism itself
Spoken like a true nihilist.
it spoke to me too
I was about to make this same comment
I made one of these as a kid. I saw one in the store, and could see through the package that it was just a read/write head. So I took a read/write head out of a broken tape recorder, and wired it to the chord from a pair of broken headphones. Took the ribbon out of a cassette, crammed the head into it, and ran the wire through it. Worked perfectly.
Did same thing couple years ago
A rubber band directly between the winding wheels too and it's perfected
I'll take things that didn't happen for $500, Alex.
@@mechanomics2649 Not only did it happen, it was so simple, anyone with a basic understanding of wiring could do it with just basic instructions. The hardest part these days would be finding the parts.
The two coils coupled together function like a miniature transformer.
I very vividly remember the dark period of cars between ~2006 and ~2010 where they’d mostly gotten rid of their tape decks but hadn’t yet added aux jacks. Stuck with CDs for the life of the car.
I had a 2004 Explorer with lullaby renditions of Christian songs stuck in the CD deck when i bought it. Never got the CD out
I added an aux jack to my 2006 Nissan Altima head unit by splicing into the connection from the CD player assembly to the main board. I used a switched jack so the CD player still worked when the aux cable was unplugged, but I was thrilled to be able to use a tiny MP3 player instead of rotating through burned CDs.
My 1995 Ford was like that, AM/FM/CD. That's it.
Even my dad's like 2013 car doesn't have an aux jack, it has blue tooth, and a usb and freaking composite inputs for the tiny little screen. I mean the bluetooth works fine but I rather just use an aux cord so I don't have to fumble with setting up or connecting to bluetooth.
I wonder if cars will start ditching the aux jack now phones are getting rid of them, hopefully not haha.
Time made even darker by the fact that that's when they started using their own non-replaceable non-DIN conforming head units.
“Friggen tapes, how do they work? Magnets!”
Best line
It is. I can see him never missing a gathering of the Juggalos. I wanna hear a Woop Woop! 🤣
I was already thinking "And I don't wanna talk to a scientist!" based on the thumbnail, so I was so happy to see it paid off.
that was beautiful.
Magnets and Tapes = Miracles
I was almost tempted to reply "Nanomachines son!" at that question. I play too many video games 🤣
Bluetooth cassette adapters are the most Cyberpunk bits of tech I didn't know existed. Rad.
www.kickstarter.com/projects/mixxtape/mixxtape-the-cassette-reinvented
Here's the cherry on top
Maybe we didn't get all the neon lights, unnecessary Japanese signage or widespread use of makeshift prosthetics, but hey, cassette adapters.
If they added a small generator to power the thing from the rotation from the cassette deck, that would be rad.
I want it and i don't even have a cassette deck
Was there ever a full MP3 player in a cassette?
EDIT: Ah, he mentionned it 😅
One of my first 'hacks' was when I lost my own adapter as a child. I ripped the head out of an old walkman, did some surgery on a set of headphones, and glued it all into a real cassette. I never had any sort of feed spool mechanism or anything but it still worked perfectly! Totally forgot about my shenanigans until you reminded me today! Thank you!!
Real Walkmans are worth a mint now 😢 I was looking around to get an original one recently.
@@josephjimorris not even worth it, Walkmans are SUPER mid
So. Many. Jokes at start! 😂
But, seriously, as a person who still uses one of these regularly because I'm the proud owner of a 20-year-old truck that I maintain and keep running... May I ask how many people have ever tried the Bluetooth versions of these?
Perhaps a future video could solve the mystery as to why EVERY SINGLE BLUETOOTH CASSETTE ADAPTER THAT HAS EVER EXISTED IS HORRIBLE AND UTTERLY NON-FUNCTIONAL. 😠 I realize one appears in the video (before I started typing this comment) but I've now tried at least 5 of these and every one has sounded like an Emerson stereo playing inside of a college dorm bathroom.
It's quite the boggle.
I have experience with only the one in this video which came from the exotic lands of Walmart and... it's been fine? Though I've not used it much at all, frankly (if you hadn't guessed I bought it for the Figaro) but when I have it sounds totally fine to me!
(edit): I should add that the Figaro's right speaker is dead, so I haven't heard what the right channel sounds like yet! But the left seems totally fine!
@@TechnologyConnections maybe I'll have to give this another shot then. :-)
I tried all of mine maybe seven years ago I think.
Here's to old cars!
@@DeviantOllam 7 years is quite a while for Bluetooth and mobile things. Especially in terms of getting it to work at all. Probably. Some stuff is still just as painful, but some is actually better than a while ago.
@@TechnologyConnections I have one of these adapters in my 92 Corvette ZR1, but it only seems to play out of the left speaker. Is this adapter mono?
"Frickin' Tapes - how do they work? Magnets!"
