Cassettes - better than you don't remember
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- Опубліковано 31 тра 2024
- In this Beginners Introduction to Compact Cassette - I'm using Metal Tapes and Dolby S for the first time to see if a cassette tape really can sound 'almost as good as a CD'. Useful links below - click SHOW MORE to reveal..
eBay UK - Cassette Players goo.gl/awzyQR
eBay US - Cassette Decks goo.gl/sfgahf
If you are looking to buy the same model of machine I bought - the model is the Sony TC-S1 - this link will search for it on eBay UK goo.gl/leqEIP
However the TC-S1 is part of the Sony Scala system and some people list it under this - so this link will look for the Sony Scala on eBay UK goo.gl/TUFz82
Whatever eBay search you are doing - it's advisable to expand it to include the rest of Europe - the prices and condition are often better if you source a machine from Germany, Austria, the Netherlands etc.
Don't just search for Dolby S - as often this spec is not mentioned in the title of an auction.
I bought my blank Metal Tapes from here: tapeline.info
They sold out long ago.
Here's the video I mention at the end, about the LAST AUDIO CASSETTE FACTORY: • The Last Audio Cassett...
If my video was too basic for you, don't complain, it's futile (the video has already been made and can't be changed now) - Instead you can head over to TAPEHEADS.NET and talk to the infinitely more knowledgeable people there about any tape related subject in detail www.tapeheads.net
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The best thing about cassettes, and CDs too, was that when you bought a song or album you actually owned it.
You didn't own it then either. When you bought a CD, Tape or Vinyl you are buying a license to listen to the media for as long as the tape, CD, or Vinyl functioned but only in a private setting. You were not buying anything besides the license and the key, the key being the physical media. They were not yours.
That's also possible today thanks to the modern equivalent of taping a song on the radio (aka downloading youtube music videos audio)
Or if you recorded your own compilation from the radio.
No the best thing was when the cassette started to tangle or break down; it would go into slow motion.
You didn't own the song just the medium on which the song was licensed to you.
I remember comparing metal tape with Dolby S, to a CD, on professional equipment. I couldn't tell the difference. The cassette was perfected at the exact moment it became obsolete.
Definitely
I have a Sony metal tape with Dolby B
I recorded Hotel California in it and it sounds exactly like The source
Would cassette have an "anolog" advantage in anyway? Or does it sound 100% like a CD?
Nope, cassettes won't have any sort of "analog advantage." The thought behind that is, quite simply, that since digital systems have a hard upper frequency range limitation imposed by sample rate, an analog system's lack of sampling gives it "a frequency advantage." In truth, cassettes do not have the speed or material quality required to meaningfully exceed a CD's 22.05 kHz upper frequency bound, and they inherit all the characteristic problems of magnetic media: inconsistent playback speed (wow/flutter/pitch shift), crosstalk, medium wear, nonlinearity, and inconsistent frequency response chiefly among them.
On the flipside: one interesting "advantage" is that same nonlinearity (aka distortion). TL;DR: as you record a signal louder and louder onto a tape, there's a point where the tape can no longer accurately reproduce the input signal and will begin to distort. It's a disadvantage for accurate sound reproduction, but is a neat creative effect (and is often used or emulated when recording music!)
Pioneer CT-W604RS... Good luck telling the difference between the CD (played on a Pioneer PD-F906, through a Pioneer VSX-D903S) and a Dolby-S copy.
It was sad to see stores slowly faze out tapes, then it was also sad to see CDs being slowly fazed out. Now I see walmart slowly gazing out DVD box and the DVDS themselves! I also was sad to see rental stores die out especially the movie rental titan Blockbuster, and movie world! I dont even hardly see red boxes a anymore.
Was anyone sad to see payphones go btw? I do, the memories of using them is priceless and meaningful to me when I would be grounded as I was growing up and not being allowed to talk on the phone i would go walking and go and use the payphone for a few. I couldn't help it i was having major withdraws not being able to chat with my buds. The reason is my mother got the bill and went ape shit, I had ran it up to almost 300 dollars using *69, 3way calling and also *67 which btw *67 still works on cellphones! Ain't that amazing? For people who dont know it's where you put *67 in front of a number you want to call and it wont show up on caller ID it will show private number or restricted. I cant believe it still works on cell phone, I use it sometimes when I call a certain person who I dont want them knowing my number or its good if you are trying to reach someone,blowing it up and they know it's you so they wont answer, so I used it and on the 3rd ring they answered, I was so pissed too. It only worked once and that person would not answer restricted numbers thinking it was me and it wasnt most of of the time, found out he was dating many and didnt want to answer if he was out with one of them and sees another girl calling and not get caught with the one he is with. He is an asshole btw. I havnt dated since and it's been 4 yrs ago I cant trust guys anymore. Anyways I just wanted to comment. Sorry so long♡ have a wonderful and blessed day
Cassettes somewhat forced you to listen to every song on the album. This is why I know so many good songs from the 80’s and 90’s that weren’t ever heard on the radio.
You don't get a true feeling for a band until you listen to their albums in full. Many bands can make good music that hits the charts, but that can tend to follow a trend and be the less adventurous material an artist makes. What makes a band unique is the whole of what they make.
@@ryjelsum So true. I just don't understand the one-song-from-here, another-from-there mentality of digital track procurement and playback. With the LPs it was so much effort to leave one's comfy space, get up move the needle etc. just to skip a track, So much effort that it just wasn't worth it.
As a result we listened to whole albums as the artist intended.
@@auntiecarol well I always listen to the full album whenever I get into an artist. In fact, I always listen to all of their albums fully. I just got a cassette player and i’m not that familiar with cassettes
@@auntiecarol It probably has more to do with your age. If you're growing up in an all digital/internet age then you're used to instant gratification so the idea of not picking exactly what you want sounds weird. I myself grew up with cassettes in the 80's and 90's so I'm with you I like to hear an album all the way through. And If I can't listen from one end to another then it probably says more about how good the album is or isn't.
@@Kylefassbinderful Not so sure about that... I still have multiple GBs of songs I cherry-picked from Napster when it was a thing, and I routinely drag single tracks down using youtube-dl.
Maybe albums are just not a thing so much anymore, and we are all just creating and curating playlists??
Back in the day , it was a normal sighting to see a mangled cassette tape laying along the side of the road , which was tossed out the car window in a fit of rage 😒
Yeah, those POS Radio Shack tapes. Never saw a Maxell, Sony, Fujitsu, TDK or Nak tape on the side of the road.
Those were the best days of my life!
@@kazparzyxzpenualt8111
Mine too !
Once in a long while I still see mangled cassette tapes on the ground, it's pretty strange
Free music!
I'm 17. Upon getting a walkman from my mother, I decided to go wander on ebay and ended up buying a cassette of "Killing is my Business" by Megadeth. Then I listened to it and was pleasantly surprised with the audio quality.
Yes, listening to a walkman comes with a few issues, such as static noises and low volume, especially while riding the bus (which I do everyday to go back home from school), it sure is a lot easier to listen to it at home while laying on the bed or working on the desk. But it feels like owning something special.
I don't wanna be that one kid who says "I'm the only one who listens to good old music in the best conditions", because it'd be a lie to say I don't use Spotify daily too. But popping a tape in your walkman and forgetting about your phone for a little while does feel nice.
