You have to be born in the land of quality approach, at the time when everyone have nothing to do but talk, and raised by people who don't like to waste their breath for a bad sentence.
Wow... I saw that first cassette player and thought.. "Wait a minute.. that's a CD player." Then he ejected the tray.. I've never seen a cassette player like that before.
hey, nice seeing you here, it was a thing people did at the end of the cassette player to make it seem more like a cd player, to my knowledge. most dcc decks used this kind of cassette loading system.
@@Alpine_Wanderer My dad had a Pioneer CT-F8282 Stereo Cassette Deck when I was a kid and it has this curved clear cover over the cassette that I thought was the coolest thing growing up. Found a UA-cam video of someone showing one off. ua-cam.com/video/W7pypr0e5us/v-deo.html
To be honest there aren't many people on UA-cam who are the only people doing it, that's what happens when you have 1,000,000's of people using the same thing. What sets @Techmoan apart is the way he delivers the content, works very well for me being from the UK. Thanks for yet another informative video, keep them coming!
I had figured out how the power gets to the adapter decades ago, and as you covered it the cobwebs very slowly cleared from my mind. I remember buying a used car that had an 8-track and one of these adapters under the seat. Retrieving that cassette adapter and slamming it into the 8-track put a huge smile on my face.
We need to get a device to allow playing of 8 tracks in grammophones. A voice coil driving the needle should do it. Also at the other end, a wifi card to go into the SD card slot and play from a streaming music service. Then we can have Spotify playing into an MP3 player pretending to be an 8 track driving a grammophone.
I had a neat little device in the early 90s called a "Sound Sender". My first car just had an AM/FM stereo with no cassette deck, and certainly no CD player, and this was before MP3s existed. With this device, you plugged it into the cigarette lighter, tuned the radio to a specific frequency, and plugged it into a portable cassette player or portable CD player, and the sound came over the radio. It actually worked pretty well. I don't know alot about the specifics with electronics, but it seemed kind of like a similar concept to an R/F adapter for a VCR or video game console for a TV, where you selected channel 3 or 4 and the signal of the device went over that channel. Similar concept, but with audio rather than video.
"Finally we can play mp3 in an 8-track player"...all the 8-track users will be really happy now. Great video as always Mat! Thank You! Also really smooth ending with the music and credits...
1:58 - "Unsurprisingly, I don't have an 8-track player in my car..." Maybe not but did you ask the dealer when you bought it if you could get it with that option? LOL Whenever I buy a new car I always ask that question just to see the "deer in the headlights" look from the salesperson. LOL
I always threaten my car dealers that if they don't include a plush toy I'm walking out. I've waited over 30 minutes for a Peugeot dealer into including a stupid plush Peugeot lion plush into my last purchase, he was probably just idly chatting away with his manager all that time but I don't care. I got the plush. It's cute. Retails for about $40... absolute ripoff.
I got the Toyota 2020 Olympic plush (some robot masco thing) with my car just before lockdown. The salesman was saying Toyota has millions of these it can’t do anything with cos the Olympics were looking like being postponed.
I have my 1972 Panasonic RS-802US 8-track player/recorder where it plays and records music on 8-track. So I use my Sparkomatic 8-track cassette adapter to play MP3’s on them, and it plays regular cassettes where it plays way too fast.
Syncopator It works with both SD and Mini SD cards. On the back, it says up to 8 GB, but if you use 16, 32 and 64 GB SD card, it will have more songs to go with it. Along with the earlier capacities like 256 MB, 1 GB and 2 GB will also used for box sets like a Reader's Digest or a Longines Symphonette boxsets from original instrumentals to compilations.
you could measure "vinyl records eaten by the scratchy vibrato-stylus per minute". also imagine the vibrations of the stylus (mainly because of the motor, but also the road) amplified by your car stereo. you might just go deaf from that by listening to the music at conversation-volume.
they actually have car record players. I saw a DeSoto Firedome at a show with a record player installed in it. Slid in like a CD, It plays the record upside down in a gyroscopic type springed enclosure, the owner of the car said it never skipped.