I uhhh... I understood that reference!
With a 1/4 adapter you could play an electric guitar through your car stero with these. Pretty cool back in the day.
I’ve never thought of that! That’s awesome!
then record it with a nokia for 100% trve kvlt effect 🤘
Oh my gosh because it's analogue.. don't make em like they used to.. genius
Add a line 6 pocket pod and you are on
But add some real pedals (doesn't matter what effect) before it. Adds to the kvlt.
@@AGTR98
(I like that we're brainstorming black metal toan on a 2 year old comment).
4:26. That got personal real quick. I have a 96 Honda Accord. And yes the cassette player still works!!
JD's Variety Channel , I have a ‘96 Accord too. Great cars. Got 275k on mine, how about yours?
i use one in my 98 impreza. mainly for podcasts since i dont use my phone for normal music, i usually use casette tapes or just listen to the radio
I miss my Accord. That thing controlled so smoothly! I hope it's a standard transmission. Take good care of it.
2008 Renault Espace, has a working cassette player.
2001 Ford Ranger with am fm stereo cassette and cd player.
I hope I’m not the first person to notice the “international hand sign” for CD Walkman, deep-cut TechDiff reference. Makes me love this channel even MOAR.
Ah, I was looking for this comment! I see you're a person of culture as well. 😊
Wite Rabid it made my day.
6:03 "While this is completely and totally useless it is at least mildy interesting."
Well Sir you've unlocked the secret to my UA-cam recommendations
Nah fr ua-cam.com/video/Ft-iXoJQvP8/v-deo.html
To UA-cam itself, mostly.
hey! i was just explaining to someone how these work yesterday!
people don't believe me when i tell them my favorite feature of my car is the tape deck, but with a small investment of $5, i can play just about any song i want through my car's stereo system. not bad for a car that's almost old enough to rent a car itself!
So back in the day when we were listening to our favorite music on cassette tape, no matter the genre we were always listening to metal lol. I'm so glad everyone likes my corny joke.
😂
Heheheheh, nice.
Goddamit 😂
Omgahhhh dad level 3000. I’m borrowing this one.
Not gonna like this. Because 420.
Fascinating, I always assumed it had a small loop of tape that was continuously re-recorded, but that would probably wear out quickly and needs twice as many components.
yeah i assumed that too. glad it's so simple in reality
It is but electronically as in recorded on electron
The meachanism have gears ro keep both reels rolling to prevent trigerring auto stop or auto reverse.
I just picked one up from an op shop for a dollar, hoping there was tape inside, hoping to rig up some sort of cheap and easy tape echo. My dreams are slashed, but not dashed yet.
- What are device you using to handless calls? Earphones? Speakers?
- No, I'm using a *cassette player*
*_80s internally_*
I have done this ! Z.K.
Blending old school with new school technology!
This is way too funny
@@mrmaniac3 new retrowave. The 80's that never existed! 😂😂😂
"not groovy" and "particular". I see what you did there. I also LOLed.
Those are Professor Utonium level dad jokes.
I literally had to pause the video for a laugh break
I laughed pretty hard at hearing this.
Paused, came for this comment. Was not disappointed
This is why i watch this channel
"Freakin' tapes, how do they work?! ...Magnets!"
Well, that just raises further questions!
More correct to use the term 'induction', rather than 'magnets'!
Eh, the answer is always '42' anyway.
@@MrWombatty yes, but then the joke doesn't work
@@KaityKat117 Jokes, how do they work?
ICP reference?
That unit provided the best sound per dollar than any other device I ever purchased. From the 70s to today. Sweet analogue signal. Thanks for keeping it concise.
For those who want cassette MP3 player/adapter. Google: "cassette sd mmc".
Thank you for this, it was too interesting of a concept to not look into.
There is a fancy version called the Mixxtape that even has a little display inside the clear cassette shell.
@@KeithJewell I got my dad's original kickstarter model and it is really cool!
@@jakershaker13 Woah hold up, he support it?
It’s so funny that there was even a Kickstarter for this. Most of us slightly older people were glad to be done with those things once and for all. I _was_ a cassette fan, back when I could obtain good (used) decks but couldn’t afford CD players, but I never saw a car cassette deck that was all that great and once I moved to CD changers in the car, I didn’t look back. Now I just stream from my phone in whatever format I want with my subscription account to listen to what I want. No desire to go back for nostalgic purposes. Not in my car, anyway.
Though I never gave up tube radios and turntables at home. Not that I’m old enough for tube radios to have been “in” during my lifetime, they were just some of the first things I repaired as a kid (my grandparents’ old console tube radio) and I always thought they were neat. But never gave up vinyl as I already had a lot of it and some things I like were never released on anything but 8-track, cassette and/or vinyl and given the choice, I stuck with vinyl for those recordings. Many of which still have never been digitized by anyone except end users.