Anyway, I grew an interest in cassettes and I've been looking for cassettes for pretty much every "old" band I like (Alice in Chains, Slayer, Korn, Metallica...). I'm currently waiting for a double order : "Powerage" and "Highway to Hell" :D
Ah, Megadeth, I see you are the man of culture as well. I am now waiting for Rust in peace LP delivery. Old music formats truly have something special to them
The walkman i have has an equalizer, i can improve the sound a bit as well as enable dolby NR B, but it's freakin' huge! 😂
You got good taste my boy!! I bet like me you get weird looks for using a tape deck. Just be sure to carry a bandolier of batteries.
@@josephcontreras8930 yeah, but i wouldn't care if i got a weird look for using a sony walkman these days. But most people find it so cool.
You know you're getting (are) old when Nirvana is considered ancient, and you were already thirty-something at the time when they were still touring....
I remember when CDs first came out. My mom kept referring to them as "round tapes".
Yo mama so fat even her vocabulary is rounded
Its 2017. My mom still calls CDs "tapes".
I used to have a verticle CD player with a window, so you could see it spin, most people who came by said, ''are you rewinding it?''
Funny. Popular mechanics ran an ad for a DVD re-winder. Of course it was the April addition that year.
One of the first CD store owners here almost called his business "Shiny Coasters"!
1. Buy vinyl record
2. Record it on a cassette.
3. Listen to cassette
I have dozens of pristine LPs that have only seen a needle a few times.
Thank you! I take your advice. I have lately become more and more retro in my taste of sound and music. Don´t have Spotify..
Yep, thats the drill. Play the LP maybe 3 times to break it in, record it, and then park it.
That was because you didn't want to wear out your record, but use it as a master.
If you used Dolby S on metal they would sound the business : )
@@drfish5393 that's me right there. Dolby-S on Chrome tapes (Maxell XL-II-S) is really, really good too.
Best part of cassettes was making the perfect mix tape. You had to pay attention to song length to avoid dead space with no auido and songs getting cut off. Didn't know there were so many options... thanks for the information. Great video!
I usually make side a and b Playlists and then let them play all the way through
Back in the 80s, my heart use to beat with anxiety- will The song finish before the spool ends?! Or should I start fading the song?
So much this. Also, because you can’t easily skip around like a cd I would pay way more attention to track sequencing
Hard to record off the radio. It's very annoying when the DJ talks over the beginning of the song or cutting it off at the end.
Interestingly. Cassette allows copying of any material (say, when compiling your own mix-tape), even tracks that are DRM protected. Not so Digital, as DRM is a copy-once, software function, preventing multiple copying (and subsequent selling-on? )
A DRM protected Digital music track, can successfully be recorded to a Hard Drive, but not Ripped to a CD (or re-copied to USB) from their, if you're wanting to create your own mix (Tho' there are "naughty" pieces of software
out there, that defeats DRM?)
"I once played a blank tape at full volume: the mime next door went nuts"
-Steven Wright
gotta love Steven!
When me and my mate took up electric guitar my downstairs neighbor came and put a axe in our front door quess it was a little loud for him
Steve Wright (the Ipswich strangler) in the afternoon
Dr Diablory heard that from a comedian years ago..
Haha
This has seriously become one of my favorite channels. Comfy, simple, thoroughly entertaining.
+Lazy Game Reviews I just read that in Duke Nukem's voice.
tfw one of your favorite channels comments on one of your other favorite channels
+Lazy Game Reviews You and Techmoan are my go to channels!
+Lazy Game Reviews I smell another episode of LGR Thrifts :D
+Steven W I feel funny inside
"I was listening to some blank cassettes the other day, because I'll be darned if I'm going to take the manufacturer's word for it..." - Emo Phillips
LOL that was the best laugh I've had in ages .Thanks.
I still have traumatic flashbacks from cassettes in the 80s getting tangled up while playing. The mad rush to the deck to save them...... Ah the memories.
While moving a few years back I found three or four unwrapped Maxwell XLII 90’s - smiled the rest of the day while remember making mix tapes
Ah yes, gotta love a good ole 'tape salad' 😂
Bad Memories... Lost lots of tapes....
@@ronhamann2179
MIX tapes both started an ended with the cassette tape
Listening to radio in your room with a tape ready to record your favorite song off the radio!! Getting mad at DJ talking over the beginning 10 seconds but u had to go ahead an push record !!!!
Cassettes had a Side A and a Side B, so it’s logical that the successor is the CD ;)
Clint L clever
Clint L,
??
@@quabledistocficklepo3597 the other sides of a tape would be C and D hence CD
@@wclifton968gameplaystutorials,
Is that supposed to be funny?
+Quabledistocficklepo I assume so.
I remember researching cassette decks to DEATH when I was about 11 because portable CD players still skipped! I saved my allowance furiously and spent $220 on a really nice Sony model with Dolby S. ...I remember forcing my friends to listen to how good the Dolby S sounded but none of them were weird enough (like me) to care. It really was remarkably good though.
fisqual
We believe you!!
I found a dbx tape deck for $7 at a thrift store and the dbx NR blew me away. I payed more for damn metal tapes than I have for any of my playback machines lol.
Lou Ottens, inventor of the cassette for Philips, has passed today at age 94.
RIP
R.I.P. Louis you made many things happen we can never thank you enough.
he was Dutch and worked all of his life for Philips..he also invented the CD.
Rip
😭😭
I bought albums. For the first play, I recorded them on Metal tape usually with Dolby B or S. Then put the record away. 80% of my records have only been played a few times because I listen to the tapes. When they wore out or were damaged I pulled the record out and made another tape. I still have most of the tapes and they still play great.
As a poor kid in the 80’s , I didn’t even know there were options. I just bought what was available in my small town store. Thanks for the education on tapes. 😄
I am glad that I know what that B, C and S mean... TWENTY YEARS LATER!
Yes i also 😂
thomas dolby blinded me with science.
Twenty years later indeed. I wonder if CDs might have been a little slower to catch on if Dolby settings were common knowledge.
Your not alone.
The same happend to me, but just 30 years later!! hahahaha!!
I used to hate cassettes....the hiss, the rewinding and fast forwarding, the chew, the wear and tear. But I've come to love them now! Very interesting and rewarding. A vintage deck is absolutely awesome to play them on. I like to watch the music not just hear it.
Wow. That's pretty damn impressive. I never owned many cassettes. They were on the way out when I started buying music. But I think if Dolby-S systems and metal tapes had become more affordable, they truly could have given CD a run for their money. No skipping or scratching is a pretty big deal when you take audio quality out of the equation. Didn't help MD though, unfortunately.
Richer Sounds in the UK used to sell cassettes well cheaper than anywhere else. I bought my blank cassettes, MDs and CDs from where as well as my hi-fi stuff.
Absolutely. I remember when I bought Master Of Puppets for the first time I had the same tape 6+ years before buying it on CD. Frequently played on CD's I probably bought 3 copies in that same time period..before I had a computer to burn a new copy once and never have to take it out again. I took care of my CD's too. I also noticed different CD's had different aversions to skipping. I had a Who Made Who disc that was virtually resistant to skipping and yet I've had others where you touch it wrong and there goes tracks 3-4. I'm sure the record industry made even more of a killing when people had to buy their albums multiple times.