The intro you use to your videos is immensely satisfying. Short and sweet, sounds wonderful, and the LEDs are a great visual touch. I think it's way better than the generic After Effects Tech Demo intro used by so many channels.
There is not a generator in existence small enough to fit in a cassette that would generate any meaningful energy at the comparatively slow speeds a cassette plays at, nor do I think it would be possible to make a generator so small in the first place, but it would be a cool idea.
@@stephanschmidt2334 im not really a mechanical engineer, but i dont think torque would be a factor in this case. energy generated in an electric motor comes from magnetic fields rotating around copper wiring, moving the fields faster moves electrons through the copper wiring faster. you want torque in a motor for something like a drill, where you need to apply more rotational force, not faster rotational force but that's just from my knowledge ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@Templarfreak the speed doesn't matter that much, its trivial to design a gearbox to make it spin fast enough, the problem comes when the motor spinning the cassette doesn't have enough torque to spin it up.
Probably not, since records use physical grooves rather than magnetic pulses, although maybe with some very fancy and expensive technology you could create those grooves...
I actually just got a cassette adaptor with bluetooth to use in my car since I always wound up breaking the older, cheaper adaptors with the headphone connection. Even has a little microphone you can pull out of it to dangle from the car's tape deck to use all the fancy hands free stuff, and the quality seems identical. I've been using cassette adaptors for years, even in the early 2000s for a CD player and my first mp3 player and always assumed they never got any better. Had no idea this MP3 reader version existed, but I would have sprung for it super quick back 12 years ago since I only ever used my MP3 player in the car with my silly wired adaptor. Great video!
I'm at a point now where I've watched so many of your videos, I cant remember for sure if I have already seen one or commented on it before. A testament to how good your videos are. In any case its pretty interesting the way the cassette mechanism was powered in the Cassette to 8 Track adapter. If I hadnt watched this, I never would have known, lol.
Yo Techmoan, I just gotta say, when I first watched this video and saw the device at 6:00, I bought one off Amazon right away - my car only has CD and Cassette players, but I listen to a lot of things straight off of UA-cam. About a year later I'm still using it every time I drive, and my friends use it too whenever they're in my car. I was a little skeptical at first, but as far as I can tell it sounds about the same quality as a CD. So thanks a lot for the info!
Hah, that tape mp3 adapter was pretty cool actually, never knew they existed. And putting it into the 8-track cassette adapter was some Inception level material.
Now that's a serious audio mash-up. I own one of those cassette-8 adaptors & yes, I have inserted a line-cassette adaptor connected to a discman. Compact disc to 8 track in 3 clumsy steps. Very happy to see someone else on the internet daft enough to do this!
12:09 You can actually hear it playing before you even pressed play. It must be close enough to the play heads to actually pick up the audio without even being engaged?
Two reasons why I chuckled: 1) He's visibly struggling with the button 2) and once he succeeds, it lets out a horrible noise that only later begins to sound like a guitar
This brought back memories from high school when I was driving a 1979 pickup with an 8-track player. I found one of these 8 track to cassette adapters at a rummage sale, got the cassette to 1/8" jack and plugged into a discman so I could listen to cd's in my old truck. Worked well if I held the CD player, but having to shift gears and hold a disc man didn't work too well. Good times.
To those complaining that Techmoan "stole" this idea from databits, I suggest that you actually watch both videos. Same idea, yes, but they each have a different take on it. I'd also point out that databits has several videos that were quite obviously inspired by Techmoan's. As a sidenote, I recently used a similar series of adapters to connect a mid-'80s portable TV to a modern cable box. Much like in this video, it was completely pointless but I enjoyed proving to myself that it could actually work. :)
I have never heard of an 8-track media format. Didn't know that people were using these to listen to music in their cars back then. I was born way after it went out of use and never saw a car that can play an 8-track, but I did see a car with a cassette tape deck before. This is fascinating to watch.
possibly one of my favourite videos of yours ever! if you EVER for some reason, needed to play a specific track, and it had to be in MP3, and you needed to play it on an 8 track player, youre covered. I love it.