Was always able to pick up neat tabletop tube radios cheaply that I kept around and used as they always sound great. I have a radio alarm clock one that still works fine. Had an early stereo FM tube radio from the 50’s that paid my rent one time when I was hard-up for money.
Current projects are an eeeearly 1926 Bosch Cruiser tabletop tube radio (six massive tubes in a large wooden case that requires “A” and “B” batteries - “farm” batteries as many people didn’t have electricity yet; still need to build a custom power supply and speaker converter for it) and a 1947 New Zealand radio in a nice wooden tabletop case that doesn’t work at the moment. Both are shortwave / broadcast (AM) radios that I’m anxious to get working and utilize. Anxious to see the “magic eye” tuning indicator tube working on the 1947 radio.
So maybe I am the same as the millennials that like playing with cassettes and things, just slightly older lol. But I do actually utilize these things for primary listening, those that work. Only modern thing I have is a Sonos Play:3 speaker and my iPhone. I work in IT and hate most modern tech, especially those creepy things that talk to you and spy on everything you say. Get them out of your home! lol And for goodness sake, disable Siri!
technology connections: video is 9:31 mins long
tom scott: video is 1:19 hours long
yep thats 2020
I know and to tie it all together we have an obscure Tom Scott reference in here too
There's a Vsauce3 video that's 18 hours long
@@mychemicalbromance97 Ah yes, the International sing for the CD Walkman. I see you are a man of culture as well.
@@cpufreak101 I did feel Jake got a bit repetitive near the 14 hour mark though.
Hell world
I remember when I was like 15 I built one of these from a set of old headphones, a cassette and a tape player just to prove to my brother it was that simple...
My brother made one of these to prove to me that it was that simple!
@@felipesancho Plot twist: you are brothers!
I made one too but could never get it to sound clear enough for regular use.
When I was about 14 I used an old cassette player head, a stick, some hot glue, and some magic to make an adapter to fit my 8-track player to play CDs from a Discman.
I love how stopping the tape player from detecting it's reached the end of the tape is more challenging then actually feeding audio to the tape player
It's ironic that something like this actually makes having a cassette deck in your car more viable than a CD player.
Second that ... he's one of the very few youtubers who manages to walk the extremely fine line between science and entertainment without one getting into the way of another.
Added bonus: just like a stick-shift or manual transmission it can act as a millenial antitheft device.
How so? Most car CD players post 2000 have some form of aux input, through either the front or rear or in the case of factory radios, wired directly or patched into the cars loom somewhere. Not to mention that almost all CD players have better amps/output power etc.
@@JordyValentine I had a 2005 honda accord, it was even the higher end one and it did not have an aux cable, had to spend $100 for an adapter that plugs into the stereo and I also had to take apart the entire center console to add my own aux cable. so yeah I'd have to agree with Kova.
@@JordyValentine I want you to name me 5 cars in the early 2000s that came with an aux jack stock, obv cant be a parts bin head unit. Also most standard audio equipped vehicles have a factory amp capable of about 25w, it does not take much to drive 4 paper cones
Re: The MP3 cassette player thingy. It was called the romeMP3. I remembered it too and about a year ago went on a Google binge to look for it. It's a full regular MP3 player. But you can put it into a cassette player and it will actually play. Even rewind and FF will perform as expected.
i found the same but named "auvisio MP3-Player for cassette steros" in german ebay.
I backed one on Kickstarter named "Mixxtape".
Yep, I got one close to 20 years ago, and to this day I still think it's the coolest gadget I ever got, hence why I still have it. It amazed me how you could use the controls on your cassette player or car stereo to pause/RW/FF just like it was a normal cassette or just hit FF/RW for 1 second to switch tracks. At school I just plugged in ear phones to use it as a normal mp3 player and after school I had my favourite tunes playing on the car stereo with it. I can't describe how awesome that was at a time before portable music was commonplace. Here's the one I got at the top (and still have). I think it was around $200 at the time. Best money I ever spent. www.stereo2go.com/topic/index.php?content_oid=304301014311174157&board_oid=193392314111653483
Ages ago like 2002/2003 someone used cassette like that to connect a discman to a tape player.
I remerber starting at it like it was magic
I had one back in the day and it used a very particular kind of external media card.. still have the card, but i cant seem to find the player :( it was indeed awesome tho!
When he said: "the two heads get real personal with one another" I sort expected him to continue: "And this is how tape-recorder heads are made."
I'll see myself out.
Please do.
I don't think docking makes babies, just saying
so long as the use masks and santize their **ahem** cootchie-coo'ing parts.. they CAN get personal.
SARS-Cov-2 doesn't pass on in -seminal fluid- electromagnetic currents.