The thing people don't realize, or have forgotten: recordings didn't HAVE to sound perfect. Sure there were always the audiophiles but most of us were plenty happy with the basic kit. In fact my wife's favorite recording is something we preserved off of an old vinyl record. There are scratches and pops and to her memory there were ALWAYS scratches and pops; the record was scratched before she was old enough to remember. She doesn't like the CD version of the same recording because the scratches and pops are missing. For her they've become part of that music. Part of a world where the medium was something you could touch and feel and watch moving; something you had to protect, and something that acquired the patina of use and age. There's a beauty in that.
"Part of a world where the medium was something you could touch and feel and watch moving; something you had to protect, and something that acquired the patina of use and age." Wow that was poetic! Very beautifully said! I also think that many recordings that were not made at a major label studio with high end equipment didn't even WANT to sound perfect. Something like punk rock or similar wanted the listener to feel like the artists are just human themselves and/or that they don't want a major label make them sound good, because that would be selling out or something.
I find beauty in the old cassettes my dad recorded on his mono radio/cassette player. Not Hi-Fi but they have a thing the modern remastered CD's with the same music don't have. The feeling of the times gone by.
yes absolutely
these days i go to record fairs and pick up LPs at say £2 each then digitize them with shhh shhh sounds and tiny skips cracks etc if it is worse I edit with audacity then i have a "faulty" Lp going through everytime on my computer and sounding like 1975 :] the whole point of the operation .... fun to listen to those files walking around in mp3 versions .... let us play with the old on the new ..... diamonds should have a flaw to be perfect .... so should recordings ... never liked cds as they are pasteurized aseptized etc ..... we want flaws and we want them now
Just started on cassettes recently ..... sound is amazing even once digitized :]
BixbyConsequence a few years back my friend acquired an E39 M5 (since sold off) with the classic German convention of a CD changer in the boot/trunk and a cassette deck in the dash. I was recording from CDs to cassettes at the time to play said cassettes on my newly acquired 80s boom box (fun date idea: drive a girl down the beach or to the park and when you arrive, take a boombox out the car and hold her hand whilst carrying the thing on your other shoulder. Set it up on a bench and dance with her to your choice of 80s hip hop or pop in public. Her reaction tells you all you need to know about spending any further time with her).
Naturally I thought "let's test my new cassettes in Steve's car!" and sure enough, even though it was a cassette recording from a CD which had been burnt from an MP3 quality file from my PC, we both agreed that the inherent warmth of the sound was very enjoyable, and added greatly to the "retro" nature of the 80s tracks I had recorded on to the cassette. We weren't worried about all out fidelity (his car had the 14 speaker M audio package too, so it sounded good with CDs) but simply the "feel" of the sound.
Bonus: rewinding and switching sides on the cassette from the steering wheel mounted buttons, plus watching the tape counter ticking away in the instrument cluster, was super cool.
I know a guy who transfers his LPs to digital to the crackle and pop missing from streaming and CD.
Are you sure the noise isn't copyrighted?
Okay, I laughed. Gotta be honest!
watch out for justin bieber techmoan😂
I broke the 69 barrier. Sorry, not sorry.
WR3ND I know how that feels. Ever broke the 666th barrier?
I’d never put anything past Google and UA-cam.
I think the coolest thing about CDs was the fact the you could skip songs whereas with tapes you had to forward and try to guess when your fav song would start. You could also put it on top of your speakers without magnetizing it
There were even portable stereos that could fast forward to the next song by listening to the silent part between songs. It helped.
Toward the late 80s, sony came out with AMS which could detect the silence between the songs and fast forward through them, then stop a second or so before the beginning of the next song.
My last car cassette deck had that feature. Always worked just fine.
Cassettes were very much a social product in that you shared them easily and you made them for friends as presents and you put a lot of work into making them. This is why cassettes are superior in terms of social value. CDs you could do somewhat the same - but the work involved was so much less. Digital download destroyed the social relations involved in these activities. It's like going from dating leading to a good relationship to service from a call girl that comes to your house.
Excellent analogy! I've just made a mixtape for the first time in about 20 years. Was surprised how enjoyable it was setting the rec levels and cueing up each track. Felt more artistic than the same process on a laptop...
@@StupStups good for you!! young people don't know the fun.
@Devin I have a box stored I couldn't throw away. technology jumped the shark in 1990.
Absolutely!
Whenever you've just bought a new LP, next thing to do was goin' to your buddy's house for him to tape it...
Cd sucked imho. They hadn't the good things of tapes (cheap and easy to use), and combined with some cumbersome CD players it's even worse than having an mp3 with music.
Finally somebody who explains all those options on my cassette decks from 30 years ago.
We sure didnt know what all that crap was at the time.. but of course now that it's 30 years later I officially have the patience to learn..
I know, right?
Where was this guy 30 years ago dammit! :) I still find it funny even hearing all these youtubers from other countries, when I think back to those days in the 80's England could have been on another planet because it seemed so far away. No longer the case.
And none of the encyclopedias...what we had before wikipedia... before Google...hell before the internet...
As I said, none of the encyclopedias would tell us these things
I still remember the nerdgasm I got when I bought a reeeally nice walkman that supported dual direction cassette playback and AM/FM radio and had metal/chrome playback type switch and a bass boost and had really handsome technical aesthetic design. I was on the bleeding edge of high tech.
Damn that sounds awesome... we always heard of playing tapes backwards as kids, but we never could get a machine capable of it
@@BeetleBuns I had an Akai portable that was 2/3rds the size of the Sony am-fm cassette with DOLBY b/c and ran on ONE AAA! it was all-metal and I suspect expensive. It was auto-reverse with a 4-track head and switching capstans. Clicky with lots of relays.
@@pirate0jimmy holy crap... it's hard to find ANYTHING that can run on 1 AAA, that thing must have been sweet
You were truly "wired for sound". I can see you on your roller skates now. 😂
I remember having an off-brand walkman that airport security decided to open up in case I was carrying a bomb (I was about 8 and it was about 1992). It never worked again. I was not on the bleeding edge of high tech.
As a reasonably young person, I'm still amazed that I went to school with people that have never seen or don't even know what cassettes are (in the grade I was in, and grades below me).
I know it's been a year but reading your comment reminded me of someone referring to a floppy disc as a 'save logo thing' a while ago, blew my mind 🤣
@@skyrocketautomotive670 I've felt the same way about the same thing, maybe growing up poor and with 20 year old tech wasn't too bad after all XD
@@brandoncallahan9289 Honestly I think growing up listening to cassette tapes (and vinyl for me, I'm an '07 kid) was absolutely worth it. Probably sparked my interest in older music, electronics and mechanics
@@tunaburnak5650 Same here but 2002 instead, if you can afford it, hifi equipment is an amazing hobby to get into. I just bought a Kenwood KA-5700 from 1978 and I couldn't be happier.
Yes, there is a point in recording onto cassette tapes. For us walkman owners and users (that also includes my 17yo son), it's the only way to take away with you the right amount of favourite tracks or even listen to a single album, without being drown in gigabytes of mp3's from which you can never decide what to listen to… and with added analog coolness ;-) Seriously loving your channel, dude.