So Carl, How do you listen to music? Me: Well, I download it off the internet onto my micro sd card. Then I put that into a micro to standard SD card translator, then I put that into an SD to cassette player. I then put that into my cassette-to-8 Track adapter, which I put into my 8 Track player. How odd. Me: Well how else would one listen to music?
Support for 8GB SD cards puts the device sometime after the introduction of SDHC in 2006. Prior to that the limit was 4GB, and support for 4GB was iffy (it wasn't *quite* in spec) so 2GB was dominant.
The one my parents had was far less bulky. It was longer than a typical 8-track, but not by much. The compact cassette actually mostly fit inside the machine when you played it. I'm also pretty sure it has this small roller at the end. I don't know if it used it to power the cassette, but I do think it was what was used against the heads in the actual player.
a new problem now is having a car stereo with only a CD player and radio. how can I play my music from my cell phone. if it had a tape deck I could use the wired tape audio adapter that was shown in this video. the car is from 2008 so there is no audio in jack or blue tooth. new cars come with these options now. I am better off changing the while deck.
I have the same thing in my car - I just listen to the radio. Those personal FM transmitters are generally a bit rubbish...and I have enough things plugged in.
I had that same problem with a car I used to own as well. My solution was to purchase an aux in jack that I wired into the car stereo. At the time, the solution was kind of crude, being that I had to splice a few of my radio cables and also use a power switch to turn the thing on and off, but it worked great, and sounded MUCH better than an FM transmitter. I did a quick search on Amazon for "aux in adapters", and it seems that they've gotten better, as you no longer have to splice them in. Instead, you can just plug them in. They cost around $25-$30US. Hope that helps!
I have the same problem. 2007 Astra only has radio or CD. I now have a huge stack of burned CDs in the car since empty discs are cheap as dirt nowadays.
Usually there is a port on the backside of car stereo unit to connect the cd changer. I have Yatour mp3 player that simulates the changer and it works perfectly in this situation. Sometimes you need a special Y adapter cable to put inbetween. Everything depends on the stereo model.
Instead of taking off the piece of plastic, you should have made an even bigger monstrosity by plugging one of those headphone-to cassette-adapters into the device and put that in the 8-track player.
the limitations written in manuals are just a list of what SD cards it has been tested with. some companies like Canon or Nikon make extensive tests with basically every SD available atm. others will just test a couple of basic ones. it's the writing speed and format which is important here.
if you rip out the recorded audio from your own youtubevideo from just about 12:10, transfer that piece of digitalaudio on the SDcard, put the SD card in the cassette adaptor and play that with the 8 track adaptor in an 8 track player, the universe will implode. Great video. Made me smile. Thanks
16gb is probably the limit of what it can read. Once you get into 32gb you're talking about SDHC. More than likely 8gb was the most widely available size at the time.
The only difference between SDHC and SDXC is that SDXC comes formatted as exFAT. You can just reformat it to FAT32. I use a 128GB card in my 3DS this way, even though Nintendo lists the maximum card size as 32GB.
We still have one of these running around here somewhere. I remember going on vacation with my family and listening to cassettes with this contraption hanging out of an eight track player in a 1981 Cadillac Fleetwood. My parents want us to listen to their eight tracks like Lynn Anderson, John Denver and "Torn Between Two Lovers"... Over and over again. This device saved us so we could listen to Springsteen, Zeppelin and the Dead.
Talking about cheap power adapters: Could you tell us which car cigarette to usb adapter is worthwhile? i found many create a lot of HF noise and my radio reception drops.
Just pay a decent amount from a recognisable brand - or a company you trust. E.g. Belkin, Griffin - perhaps pick one up in a proper electronics or phone store, even an Apple store.... just avoid unbranded or cheapo devices from a market stall or a random ebay seller. Too many people buy a dash cam or action cam for £100+, then cheap-out on the SD card and charger and blame the device.
Anker. Hands down, the best USB charging solutions (including cables) I've ever come across. Readily available on Amazon. Maybe slightly more than some of the alternatives, but you get what you pay for...