Electromagnetic frotting.
When 2 heads touch each other, urban dictionary calls that "docking"
When I was 12 years old - I had a cassette stereo with a broken tape drive and a walkman with only tiny headphones. But I wanted to hear my music loud.
When I learned electromagnets from the encyclopedia - I just placed one headset unit over the head in the stereo, hit "play" both on walkman and stereo - and (surprise!) made the stereo play the music from the walkman without any cable connection between devices (I just had no appropriate cable those times).
Of course, it was mono. But I was happy about this trick in my twenty)
this just makes me want to try making an adapter with a small fast-switching LCD and another laser motor just to follow the laser around, you know. Just because. The dumbest adapter ever, where you have to leave the door open on the player for it to work.
I discovered a similar trick putting my phone speaker to the strings on my electric guitar. Back when phone speaker volumes were very low and most didn’t have earphone jacks
@@stephanietanniss how did it work?
@@DFX2KX I love this
@@zsin128 pick ups are basically microphones, but normally they are passive, they need another electric field to disturbe them aka the strings, i was wiring my guitar and if strings doesnt have a conection to groudn the passive pick ups will not pick up the vibrations, so when you make the strings vibrate to the speakers, the strings transfer the vibratiosn to the pick ups..
but theres also active pickups wich are microphones and can pick up all noise
The first time I saw this thing in a mail order catalog in the early 90s, I was totally sure it was a scam. Because how the hell would this work, it’s ridiculous!
To make things even more confusing, those catalogs had a contest where you had to find the one hidden fake made up product hidden in it.
I was sure this cassette thing was it.
"they are not groovy, they are particular"
I unsubbed then resubbed again. To send a message.
I can't tell if it's a negative or positive message.
Neither can OP.
Welcome to the channel!
This message fits your pfp
I don't get it
It feels like every time I start to think about how a random object I suddenly remembered works, either an old video or new video of his appears on my front page without me looking it up or talking about it like he knows I wanted to know how it worked
Upvote this so my dude will see it: "mixxtape" from "mixtapeboss" is the MP3 player-cassette tape.
It's a modern version, but I had one that had a replaceable battery, 14 years ago.
Mixxtape looks pretty rad, tho sadly it falls victim to the tape movement sensor.
Fwm ua-cam.com/video/Ft-iXoJQvP8/v-deo.html
There's also this one usb.brando.com/usb-cassette-mp3-player_p01122c035d15.html
www.aliexpress.com/item/4000780210561.html
@@BertGrink I actually had that one back in the day. Sadly my car stereo was too smart for the fake tape technology so i could only use it as an mp3 player.
It was pretty neat, but be warned, it didn't work with SDHC cards and the battery was useless after a year of forgetting about it. I question whether they bothered to update the tech.
I'm going to wait until Part 3 so I can find out the really technical details, and the backstories of the engineers involved.
“Short video!”
The next day: “The CED part 6!” *37mins*
sounds like a solid video, everyone knows the CED is a bottomless pit full of content
I forgot about the CED series, did he finish it or is there more? I can't remember lol
It was finished in a Part Five.
This aged like milk
I remember when i was looking to buy my first car, I specifically chose a car with a tape deck over a cd player just so i could use one of these. The devices work surprisingly great as long as you played with the volumes on the device and the car.
"While this is completely and totally useless, it is at least mildly interesting." Hilarious, and kind of a great mission statement for the channel. I just discovered your channel, and I love it so much.
Sadly while the first part is a pertinent statement for my life the second part isn't.
That statement made me laugh
I could use that knowledge to digitize any cassette with only a cassette recorder and a smartphone. Not saying it's the best way, but now I can do it with the resources I already have.
My first car had a CD player with no Aux jack in the era of Ipods... I hated the thing because I had tons of music on my Ipod and could not use it.
I always wished the car had the original tape deck so I could use one of these.
The radio station things just suck in cities.
“While this completely and TOTALLY useless, it is at least MILDLY interesting!” 😂
I found it *very* interesting, personally.
Personally I’m not. A short look at this thing makes this video pointless
@@ingenfestbrems Lol you aren't very interesting?
@@ingenfestbrems I CaN tElL yOu ArE fUn At PaRtIeS
The motto of this channel.
I once used one of these in an old, massive stereo with an 8mm microphone hooked up to a 8mm->3.5mm converter and a male to female converter. Jankiest setup of all time but it WORKED and it was legendary. Still remember the band and I hauling this massive stereo system from the late 80s into a 16 year old girl's birthday party in 2014. Absolutely comical.
Finally! You are someone I can understand when teaching something with complex solutions.