I'm 18 years old and have used cassettes my whole life. Funny this is, my parents always said they were shit! I guess they must not have taken good care of them because mine have always sounded great!
Tape is a good format as far as analogue goes, but man it didn't suffer abuse much.
The Sonic Sega Nerd my dad's tapes all still sound good but my mom's tapes are all pretty much destroyed. my dad's home collection vs mom's car tapes...car tapes always lose
Anyone who didn't have their tape get eaten or broken was never a real music fan. Only a casual listener. I had tonnes break and fall apart and I've always looked after my collections. My cd's are scratchless, minus the ones I purchased used. Cassettes wear out with use. Anything mechanical does. If yours are still ok then you never actually listened to them often. I'm not being a hater. Just calling it like it is. it's the same as cars. Some people will buy a car and only drive it to church on sunday. Others will buy it and it'll be dead in 5 years because they use it every day to work and back. I listened to tapes all day everyday. They fall apart.
@@VeryDryBones the heat off the car heater distorted them that's why
Now I'm going to transfer all of my digital music over to cassette tape and rock it old school style. *And* I'm going to do it the proper way; by playing my music on one stereo, as I hold the cassette player up to its speakers and hitting record. All while forbidding anyone around me from talking or making any noise once I hit record. Ah, memories...
I remember doing that as a kid tooo..... LOL.... couldn't afford proper stuff so invented neat ways of doing things and back in the 80s you didn't really care that much on quality back then
Saadat Saeed Things were so much simpler back then, haha.
My buddy gave me a copy of a new CD that I wanted to hear. I put it in my car stereo and it sounds terrible. All sorts of muffled moving around. Suddenly, I hear his mother yelling in Portuguese and a door slams! Haha.
De fnder lol
yes sunday nights were fraught with silent arguments if anyone dare cough or speak whilst the charts were on and mic from my ITT recorder was positioned by the speaker on the floor...
I've got Iron Maiden Number of the Beast on cassette and gave it a spin. The bass still pumps and the solos still soar.
I'm a HUGE fan of cassette tapes. Properly cared for, they can last for decades. I'm listening to my collection of commercially-made and home tapes. They all sound good and rarely do they get eaten by the machine. One good thing is that a person can wind the tape into the machine and continue listening. One scratch on a CD and it's toast.
Yeah, the only thing you gotta really worry about with tapes is magnets, even if the tape snaps it can be spliced back together.
Also, cassettes are more robust then CDs. Even though, I was born in late 2004, I got my audio plays in the form of cassettes until about 2008. CDs are just so extremely fragile in the hands of a careless child. I dont know the amount of CDs I killed, just because I forgot to put them back into the cover.
For whatever reason, never had as many cassettes die in a hot car as CDs.
I remember sitting by the radio waiting on my favorite songs and I would make a mix tape , I'd call the radio station and request songs too . if the tape broke , I'd open it up and repair the break with scotch tape , putting it back together was a challenge . good times . I miss MTV's Head Banger's Ball on Saturday nights and all the new Metal videos were coming out .
I used to do this too. I suppose its the vintage equivalent of downloading mp3s from Pirate Bay today. Recording from the radio was more involved and fun though.
@Chris Russell That's funny cause I did that too . I had to convert a Eddie Money tape to Save Iron Maidens " Somewhere in Time " . So the Eddie Money Tape was Iron Maiden .
I did almost the same thing )
Same here!
Me too!
TDK SA-90 That string of characters probably are at the heart of why I love music today.
I have a TDK SA from the 80's!
Still have dozens of those with '70s and '80s albums on them. Have rerecorded over some and they still sound great. Never had one malfunction. Can't say the same of BASF.
I loved cassettes well into the emergence of CDs. That said, what won me over to the CD format was random-access play. That was the game changer.
Couldn't beat the almost instant song selection and the clarity compared to cassette or vinyl (yeah try that while riding in a vehicle) it was tried with 45's but well it didn't go well or take off, playing records in the vehicle.
@Jim Marbaz Yes indeed CD can be played a 1000 times and it sounds the same as the 1st play.
Dear Tape Lovers,
Greetings from India. Middle aged or senior citizens who are tape addicts will appreciate and comprehend that the analogue tapes from BASF, TDK, SONY & AXIA if recorded from good source and on a decent tape deck from Technics (965, AZ7, TR777 & 979), Nakamichi (DR-10) and Sony (ES) series (I have such models) may easily surpass the vinyl any day. Using a recording for commercial use may be a crime but for personal use has always been legal.
Agreed, that a tape recording can never sound better than source but the ability of tapes to be recorded in limitless options can satisfy the appetite of most demanding audiophiles. Settings of Bias, Treble and Vocals is limitless with a good tape deck and if you may get hold of some good DAC such as RME DAC ADI-2 FS or a streamer like new Arcam ST60, try recording a contemporary track and you will be stunned with the output of a Chrome or Metal tapes. The hiss is what makes it special, but if you scorn the same, playing tape on any good deck, even without any sound suppressing options such as Dolby or DBX, the hiss sound is nearly non-existent. Music sounds more melodic and warmer on tape, more than vinyl. Not that vinyl is bad either. They both are tangible and much warmer compared to best digital music from any digital source.
All you need is some good money and some luck to find a tape deck and invest a little in blank tapes, what you will hear will certainly make you realise, what you have been missing in music so far in life.
Long Live Tape and Long Live Music.
u are really improving your videos
+BackyardFun I try my best, sometimes things go a bit off the rails, this one took a week longer than I had planned.
+Techmoan That extra week of work does pay off though - this video was a lot more enjoyable compared to the shorter ones. It's well cut too! Audio levels differ a bit between clips though - the ones with you facing the camera are noticeably louder.
+Synthesizer Wiggler 303 believe it or not, whilst they might appear louder, it's more to do with oversaturation. I can see the volume I output to the finished file during editing and it's all pretty much the same.
Huh, that's interesting.
+Techmoan any reason for camera clicks every now and then?
Seeing that old catalog of boom boxes and walkmans made my heart warm up.
Thanks for making and sharing this video. I just realised I have become an old man. I grew up in the 80s, and making mixed tapes, recording my fav songs from the radio, or copying my friends tapes was part of my life. The best part was working my way through my parents collection of tapes. This is how I discovered The Beatles, who are still my favorite band. This winter I am going through my boxes and I have set up my PHILIPS 900 stereo system. It still works great, and I have just started making mixed tapes with 80s music. The reason is because I have bought a 1982 Corvette, and it has a tape recorder. Come summer, I will be cruising down the road in an 80s car, listening to 80s music, played on 80s equipment.
Those C3 Corvettes are beautiful.
@@fintanoclery2698 Thank you - yes I agree. I have dreamt about one for ten years, so when I go the chance to buy a nice one, I did. Looking forward to the summer this year :-)
@@IamMagPie enjoy your summer, cheers!
@@fintanoclery2698 Thank you. I wish you a great summer too. All the best, greetings from Norway.
I love the fact that it's just for fun. I used to use cassette decks in the 70's and 80's and loved making mix tapes. I've been rebuilding my record collection after the vinyl resurgence and a friend is all back into cassettes. I may take the plunge and get a machine off eBay. I've been thinking 'what's the point?' But as you say, fun is the point and a bit of nostalgia.