I played CDs thru my car's cassette player for years with an adapter, it was a fantastic cheap alternative. Also had one of those cassette mp3 players, good times. Thanx for bringing back these memories 🤓
I used to have one of these, in fact this exact model. It had terrible wow & flutter, even when it was new. I also had a variant of this, an FM tuner/8-track adaptor. This had a tiny socket on the front to plug in an external aerial.
I do recall the radio announcement when the very last vehicle produced in North America rolled off of the assembly line with an 8- track player as standard equipment. It was a Ford pickup truck. I was just a boy. My generation grew up with transister radios, record albums, and cassettes. I have never owned an 8-track but saw some and thought that their continuous play was neat! Or "neato," as we used to say.
Obviously ignoring the first thing you mentioned (the cassette to 8-track converter), do you know if I could use any of these on an old computer like an apple ii or c64 with a cassette drive? I'm beginning to collect older computers and while I eventually want to get authentic software for them, I want to be able to get programs from "alternate" sources first to see if I like them.
Techmoan Thanks. I recently saw a video from 8bitguy that made it sound like it wasn't hard to find the MP3's, but I haven't searched them out yet, so you may be right about them being difficult to find. Also, with the SD card one, what if I just put the programs on the card without using the MP3 method? Is there a chance that could work?
That should work, but is more complicated than needed. Most people do is just hook up the audio out jack of their PC/smartphone/MP3 player into the cassette in jack on their retro computer - no need for an actual cassette deck.
rjhelms Well I do want authentic cassettes eventually, and a 3.5mm-cassette is about the same price as a male-male cable, and the former is much more noticable in stores.
You should have gotten one of those bluetooth cassette adapters they have now. Thanks for doing 8 Track > Tape > MP3 though. I had anxiety thinking you might not do it.
8 track to tape to micro tape to aux to Bluetooth dongle then back to aux to chromecast to smart TV to external speakers to a wire voice recorder. Do you accept the challenge?
I use a Sony WM-FX38 Tape Walkman at work, and the SD to Cassette adapter in this video has been a godsend for me as of late. Higher ups just see me using a tape player, which is allowed, and I don't have to carry my tape case everywhere. Love the Pre-Amp in this old Tape player, as it works wonders with my AKG K550 Mk II over ear cans.
I got the same thing that I've got off of eBay today. It plays MP3's on a cassette. It works with all of vintage cassette deck of your choice, one of the shoebox cassette recorders, cassette deck, children's cassette recorder or an 8-track adapter thatI have is a Sparkomatic. I tried it on my Panasonic RS-803US 8-track player & recorder and it plays and sounds so good than an ordinary 8-track tape and cassette.
the 8-track to cassette adapter I had had a rubber wheel driven off the 8-track player's capstan that ran the mechanics on the 8-track adapter & it always ate my cassettes all the time so this one you show is a little higher end than the one I had years ago as it has the motor built in to run the cassette transport!
I had one of those cassette - 8 Track adapters that I purchased at Radio Shack back in 1978. I popped in my Dark Side of the Moon tape, and it played back in fantastic monaural. It was for my home deck. I immediately returned it and purchased a proper cassette deck.
Spoiler, it's a microphone recording that has been compressed recompressed and processed multiple times before it plays through your laptop speakers. You are dumb.
GeoNeilUK Right, the cheap mp3 player sound converted into casette signal, through a cheap casette deck's head, into 8-track signal and to 8-track player's head is fantastic. That's all the microphone, editing software and youtube's fault.
Many thanks. I just bought one of these 8-track adapters off eBay - it didn't seem to work, so with the help of your video, I took it apart and found that the belt has disintegrated. I was about to write it off as yet another eBay failure when I wondered if it would still work with a cassette-to-3.5mm jack adapter. Guess what, it did! Even without any of the mechanism turning the head was still reading the cassette and passing the output to the 8-track. Result! I guess it would also probably work with a cassette-to-bluetooth adapter.