I actually built one of these when I was in my early teens. Literally just wired a head from a broken walkman an glued it inside the tape. Worked perfectly
Well hey, when it's literally that simple you can do stuff like that
I did the same thing.... GMTA. :-)
@starshipeleven as much as I love tech I can agree. There's a magic when you can visualize what's actually happening versus "this little blob does everything"
You know, that cassette bluetooth adaptor actually makes having a car with a cassette player more useful than a more recent car with a CD player. If your car has a CD player you have to buy one of those bluetooth FM transmitter things, which kinda work but are also a pain in the rear, especially when you drive to a new city and have to find a new blank frequency.
The worst for me are cars that have these CD players, think to include an *Actual AUX* port, but don't actually put that port on the front of the panel.
Looking at YOU, Ford and your 07 Focus head unit....
@@DFX2KX lol, I had 2 ford freestyles. Both included an aux connection jn the back of the radio... but didn't use it for an aux port. One used it for the DVD player in the back, and the other just iddnt use it for anything at all.
DFX2KX 07 Mazda3s are the same.
Ah the good ol cassette aux adapter! Back in the late 90's I installed an MP3 player in my car for a cross country road trip (this was back before most people even knew what MP3's were). I literally put a desktop PC tower, CRT monitor, and keyboard in the back floorboards of my car and wired it to my car stereo with a DC to AC inverter lol. At the time, it was one of the largest collections of music to ever be access in a vehicle.
lol, my friend and I did the same thing in my '92 Caprice. We even made a little GUI in Visual Basic to make it more user friendly on the go.
Buddy this has been done since the 80s lol
@@RETIREDAMATUER considering mp3's were only conceptualized in 1987, and released to the general public in 1991. i call ballshit.
0:37 Ah yes, the international gesture for CD-Walkman, I'm familiar.
Fantastic reference.
OF ALL THE PLACES TO FIND A CITATION NEEDED REFERENCE 😭
I mean, Tom's Hell Adventure does show that they're related so it's not _that_ surprising, but still.
That bluetooth adaptor is pretty damned cool. I wonder if its possible for the motor in the tape deck to turn a mini dynamo fitted in the casing, so you don't need to remove it to charge!
Great idea!
Oh you smart cokiie
One way to find out!
if I stop being lazy and get around to finishing my projects lol
I don't think so. It usually moves too slowly to be useful, and the motor doesn't have much torque, unless you're fast-forwarding.
@@techno1561putting some gearing on it would be a place to start, but torque could still be a limiting factor depending on the speeds necessary.
I remember wondering this as a child... I remember imagining a loop of tape, somehow getting a perpetually updating and erasing the recording on the loop of tape, lol.
Me too! Who would have known it was _that_ simple, instead.
6:03 reminds me of the time I plugged some headphones into a microphone jack, and spoke into the headphones. It actually worked as a (very crappy) microphone.
I’ve done that before and I thought I discovered a secret in the universe
I have headphones and speakers hooked up to a splitter. When the speakers are on and I bump the headphones I hear it through the speaker.
Any idea what that talking in the background says?
For me it was the opposite, I plugged a Mic into an earphone jack and I could faintly hear audio coming from it. It opened my eyes up to a whole new way I looked at tech.
Yeah, I did this back in the nineties when playing around with mod-files. It was glorious! I could sample myself saying silly stuff, and play around with it in a mod-editor. Microphone? Oh no no no, that wasn't readily available back then...
6:09 As any ZX Spectrum player will tell you, it's not useless. You can easily record your BASIC programs with such an adapter into an audio file on your phone.
My first computer used cassette tapes.
1:05 the pun muscle is strong in _this one._ "Not groovy, but particular..."
Yurrr ua-cam.com/video/Ft-iXoJQvP8/v-deo.html
Can someone explain the pun to me ?
@@maximecollet30 Magnetic tape is not _groovy_ because it doesn't have _grooves_ like a record; it's _particular_ because it has _particles_ of iron oxide. At least that's how I understood it!
(In case you're not familiar with the words, "groovy" means great, exciting; "particular" means special, distinctive.)
Diego C. I knew about grooves but not about groovy. Didn’t make the **connections** with records and the particular either. Thanks !
@@maximecollet30 The pun is more easily caught by a boomer. Alex is quite young to use "groovy" instead of "noice" which makes it just a little bit funnier. I've seen enough of his videos to know that he's steeped in the culture grandfather's era - which is approximately my age.
“While this is completely and totally useless, it is at least mildly interesting.” Spoken like a true nihilist.
1:00 "Frickin' tapes. How do they work? Ma-"
Me: Magic.
"-gnets."
makes me wonder how may people missed the joke
"Magical Mysteries by Thrilla Killa Klownz" to be more accurate.
Eduardo Daniel Don’t disrespect the insane clowns like that
@@StevieDrama I used to be a fan of them, not a juggalo but a fan since their wrestling days, but Shaggy said that scientis LIE... for me turned a song that was spiritual in to ignorant bs.