Just writing a comment to say how much I appreciate your videos! I really have learnt a lot about audio and various other things from the content you produce. I remember playing with tapes when I was very young, that would have been the early 2000's and I enjoyed it. I'm very impressed of the quality you can get from tapes, I had no idea! I look forward to whatever you have to show us next!
+Oliver Shearer I agree, Techmoan always uploads quality content. I am glad to have found his channel and I am glad I have visited Manchester and it's shopping centre Arndale myself. :D
agree!! this video really unique and educative.
+v1ncn7 you recommend us to go and visit Manchester????
I admitelly recently bought a sealed metal tape out of curiosity, a Sony XR 60 (wasn't too expensive, but not cheap either), recorded some tunes that I consider "benchmark tracks" with it with dolby B on (no C or S on my deck), holy hell you weren't kidding. It's 98% indistinguishable from the source material, and dolby B is already good enough for me.
Dolby sucks, use a decent rig and cassette and you don`t need dolby at all.
+ normie Exactly.
I agree, Mr normie x.
Dolby sucks if the deck isn't calibrated because it exaggerates frequency response errors. Dolby B is affected less than Dolby C because it has less gain. Self calibrating decks are the only way to get the best out of Dolby. Pro studios used Dolby A which is way more sophisticated
Metal recordings age - anyway mine did they start to sound worse and loose pitch after only weeks but still sounds better than normal or chrome and dolby is just bad - in the beginning of dolby you could hear a pumping sound even with dolby C occasionally - for me the magic was ferrochrome which didn't age as metal but had same dynamic range
I love Audio Compact Cassette Tapes more than I like people. They never talk back to me, never make me mad, never rip me off, never lie to me. Cassette Tapes play me my best music and bring my mood up. Cassettes are awesome! They come in different colours, types, brands, (hundreds of brands). My cassette collection keeps growing
The advantage with recording with cassette is there is no processing delay (or lag), recording is simple, and you don't have to be blinded by a bright animated graphical user interface and exposed to its radiation. I work as a full stack developer, and when I am not working, I want all computers, mobile phones and things that go beep turned off.
Is your name Chuck McGill by any chance?
Making a mixtape for a crush or a friend. Oh, how I miss the days.
And no, sending someone a link of a playlist you made is not the same.
Or it could be if songs were unskippable.
It's possible to fast forward a cassette. One could skip songs on a mixtape.
I would LOVE such a feature, unskippable playlists!
r/gatekeeping
i still do record mixtapes for my crush/friends lol i really love the feeling of a cassette tape
For anyone who still remembers the total joy of creating mixtapes (it taking so long in real time is part of the pleasure, for me) the movie High Fidelity starring John Cusack is a real treat.
My strategy was to buy my favorite albums on vinyl and make cassette recordings of them to listen to in portable players or in the car stereo. Vinyl tended to be abused less often that way, too. Nowadays I do the same thing with vinyl or CDs, using mp3s for portability.
+Helium Road Excellent video, by the way.
Acci Acci Use your imagination. Your own helium road is however you think it should be.
Acci Acci It doesn't ice up in the winter and no potholes, for starters.
+Acci Acci ... and there seems to be an endless supply of tierods for my Fords.
+Helium Road :: I did the same thing and always used metal tapes for my portable copy.
This video had made me revived my teens cassette hobbyist in present modern day.
You’re of course a legend.
Love your video! I grew up at the very end of the cassette tape era.
I was one of those people who thought that cassettes suck compared to CDs, but I could only afford cassettes...
Took me a while to realize that cassettes can sound amazing! Back when I truly started getting into cassettes in the 1990s, they had already started to go downhill and were getting hard to find.
Not too long ago, I found a Marantz single cassette deck for all of $10.99 at the local Goodwill thrift store. I brought it home and decided to have some fun with it. Didn't take much to get it running.
I'll say that just recording some cheezy UA-cam audiophile records onto a NOS Maxell Type II cassette revealed just how good these things can sound, even without the appropriate equipment!
Gotta be one of my favorite Techmoan vids!
I was born in 1997 and only remembered cheap tape on a cheap boombox, so I was really excited when I got my first CD when I was five
But about a year ago I got my driver's licence and inherited an old Ford Taurus with a working tape player, and having seen this I thought, why not give it another go? Plus, I had been collecting music on vinyl and found it much easier to copy them to tape with the equipment I have, and I must say, I've never had so much fun listening to old music in an old car.
Shame all my dad's old tapes are wore beyond recognition
I just found 2 old BASF self recorded tapes in the glovebox in my old car. they must have been there at least since I got it 10 years ago. my car is always parked outside summer and winter and I even had the odd leaky roof problem with water everywhere. tapes played just fine when I tried them out. no idea how your father destroyed his tapes. they seem indestructible to me.
Being born in 1993 I grew up using my grandads high end Rotel cassette deck. Its an awesome format if you have high end equipment.
ForrestBob
Great memories x 😊
very good decks, i am using at the min a Yamaha kx-650 it was made back in 91..sounds really good to.
Not indestructible, but sturdy. Regular cleaning of the mechanism is required, and the car decks were notoriously hard to clean. I used to use a
Similar story, I found a tape player in my '97 pickup.
After 10 years of owning it.
Right there in the dash, below the radio, above the CD player.
Probably needs lube by now, it did try to eat a tape after a few successful plays.
What annoyed me the most was when the batteries in a walkman got too low, the playback speed would slow down.
I forgot about that.....thanks for the nostalgia :-)
@@chucky8787 man those last gen sony walkmans were amazing
Peanut parents in syrup
Haha i remember that, but i only remember that on a cheap plastic walkman that they used to giveaway as gifts with everything lol, cant remember how i got mine lol maybe a magazine
And when the tape got stretched. I had a Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits with a stretched spot on the tape. The pitch would drop one semitone the last time they would sing “parley, sage, rosemary, and thy...y...me.” Cracked me up every time I’d hear it.
I listened to cassettes for many years, and still own 2 high quality Yamaha decks. I rarely used the Dolby NR because (in spite of Dolby's good intentions) it always blocked out the higher frequencies. The hiss was never bad enough to bother me while playing pop and rock music.
Did you played tapes of 120 minutes?
Yes, though only true if the recording was NOT made with a particular Dolby NR on. Dolby S was stunning, and a game changer, but just came too late. Just imagine if ALL TAPES since the beginning of the medium had been metal tapes, and Dolby S was present as the default on all recordings! :)
Years after you posted this video, I got my own Sony TC-S1. Pinch rollers needed replacing, but it is working superbly now. Thanks for recommending it!
I remember buying an album on cassette in the 1980s. Someone I knew played the recording they had made of the same album, copied from a CD onto a higher quality metal cassette. Their pirate copy sounded better than my original. Such a pity that many in the record industry saved a few pennies on quality cassettes and undermined the case they were making at the time that illegal copies were of inferior quality.
I learned how much I didn't know back in the 80's and early 90's regarding cassette tapes.
Im 18 years old but I still used my grandma's cassettes when I was little... Old technology is just so much nostalgia for me...