I used to have one of these, this brings back memories. I also had a cassette which played AM radio when you put it into a cassette machine. It have a tuning dial on the outside. You don't see many of them around nowadays. I wish I had kept it.
@@munkpuppy Count yourself lucky. Were I King, I'd gladly impose a fee for companies and the waste they create, that'd motivate more recycling options. Here, though, the list of "cannot be recycled" is long.
the natural wow and flutter that occurred when you used the 8-track to cassette converter was beautiful lol. not even being sarcastic. I just love that shit.
An lcd uhf tv..what manner of electronic perversion was that!? I used to put lcd monitor screens in overhead projectors, so I'm just as much an offender, I guess!!
Fantastic video! It made me smile. I installed a 4-track in my car, then when 8-track came out I swapped it. I bought one of those pinch roller adapters so I could play my 4-track tapes... 👱🏻
Similar? Maybe. Our boy Techmoan went much further in depth as to how it worked. As per always. He improved upon the video without ever seeing it. Bravo!
5:47 - "But let's move the same problem on perhaps 20 years or so later, if you've got an older vehicle with a Compact Cassette player, but you want to play MP3s on it." Yup. I actually bought two adapters for doing that. The first is the cassette adapter you showed right here, and it worked pretty well, but I'm surprised you didn't mention the second: an FM transmitter that attached to an MP3 player's headphone jack and played on any of several channels on the car's FM radio dial. The FM transmitter definitely had a sound quality advantage -- when it worked, that is. That, of course, was the problem. There were several things that sent me back to the cassette adapter. First, in places that have a lot of radio stations, like the city where I live now, it could be hard to find an FM frequency that wasn't being used by a commercial radio station, which the radio would pick up more readily than my little transmitter. Second, my FM transmitter tended to go through batteries quickly, and while it had an adapter that would plug into the cigarette lighter power plug, the car I bought this thing for didn't have a cigarette lighter. (On that car, the cigarette lighter and ashtray were optional, and since nobody in my family smokes, we didn't want to pay extra for it.) Third, even if there weren't any FM stations interfering with the signal, we found the range of the FM transmitter to be quite limited, and also very sensitive to where in the car it was sitting. So, while it sounded great when it worked, all too often, it DIDN'T work. So, back I went to the cassette adapter. That is, until the tape deck in the car broke, at which point I gave up and just listened to the radio.
omfg. Look at the picture of the "Car Audio Cassette Adapter" at 6:08 "Mini-Disc" "DCC Digital Compact Cassette" "Compact Disc Digital Audio" "Auto Reverse" Wtf. That's a lot of logos. "Made in China" Oh, that explains it.
That cassette mp3 player is beautiful, cheap but beautiful :D I'm glad you put the mp3 cassette in the 8 track, i would have been disappointed and upset otherwise.
Don't forget about MP3 and WMV CDs! I bought a special aftermarket car stereo that could play those. Now they all can, but that was not the case in 2006 or so. My particular aftermarket stereo didn't have an AUX jack, and SD card slot, or a USB input (something I came to regret later), but I could at least play multiple albums without having to change discs in the car. And, of course you could plug a Discman into a cassette adapter so you could play CDs on your cassette stereo. That might be the first time an MP3 has ever been played in an 8-track player!
I'll just add a couple pieces of trivia here. I used to work for Radio Shack (Tandy in the UK) and clearly whoever the actual manufacturer of that 8-Track to cassette adapter was also made the one that we sold. Ours was EXACTLY the same except that the three buttons were molded in different color plastic. They sold for (IIRC) $35.00 and worked fairly well. You had to experiment with which "track" selection on the 8-track it was inserted into was on to see what produced the best sound. There was at least one such adapter here in the U.S. (marketed by Sparkomatic) that used a weighted flywheel drive system so as to avoid using an electric motor at all. Unfortunately, they had a LOT of flutter and wow and depended on the 8-track deck to have a decent functioning drive system to work. The problem there was that a lot of old 8-track decks had worn or broken drive belts, so turning that weighted flywheel (especially at the correct RPMs) was out of the question. The type of adapter shown here didn't rely on the drive working at all. Lastly, the Sparkomatic adapter used batteries for the electronics, so that was just another possible point of failure. And finially, you mentioned using the cassette adapter for MP3 players but don't forget that the first use for them was to hookup portable CD players to cassette decks when CD's first became the norm.. Good video as always! 👍
Yes, I did have a look at the referenced 'original' video. But as always, I prefer your video even if you discuss the same devices. But you go more into depth on the devices and even open up on of them. That is more than just a simple review and THAT is why your way of reviewing does it for me... Keep up the good stuff !