@@HarunaNoJikan man I'm a juggalo and it always makes me smile hearing jokes in the wild :)
Under 10 minutes!? Wow. I can view this in the toilet without getting hemorrhoids
I love the Techmoan reference when you use the same type of player he used in one of his recent videos.
That model is going to inflate in price on eBay.
You're the kind of nerd i'd love to spend an afternoon talking about weird stuff that nobody else really pays much attention to. Love your content man, keep it coming!
In my high school in the early 2000's someone figured you can break open a headphone earpiece and put the magnetic speaker on the cassette head in the boombox and do the exact same thing, amazing
Nothing like a youngster investigating how things work. Nice!
I was always so baffled about how these worked (but to be fair, I didnt know how casette tapes in general worked). I'm so surprised by how simple it is. Awesome video idea and great explanation.
First video I've watched since the tumor in brain was just removed this past Friday. Thanks for brightening my day
I'm sorry to hear you went through that. I hope you are OK overall and wish you the best.
Keep your head up and get well soon! Stay strong and have a wonderful day
When I was a kid, I had a second hand stereo with an 8-track player. But I had a portable CD player. So I had to use an 8-track tape adapter and then put the cassette adapter into that. It was like Sonic 3 plugged into Sonic & Knuckles plugged into a game genie plugged into a genesis.
Plugged into a 32x on top of a Sega Cd
EnGiNeER
Yo I heard you like adapters, so I put an adapter in your adapter, and adapted your adapter for your adapter with your adapter in it so you can adapt your adapter to your adapter with your adapter.
"Frikkin tapes! How do they work?" -Insane Technology Connections Posse
Magnets.
"magnets!"
I lost my shit to that one.
The audio quality with this is absolutely indistinguishable from any other medium. Maybe an audiophile could nitpick in some fashion but it’s extremely crisp, especially in the controlled acoustic environment of your vehicle. My Acura has a stereo that is notoriously difficult to replace, so I just use one of these.
Not really, because of the deemphasis EQ in the tape preamp and the heads are most likely never properly aligned. Good enough for a simple car stereo, though.
Lol that "Magnets" ICP reference was so well placed I almost missed it 😂
1:00 - "Tapes, how do they work?" "Mag--" I thought he was about to say "magic", lol
I think it was actually an Insane Clown Posse reference. Ingenious.
"F×××in magnets, how do those work?"
"Frickin tapes, how do those work? Magnets!"
That's the reference lol
"F×××in magnets, how do those work?"
"Frickin tapes, how do those work? Magnets!"
That's the reference lol
Me too.
When I was a kid I made one of these myself simply wrapping a “replacement” head with a square tube of cardboard so the two heads just plug together (My player wasn’t fancy enough to care if the tape is moving or not). It worked great except for being a bit bass heavy. So yes same exact head type works - no special head needed.
I had one of these in a MK4 Golf GTi so I could keep the original radio and keep all the dash lighting the same red colour. Cost about £25 and worked way better than I expected. Hid the wires so everything looked neat and tidy.
I love how you changed your shirt everytime you did a "side character" lmao this was hilarious.
Holy crap. Nice catch.
I had to go back en check cx
Didn't even notice until this comment. The transitions between shots are so smooth!
'The cassette adapter doesn't have tape'
'Wait, do they?'
10/10 preparation for this video.😂😂😂😂
The cassette adapter doesn't have tape'
'Or do they?"
*Rise 1 eyebrow while cue music by Jake Chudnow starts playing*
I will gamble he wrote that joke
I was obviously part of the script you idiot.
@@vertyisprobablydead it*
"This is completely useless, but midly interesting!" should be the slogan for consumer electronics in general
Hahahaha dude love it
It is quite useful, if you have a vintage car with the original cassette radio player. It doesn't mess with my dashboard :)
me: "Huh, these would be cool with bluetooth."
TC: "We now have bluetooth versions of these!"
"Ground up rust smeared all over it"
I chuckled for a solid minute at that line.
i dont get the joke thats just what it is
I remember a secret life of the machines episode, in which the presenter actually made some working audiotape using Sellotape and ground up rust.
More like talcum powder fine particles on the backside of the tape... and technically, its Iron Oxide, or rust.
@@r0bhumm that English bloke is pretty cool. Watch him all the time. Check the one on the secret life of switches.
Iron is one of those elements that forms a range of different oxides. The one that predominantly makes up rust isn’t magnetic.
Me: Wonder if they make Bluetooth version...
Tech Con: They now make Bluetooth versions!
Me: OH SHI... FRICK!