Such a fascinating look at something I took for granted in my childhood. I remember tuning into my favorite radio station and waiting, hoping my favorite songs would come on so I could record them on a cassette tape. I had cheap quality machines, for the most part. And I did encounter the stuck tape problem a few times.
I do not miss seeing the messes of tape on the side of the road all the time. But I do kind of miss the joy of placing a cassette into a hinged slot, closing it, and pressing a big, fat silver/chrome button to play it. Well, kinda. Tapes were definitely cool.
Opening of b2tf haha
The metal tapes were saved for really special favourite
lp's
Yeah beatles elvis and pink floyd. Pink floyd you need to use headphones to enjoy every nuance and subtle sounds and you have to just sit down lie down and actually listen to it.
@@josephcontreras8930 damn. You know where I could buy one? If not I’m going to comb all my goodwills.
Kids today will never know the joy of impressing a girl by making her a mix tape. Putting serious thought into what songs they might like, lining up all the tracks (many of which were recorded from the radio on a scattershot of different cassettes), figuring out the playlist order and sitting for hours and really listening to the tape you were making were all magical musical experiences that i'm genuinely sad that people dont get to experience any more.
check out bandcamp.com /countvaseline. I believe yo no soy marinero is a mixtape to his city, fans, friends, and family . first offered as limited edition cassette and now cd
Santos Jezebel Some sites try to capture the soul, making simulated mixtapes. You can also get tape shells with USB drive middles, you pop out the USB, fill it with music, put it back, then do the jacket like it's 1992!
Santos Jezebel I did this too (I used to add my voice and add a soppy love message. I cringe when I think about it!)
Mixtapes are totally still a thing. As strong as always. Also more commonly referred to as playlists now. It's just become easier to do and doesn't involve actual tapes. :D
CatSay do people still put there voice on the playlists ?
At the tail end of my cassette era, I used to record in DBX from CDs on Metal tapes using a high end Onkyo home tape deck. Played the back in my car using a top of the line Concord HPL-550 AM/FM/Cassette automotive stereo. They sounded SO good! When selecting the Noise Reduction, Dolby B removed some hiss, Dolby C, even more hiss, then the DBX virtually eliminated it. Near silence. Bass and high end sound was CD quality. I feel the bass was even better. Without the DBX on, the tape sounded all high end. Couldn't listen to these tapes on just any deck. Couldn't even compensate with an EQ either. Not much bass at all and super tinny high end, but all that changed after the short pause when activating the DBX switch. Loved them and actually miss them a little. All my tapes and decks are long gone. Went down the CD path like everyone else. Almost went DAT, but wa s way to expensive back in the early 90s. DAT decks cost about $1000. Never heard a Dolby S recording though. Wonder how it compared to the DBX. If anyone knows, let me know please. I also love your channel Tech Moan dude. Keep 'em coming and thanks for all the tours down Memory Lane.
I recently got a whole cassette collection plus tape deck and some other equipment from a friend of my parents,who is now around 60 years old, which is why I am finding your videos very interesting to watch right now. Thank you!
there is something about listening to Wu-tang Clan on cassette that just sounds right, I feel like their first album was mastered for cassette. Same with a lot of early 90's New York hip hop.
Patrick McCarron I couldn’t agree more. Wu was big obviously, but Digable Planets Reachin was a HUGE tape for me. I bought multiple copies even after cds had become super prolific. You’re spot on, some tapes were made for cassette.
Crappy music for a crappy medium!
James Koralewski ok, james
@@jameskoralewski1006 What music do you like James?
@@espenfarstad1697 Classical, Classic rock, some country, easy listening, and new age. What types do you like?
My sister was crazy with buying empty cassettes and recording radio music.
Me on the other hand, I was recording myself making stupid noises and making idiot out of myself. Weirder it was, funnier it was.
+XtrAMassivE Funny noises. Still have some of those :)
+XtrAMassivE I was the same way when I got a microcassette recorder when I was a kid. I used to do things like record on a low speed and play it back on normal speed so I would sound like a chipmunk. I would also warp my voice by jiggling the pause switch back and forth. :P
*****
I did the exact same thing ahaha
+XtrAMassivE Ha ha. Somewhere there's a pile of 35 year old cassette tapes with 40 hours of me making fart noises.
+XtrAMassivE I never really recorded much "regular" music off the radio, but I did religiously record the Dr. Demento Show.
I got back into Cassette tapes by accident , I'm English but now retired to Hawaii , on Craiglist I found a JVC KD-S201 that was brand new & unused still in the original bag with paper over the front and the polystyrene packing ( the box was long gone ( rotted away apparently ) . I have a 1970 BMW 2002 here so I found a Sony TC-20 cassette player for the car, when it arrived it too was unused !! I even found the correct parcel shelf speakers . I'm having fun making mix tapes from old singles & albums for the car , re living my youth back in Solihull . Thanks for a brilliant channel I'm having fun catching up with the vintage Hi Fi Set ups . Aloha from Kona Hawaii .
as a kid i loved cassettes, and understood from a very young age how to use them and get near CD quality with the right hardware. CD’s had the distinct advantage of picking specific tracks to listen to, but i still preferred Cassettes for portable music. being able to make custom tapes on the fly, even recording from the radio, gave the cassette an edge.
Right there with ya!
As a kid I destroyed a lot cassettes without knowing what I was doing, lol. I think I tried eating the tape too one time when I was very, very young, haha. Knew how to use those big vhs tapes but not the lil cassette tapes. Good memories...
I wasn't as smart as you unfortunately. RIP those tapes, hope they weren't anything special.
I really do love cassettes as a format. They're just so neat.
+Lambda Blackout that's two of us then.
+Techmoan Dame
I use them daily I buy a lot of blanks to put mp3s and stuff off youtube I love them
+thomasmageeporter/GamingGutter I do that a lot, too. I carry my Walkman with me every day.
Lambda Blackcoat Love The Walkman
2:17 I'm getting that new catalogue smell just looking at this. Ahh, the excitement, the possibilities, the christmas. Looking at all the latest toys, hi-fi equipment, keyboards and games machines... so much fun!
So glad I found this channel. Takes me waaaaay back to when making tapes may have been the only real talent I ever possessed. Still have boxes and boxes of cassettes.
This video makes me so happy. Takes me back to a simpler time in my life.
We were still listening to cassettes in Australia well into the early 2000s, mostly because they were still cheaper than the CD versions as said in the video. Pretty crazy when you think about it because CDs are just slapped out pieces of plastic but cassettes are many pieces of plastic and moving parts.
I never bought many tapes personally but I definitely owned a Greenday and an Offspring album. Tapes were used a lot in school for educational material as well as fun activities that were set to music and whatnot. CDs were becoming common for this purpose but we were still using a lot of tapes into the early 00s. They were also used for school projects that required recording interviews and that sort of thing. I remember using an early cheap MP3 player that I got for my birthday for this purpose around 2006.
I recorded a lot of music and interviews from the radio onto cassette, using I'm sure the cheapest tapes available on my cheap CD/cassette stereo. That was really the only way to listen to songs you liked at leisure without having to go and buy it yourself unless you happened to have fast enough internet to pirate an MP3, which I didn't in my rural town. I guess today's equivalent is listening to an uploaded version on UA-cam instead of using an official streaming service or buying a digital copy.