I love the second one, the sd card to audio cassette adapter. Great bit of kit, I might get one for my old Honda. The only disappointment is I was hoping it used something like a small dyno to draw power from the turning of the spool motors. I wonder if there was ever one made to do that.
In addition to these 8-Track to cassette adaptors, there were also mechanical models that transmitted motion from the deck to the adaptor via a fake idler wheel. These tended to be much more compact than the ones equipped with their own electric motors for the tape mechanism, but suffered from speed issues the moment there was bad physical contact between the deck and adaptor wheels, or if the 8-Track deck ran too fast or slow to start with. Dimension-wise, my "Sparkomatic" adaptor is maybe only one inch longer than a real 8 track cartridge, it is properly convenient for playing digital music through an 8 track deck. In fact, that's what I do on my old Hi-Fi system since it's already maxed out on audio inputs from various analogue formats.
"I'll be damned if I am having my stupid dreams of doing something completely pointless dashed by a piece of plastic."
Yes!
Still can't believe how he can churn out such gems without a script.
You have to be born in the land of quality approach, at the time when everyone have nothing to do but talk, and raised by people who don't like to waste their breath for a bad sentence.
Fab
He is truly the messiah!
I was so happy he held this opinion.
MicroSD-to-SD card adapter in a SD-to-cassette adapter in a cassette-to-8-track adapter. Adapter-ception!
I'm afraid not.
@@CaveyMoth I'd like to see 8-track to vinyl adapter. There must exist something like that.
I cant wait for the floppy to cd adaptor for all my old dos games
MicroSD-MiniSD-SD
Add Bluetooth to the cassette adapter, you need Arsvita.
Wow... I saw that first cassette player and thought.. "Wait a minute.. that's a CD player." Then he ejected the tray.. I've never seen a cassette player like that before.
The 8-Bit Guy hi
I've never seen one like the pioneer that played one upright either.
hey, nice seeing you here, it was a thing people did at the end of the cassette player to make it seem more like a cd player, to my knowledge. most dcc decks used this kind of cassette loading system.
It's a TNT Player. Apparently they were pretty successful as a cheap portable 8-track player.
@@Alpine_Wanderer My dad had a Pioneer CT-F8282 Stereo Cassette Deck when I was a kid and it has this curved clear cover over the cassette that I thought was the coolest thing growing up. Found a UA-cam video of someone showing one off.
ua-cam.com/video/W7pypr0e5us/v-deo.html
Ingenious exploitation of those sensor contacts.
This is the kind of content only Techmoan can provide.
Actually, I've seen at least two other youtubes previously that did the same thing.
databits did it first...
This is the kind of content only Techmoan (and at least two other youtubers) can provide.
To be honest there aren't many people on UA-cam who are the only people doing it, that's what happens when you have 1,000,000's of people using the same thing. What sets @Techmoan apart is the way he delivers the content, works very well for me being from the UK.
Thanks for yet another informative video, keep them coming!
Pretty sure Databits did a video of the same thing.
I had figured out how the power gets to the adapter decades ago, and as you covered it the cobwebs very slowly cleared from my mind. I remember buying a used car that had an 8-track and one of these adapters under the seat. Retrieving that cassette adapter and slamming it into the 8-track put a huge smile on my face.
That's actually really impressive inside, them full solder tracks are insane and will last a life time. Nice big flywheel too
Something about playing mp3 files in an 8-track player is just amazing and warms my heart.