Yes but they are badly designed all of them you can’t play and charge at the same time leading 2 a chicken and the egg problem
@@ReiHinoSenshi And Bluetooth sound quality is somewhere south of FM radio. Cable is far better option.
@@ReiHinoSenshi I wonder if one of these could be designed to use the rotation of the spools as a means of recharging it's battery. I don't have any idea if that could supply enough power to actually recharge it but if it is possible someone should do it
@@ImDelphox Definitely possible, add a mid-sized gear to a small gear through a micro-motor and to a regulator connected to the battery.
@@AxMi-24 Bluetooth sound quality is almost entirely dependent on the speakers or headphones you're using. Cheap Bluetooth cheap sound.
I used these to load/save or stream data off/to the Commodore Datasette. I love the mechanical-analog-digital essence of this data transfer method :-)
I love that you're wearing a different shirt in each of the cut away's.
AND an interrobang in the subs...
About time I learned of the dark magic behind these cheap $7 adapters for my truck.
0:04 - Me fail English? That's unpossible.
unheard + impossible ?
@@frecio231 Ralph Wiggum, Simpsons
Yeah I also thought of Ralph right away.
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/unpossible
Himmelganger I have the Ralph Wiggum association with the term unpossible regardless of whether it actually exists in the dictionary.
Weirdly enough, if I'm not having a Mandela effect moment, there was a time in the 80s to 90s when cd players became a thing that aux jacks started appearing on cars, only to disappear when cd players were introduced. It kind of blew my mind, since I thought aux jacks started when mp3 players became a thing.
I've wondered if there would be an efficient enough circuit that the turning spools could power/charge the Bluetooth tapes so you don't ever need to charge it yourself? 🤔 More importantly, I wonder a lot about where you get those fantastic t-shirts!?
...that's actually a really good idea! If you have a relatively constant power input from a tiny brushed DC motor or whatever attached to the mechanism between the turning spools, you could probably ditch the battery altogether and go for something like a few capacitors and a power regulator instead, since you're doing more smoothing than storage of power. However, I don't know how much 'drag' tape decks are rated for -- if you get too stiff/powerful a generator, you might wear out the tape deck or trigger some kind of jam-detection feature for all I know.
...you are a genius
I don think it would fit. although there is PCB motor project so idk. Clever mind could do it probably.
Instead of an micor usb port they should just run out a cable that plugs into the cigarette lighter of your car. Problem solved :)
Yes... I'm thinking about the same thing as you, maybe just add some gear so that the output of the spinning spolls is a little bit faster, probably we can also add some sensors to the tape's spools so that the adaptor knows when the cassette deck play/stop the casette, and sends back the Bluetooth signal to whatever device it is to stop/pause/play the playback, so whe don't need to turn off manually the casette adapter and our phone to stop/start playing the songs
There's something wrong with this video. It keeps stopping at the 9:31 mark and I can't get it to go further.
It's probably jammed. You'll have to pull the tape out and find the twist. You night have to cut and splice the tape as well. It happens. LOL. ;)
@@Kae6502 Can I use a pencil to wind the tape?
You have to turn the tape to side B.
You need to activate Dolby noise reduction to get the full 9:32 video.
I’m saying to myself, “well we would need one now with lightning or USB C” and immediately he says “we now have bluetooth versions of these” and I’m like... “oh...” lol
You wouldn't need to charge it if it was USB-C... Buuuut... I can't imagine it needs all that much power over all.
Wow, removing the headphone jack was such a GOOD IDEA.
Imagine not having a headphone-jack in your Phone
I have one of the bluetooth ones, and it's actually a handy device. The battery life is ok. I usually have to charge it once a month or so.
They make Bluetooth cassettes now
Ah, these adapters saved my life from boredom back in my high school days with my old Accord.
One thing he didn't mention was that the tape contains 4 separate audio channels. Two for left and right audio channels when the tape is on side A, and the other two for when you flip the tape around to side B. The head only aligns with two of the channels, allowing you to flip the tape around to hear different music.
I just last month finally got rid of my 2001 Merc Sable, and my only regret was forgetting to eject my faithful cassettepter from the deck before it was hauled away. That thing served me almost as long as the life of that car. From yes, an actual walkman, to a diamond rio pmp300, and through 4 iphones.
I love how as time has gone on, you have gotten more and more snarky... Always have been but now in the B roll, you let loose. Love it!
Fun fact, I've watched so many TC videos, the ad before this was for an air conditioner-heater cold weather heat pump installation! ❤
I had a friend in high school that had an 8 track player in his car, he was able to daisy chain an 8 track to cassette adapter, cassette to aux/cd player - it worked.
Somebody did a video of this too. Techmoan, I think?