I didn't know about all these different types of tapes and that the noise reduction could be so dramatic. Being such a retro thing now, it's the hiss that people actually want, rather than want to remove!
I recently digitized some cheap cassettes that I bought for 89 cents back in 1984. They were used to record live performances of my college band. Turned out pretty good.
The bad experiences with cassette tapes were mostly caused by cheap cassettes and the many scams on the market at the time.
I only used TDK AD90 cassettes and they still sounds good after 43 years I recorded them.
I have some metal cassettes, but the tape deck to record them is gone: they required a bias that was 250% of the ferrous oxide tapes, driving many Watts of ultrasonic energy into the pre-magnetisation head. These critical circuits and copper windings didn't withstood the test of time sadly.
I would like to see some tech from the '80s on sale again, updated with wireless technology and flash memory storage. Tape decks, turntables, power amplifiers, tuners, and some boombox - sort of a modern Sharp GF9090: with the new batteries it would do miracles.
Thanks for the video...
Thank you so much for another excellent and informative video! From the late 70's through the early 90's I always had and used a cassette recorder in my component audio system, probably because my dad was an audiophile and I viewed it as a necessity of life. In 1983 I remember buying a couple of commercially produced cassette "albums" and being very disappointed with the quality of not just the tape, but the cassette itself, and the box it came in. Nearly every cassette I listened to back then was recorded by me from vinyl, and it was really clear that the cassettes you could buy to make your own recordings were of much higher quality than the pre-recorded ones. You've taught me a lot right here about cassette technology, and I must admit that at the time I often bought metal tapes, but I didn't really understand why they were better.
I got myself a cheap(ish) Sony unit with Dolby S and have been having loads of fun making my own tapes from soundtracks that I get with many of my computer games. Up to about 25 now! I have got all my tapes from Tapeline to custom lengths and in a variety of different coloured shells. Tapeline are fantastic, I'll order 7 to 10 tapes at a time, each different lengths and they are nothing but prompt with the order! Of course none of the tapes I made have inlays or stickers for the tapes, so I spent some time making a template for the inlays and made my own using graphics from searching on the web. It has been great fun doing this and the recordings, using Tapelines 'Super Ferric' tape along with Dolby S and the Sony units calibration has given recordings that are great to listen to! No practical but I now have a lovely collection of tapes that I can look at (and listen to!) knowing they are all my own hard work. Plus the collection looks great in my custom designed 3D printed racks :D
Dang. That Dolby S with the metal tape was pretty quiet.
Slug Jones dbx NR is strangely quiet too.
I did pull out my old Denon direct-drive cassette recorder/player after being stored for 20 years or so. Got my cassettes. Hooked it up to a Pro-quality audio interface onto my notebook and was honestly surprised about the sound quality I got. Dolby C but still.
And the Denon cassette recorder that did cost me a fortune back then (like 35 years ago) still worked perfectly (some head cleaning was about it).
I've only found your channel after being shocked they still sold cassettes at a Walgreens near me; I didn't expect to go down a rabbit hole and find a very pleasant hobby. Thank you so much for your informative videos!
The worst (and also the greatest) thing about cassettes was having to manually push FFW or RWD to get the song you were looking for. This lead to making you listen to songs that you didn't necessarily like...they would eventually grow on you and become your favorites.
They are sexy
For sure
I used tape WAY into the cd era. I actually built a rig that could clean the tape itself because i had a habit of spilling pepsi in my tapes and carrying them in my sticky back pac. The rig would pull the tape across a series of sponges with dilute IPA and a dry sponge and a fan and wind it back onto the take-up reel. saved many tapes that way...and still have them!
TestTubeBabySpy that's so awesome. Never knew that existed. Glad I found your comment. :)
You got blueprints for this thing please?
That sounds like something I need for all of my Dads old Rum and coke soaked tapes from when he'd throw parties in his younger years. They still play, but there's some mad muffling in places.
Dr_Darkly what are you talking about
@@Borals Dr_Darkly meant that figuratively, not literally, I presume. His post should have ran thus wise: Although it sounds implausible, it is very possible to record both sides of a single full-length album on side A of a 90min. cassette and then repeat the same procedure by recording both sides of a SECOND full-length album on side B of that same 90min. cassette.
Interestingly enough, I would wisely record both sides of a single(1) full-length album on both A AND B sides of an 90min. cassette! Please don't ask the ensuing inevitable question. 😳😥😰😞
I'm 23 and I grew up with tape. I mean CD was there for some time already, but my parents still had their music players and tapes, AND a car that took cassettes. Those things even coexisted in time with having the ol' PC filled with libraries of music. I went to sleep many times as a kid listening to a homecooked Mike Oldfield tape with Moonlight Shadow followed by Taurus II, so I DO remember tape very fondly. And I also remember the tape adapter things with the aux cord, which we hooked to a discman.
recently the tape nostalgia fever has taken over me, along with the excitement of listening to vynil records for the first time, a weird nostalgia-novelty combo all served into one small modular stereo setup. I really like vynil for its own reasons, but I actually like tape more, not only because it's superior in sound quality, but mostly because I can record my analog synth music onto them easily and make adorable all-analog albums at home. To get your own vynils, you need to pay someone else, or turn your home studio into a vynil press maybe.
Dear Techmoan, Thank you so much for your video and all comments to the Sony tape deck! I really love you! This is incredible. I have bought me the Hi-FI SONY TC Scala range and I do not want to hear anything else. Also all your comments to cassettes have widen my knowledge horizon very much! I am collecting boomboxes from the 80s and have suddenly began to understand so much about cassettes, as never before. Thank you again! I wish you so much success, your channel for the electronics is the best ever on you tube and best I have ever seen. Many thanks again! Ilja
Dear Matt,
I watched this and other of your videos and decided to buy a non-working Nakamichi cassette deck on Ebay for about 25gbp. some attention to the idle wheel sorted the problem. I have just recorded some music onto a blank Type 1 cassette and was blown away by the quality, much much better than I don't remember. Got some type 2 cassettes on order and will be trying these our as soon as they arrive. I would have never been confident enough to even attempt to fix anything before watching your videos... Thanks.
after watching your video I'm looking for a tape deck again after nearly 20 years.
good man...there are some bargains out there, including the kind of machines you could only dream about buying back in the day.
i fancy the pionner tape deck like you've got to go with my pionner amp
Good luck. I've gone through about 20 and literally none of them have everything I'm looking for.
Same here..
I've just made my first mixtape in about 20 years. Forgot how absorbing and enjoyable the process is, setting the recording level to just flick that second red segment on the meter... and the peculiar thrill of getting a combination that finishes barely 2 seconds before the end of the side!
I wonder if this is a mid-life crisis.
Glad to hear someone sticking up for cassettes. I had a Nakamichi Tri Tracer and a Tascam 122 MKII back in the day and ran them with no noise reduction on TDK Super Avlyn tape. They sounded great!
Back in the day the day I opened a album I would record it on cassette tape.
Me too.
@@electrictroy2010 Surely they only get scratched if you mistreat them? I've got vinyl and CD's from 25 years ago that are as pristine as the day they were bought. I must admit to being somewhat fanatical about taking care of my stuff, but it isn't hard.