@@3rdalbum yup! It was Techmoan
I remember when I was 11 in the late 2000s, my PC speakers broke down, I used this and my fathers boombox to game with sound again and thought it was absolute magic.
thanks for the video
That's funny as hell man. I could imagine someone playing doom with a boombox setting next to the monitor blasting the music.
7:27 The Cassette MP3 player you mention was featured in the Techmoan video "Car Stereo Tape Adapters - 8-Track to Cassette to MP3", about halfway through. =)
Direct link: ua-cam.com/video/ppo3IgHWDzA/v-deo.html
Found a link to an original (2005) review: www.dansdata.com/dah220.htm it was the 'MobiBlu DAH 220'.
It looks like someone has tried to sell a modern recreation, and a few people have made their own home made versions over the years too.
EDIT I looked harder and found an even earlier one from 2000: the-gadgeteer.com/2000/03/28/romemp3_review/ the 'RomeMP3'. It had a whole 32MB (yes kids, thirty two megabytes), and must surely be the earliest. It uses a Parallel port, not even USB (which was an option at the time)!
I think this is the one I remember (it's in the garish fake silver that apparently we thought was cool back then).
@@phuzz00 I found a newer one called Mixxtape from Mixxim that has an OLED display, touch controls, bluetooth, and up to 256GB of space. It doesn't have gears inside though, so it wouldn't work with decks that detect movement.
Databits did that adapter experiment before Techmoan did. Either it's a huge coincidence that Techmoan used the exact same adapters, or there's been some idea stealing going on!
Sounds like he was describing a "Diyeeni Cassette Tape Player" www.amazon.com/Diyeeni-Cassette-Portable-Function-Suitable/dp/B07XY99GPM
for those wondering, the mp3 player inside a caseate is called Mixxtape
I actually made one of these when I was a kid. As soon as I learned about how tape heads worked, I figured out that one could be put on the other and transmit sound. I've used tape heads as guitar pickups too.
That explains alot! The Cadillac I used to have had permanent Dolby turned on. No wonder the treble was iffy!
Still prefer the longer videos, but I'm just happy there's a video, regardless of duration
well shit, I just thought about this today on a whim. here I was thinking I had seen every single Technology Connections video. Now after googling, I think I could totally just take a broken tape player and an aux cable and marry them together inside a disposable cassette tape. I think I am going to try this out. I have all the tools afterall.
"It's not groovy, I'll tell you that. It's rather particular." God the puns, that is why we're here folks!
0:37 The International Sign there for a CD Walkman. Nice reference
I use one of these daily for my 15 year old car - never thought about a new one since I only drive a couple of thousand miles per year, so it only have about 40K right now (sidenote - it's fun taking it to the dealership for "scheduled" maintenance - they have to download the manuals to find out what they have to do on such an old car!). The car has an AUX input but regardless of the shielding of the cable, there is always a bad electrical HUMMMMM with whatever I plug in. So, picked up one of these beauties and it is flawless. The car has premium audio with FM/AM, Satellite, 6CD and cassette and all of my friends that have vehicles without cassette players are jealous of the quality of sound I can get utilizing the cassette adapter.
Take my Pandora with me everywhere I go... :)
Iv found the AUX hum is from also having your phone/device plugged in and charging, on my truck anyway
You need to get ahold of a Ground Loop Noise Isolator. For like $10 you'll be extremely happy not to hear it again! But the other comment was correct, if you charge your phone while playing it'll definitely have the hiss.
www.amazon.com/dp/B019393MV2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_MFofFb8QA8XTE
-now I know where to harvest xtra tape heads for my lo-fi cassette addiction-
I've used one of these things since the early 2000s. My dad still has one in his car, with a CD player velcrowed to his dash. It works.
Now you just need to rip every CD onto something then plug it in and have every song you own.
CD Walkman!? Back in my day, it was called a Discman!
Which only means you're young.
Yeah I remember it was written in the box. Unlike CD walkman, its usually also play MP3 and VCD (its popular format in my country to play video rather than VHS or DVD)
@@josephgaviota Well, it's exactly the other way round, boy. CD Walkman was a later name for SONY's portable cd players.
Sony did change the designation to CD Walkman around the turn of the century/millennium. '99 Maybe? Don't know, I owned a 2000 model, but there's this D-E201 that looks slightly older. Well, of course you must know that, I'm writing this so some poor uninformed kiddies like those commenting this will hopefully read it...
Every sony product that played music was a walkman, remember the walkman phones? It's a sony protected name so other conpanies called their portable CD players Discman
"Fricken tapes. How do they work? Magnets!"
Was that an ICP reference? I love it!
I used one of those aux jack adapters for the longest time until I got a phone that no longer had a headphone jack. I wasn't aware they made Bluetooth versions, but I'm not surprised.
Unpossible!
That's an impissibolity
I still cant believe it...
Me fail English? That’s unpossible. 😂