I did as well ... Led Zeppelin 'Houses of the Holy' bought new in 1973 has been played twice. Recorded both times.
@@electrictroy2010 may i know, how do we record it to the cassettes ?
Always loved the way bass sounds on cassettes, smooth and dynamic...
Right
Agreed very noticeable on a decent hi-fi system
One of my favourite old memories of the cassette era was my car. All of you in your 20's and teens probably don't remember the old economy cars of the 1980's unless you know someone with a "classic". They were truly "economy". My '85 Civic had nothing but an AM radio and a bare hump between the seats with a stick shift, no fancy storage bins, cupholders, none of that. So I pried that AM radio out, jammed a cheap tape deck in there (wired backwards so left was right and right was left), ran wires out in the open to the hatchback to some home stereo speakers, and nailed a plastic cassette tape tray to the floor between the seats. Went well with the shaggy seat covers and bean bag ash tray.
Growing up recording to tape either from radio to tape, tape to tape, and cd to tape, I never realized there was a difference between the tape types when it came to recording. I also never had any high end recorder. I mean my parents would just buy what was on the shelf. Your videos are teaching me a lot on considering what I want to do. I want dub my record albums preferably to cassette. As I want to have a portable copy of my analog collection. I am considering a mini disc recorder now as well as it was one of my favorite formats. Even my new records. That came out in the past year.
Your stereo set up is amazing.
i remember having to stick a piece of folded paper into those holes in order to record .... xD
What about a piece of tape?
I did one better. I could fool the deck. I would just every so slightly push the cassette in and just as the plastic humps that detect if the record tabs are in or not come into contact with the edge of the cassette , I would press record then swiftly close the door and it would put the deck into record mode! :)
I found that a 1x1 thin lego piece also worked.
Yeah, I just used scotch tape.
intra morph yes indeed, I fell back on that method many times when a piece of tape wasn't around,,,, the good old days
The first tape machine i had was in 1980 it was a Sanyo music center, and boy it was a destroyer of tapes. Bit later about 83 got a Sony separates tape deck and had that until 1990s that never chewed any tapes. Around 1991ish i got a Technics RS BX606 and a year later i bought a Aiwa AD-F910 so i could record tape to tape, and still no chewed tapes, ever !.. I still have the 606 and the 910 in the loft. For me they were the most enjoyable equipment i ever owned, think that's why i never passed them on. The Technics was a brilliant deck and the Awia was a beast with amazing sound.
I got my first portable radio\cassette player in 1979 for my ninth birthday, it had one speaker; my second I received three years later for X-Mas. My second was a Panasonic, it had two speakers and two tape decks. Most recordings I made were indeed recorded from the radio. I would put a tape in, hot record, and then fall asleep while listening to the radio. It was like Xmas every morning when I would wake up -never knowing what I had recorded during the night when they played the BEST music, tapes opened up so many new "for me" artists and styles of music I say styles because the stations would often experiment in the small hours of the night by playing unheard of artists, the music that didn't get airplay during the day. Growing up I had never seen a metal tape let alone bought one to record on. We'd (my friends and I ) buy the cheapest tapes we could find. We would get the tapes that would give us the most hours of recording, you could buy a 12 pm of cheap tapes for around $2, we never looked further. Now I wish I had.
I’m 50 years old and I still think you sound like my dad! Keep it up :)
No offense, but to me, he sounds like a school yard bully. (Actually have problems with a bunch of british sociolects. People like Richard Dawkins or Stephen Fry sound friendly though, in my scandinavian ears.)
Magnetic tapes Cassette's and VHS, where extremely durable. In my experience CD's became too scratched up and unusable after a while; you could punt a tape down the stairs and it would mock you all the way down, then play for another decade.
Unless the tape got out and tangled.
I remember the replay quality got quite bad on most of my favorite cassettes. It may have been a crappy player in addition to the tape degrading. CDs were fragile in a diferent way and arguably were much easier to render unplayable if you abused them.
@mxt mxt ?? I said 'were' and I meant CDs when I mentioned them. I was contrasting them with cassettes like the OP was.
@mxt mxt fuck off
@@rsd3719 He's alright it's just our friendly neighborhood grammar police who happened to hallucinate the typos he thought he was correcting.
A lot of musicians still record onto tape these days as the compression and artefacts add analogue "warmth" and imperfection to their recordings. For a lot of musicians and studio engineers the tape is an integral part of the mixing / mastering process, and a way to introduce imperfection and character to digital audio. In fact you can even get quite a lot of digital audio workstation plug-ins that emulate the sound of recording onto tape.
What an in depth explanation and demonstration. I never understood any of this when I used tapes as a kid! I wish tape was still a thing, today... There's something pleasing about the "tape sound." It was seen as imperfect back in the day, but in an age of sterility, the texture is missed.
Cassettes are so satisfying to collect and listen to. Starting my collection in 2019 ✌
I started collecting them 12 years ago now have 500 most cost 25 cents each l now have a great collection l could never afford when l was a teenager so happy 😀
Not really.
I still have some cassettes because I still have a tape player in my 2001 minivan. The best part about them is they can live in a glove box or on the floor or dashboard and still play fine when CDs will be scratched and cracked and skipping.
Smugglers Run o actually started my collection in 2019
@Ty Thomas Boxing Training thrift shops mostly. I don't collect them unless it's something I really want (I'm a CD collector myself) but I've seen tape go for 5 for a dollar multiple times at my locals Goodwill's, salvation army, value village and random other ones.
I started with cassette movie soundtracks and now I just have random music and such
I watch this video once in every 6 months, just for the nostalgia.
:-)
Me too, must be over 5 times now but perhaps even over shorter periods than you
I have watched this video many times because there isn't any good cassette videos on UA-cam.
Aiden 21 ikr
I still miss the top end cassette that died a few years ago. I used it to record half speed master recordings. The little cassettes are small enough to put in a shirt pocket.
And the early CDs were almost universally mass market source material that sounded like JC Penny bargain bin. Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs might have sold CD versions but all us audiophiles hated the new format. Eventually we got SACD.
Nakamichi Dragon was the most famous and sells today $1500-$2500. That reminds me. Back in 1983 I bought a vinyl MFSL UHQR limited edition (5000) Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band as an investment for $55.00 and sold it two years ago for just under $900!
I love compact cassettes! I never understood why anybody would want an 8-track player, as you couldn't record with it. Growing up in the late 60s, I was enamored with my big sister's reel-to-reel tape recorder, and remember the first time I heard my own voice on it. Then my parents bought me my own Craig cassette recorder/player for Christmas in 1970. I used it for everything--recording my family, recording songs off the radio (with a mic), recording the moon missions off of TV (because I thought the recordings would be worth money someday). I even took it to a Mets' baseball game and recorded the ambient noises in Shea Stadium (I kept the recorder in a bag because I thought it might be illegal to do so 🙂). Anyway, I have about 300 cassettes in my collection. Haven't listened to them in a while, but I enjoy having them. Thanks for the fun video! 😀
So nicely explained. I grew up un the eighties and still have boxes of cassettes. As a musician recording in a portastudio with TDKs SA was THE experience. Great channel. I totally subscribed. Thank you.