Next up, the MP3 to cassette to 8-track to tefifon to wire recorder mega adapter.
... and back to the Tefifon.
because he can.
Why stop there? Let's take it back to clay pots and straw.
That whole archaeoacoustic pottery thing is a myth.
You just need hi-fi straw.
I'm 10 minutes in and I swear if he doesn't put the tape adapter into the 8 track adapter I'm going to lose it.
Oh thank heaven.
Try watching the whole video before clicking "Post".
+wilkes85 ಠ_ಠ
unnecessary experiments are the best kind.
This is the best comment.
We need to get a device to allow playing of 8 tracks in grammophones. A voice coil driving the needle should do it. Also at the other end, a wifi card to go into the SD card slot and play from a streaming music service. Then we can have Spotify playing into an MP3 player pretending to be an 8 track driving a grammophone.
...nigga wot
Better yet an adapter to play blue-ray disks on a gramophone ;)
Phonographs do play MP3
I had a neat little device in the early 90s called a "Sound Sender". My first car just had an AM/FM stereo with no cassette deck, and certainly no CD player, and this was before MP3s existed. With this device, you plugged it into the cigarette lighter, tuned the radio to a specific frequency, and plugged it into a portable cassette player or portable CD player, and the sound came over the radio. It actually worked pretty well. I don't know alot about the specifics with electronics, but it seemed kind of like a similar concept to an R/F adapter for a VCR or video game console for a TV, where you selected channel 3 or 4 and the signal of the device went over that channel. Similar concept, but with audio rather than video.
they still make some kind of adapter
"Finally we can play mp3 in an 8-track player"...all the 8-track users will be really happy now.
Great video as always Mat! Thank You!
Also really smooth ending with the music and credits...
1:58 - "Unsurprisingly, I don't have an 8-track player in my car..." Maybe not but did you ask the dealer when you bought it if you could get it with that option? LOL Whenever I buy a new car I always ask that question just to see the "deer in the headlights" look from the salesperson. LOL
Pure comedy XD
I always threaten my car dealers that if they don't include a plush toy I'm walking out. I've waited over 30 minutes for a Peugeot dealer into including a stupid plush Peugeot lion plush into my last purchase, he was probably just idly chatting away with his manager all that time but I don't care. I got the plush. It's cute. Retails for about $40... absolute ripoff.
I got the Toyota 2020 Olympic plush (some robot masco thing) with my car just before lockdown. The salesman was saying Toyota has millions of these it can’t do anything with cos the Olympics were looking like being postponed.
I have my 1972 Panasonic RS-802US 8-track player/recorder where it plays and records music on 8-track. So I use my Sparkomatic 8-track cassette adapter to play MP3’s on them, and it plays regular cassettes where it plays way too fast.
You need to go deeper, find a way to get the longest train of converters you can think of.
Some sort of audio centipede?
That's the "true hacker" spirit. Do because you can.
Choosing awful music enough might even lead to this [shit to each others input] phenomenon that allegedly is depicted in the movie.
Yes, please!
Something like this: atomictoasters.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Adapter-Chain.jpg
Except with audio equipment.
You need to use an SD to mini-SD to micro-SD adapter here as well... :-)
if you noticed that thats what he did 8:11 at least i think he did
nah, he used an sd to micro-sd adapter
my mistake then
Syncopator It works with both SD and Mini SD cards. On the back, it says up to 8 GB, but if you use 16, 32 and 64 GB SD card, it will have more songs to go with it. Along with the earlier capacities like 256 MB, 1 GB and 2 GB will also used for box sets like a Reader's Digest or a Longines Symphonette boxsets from original instrumentals to compilations.
get a 128gb in there. played for days
now if i want to play vinyl in my modern car, have a solution for that?
John Lennon had a floating turntable installed in his Rolls Royce back in the '60s.
just imagine the vibrations xD
you could measure "vinyl records eaten by the scratchy vibrato-stylus per minute".
also imagine the vibrations of the stylus (mainly because of the motor, but also the road) amplified by your car stereo.
you might just go deaf from that by listening to the music at conversation-volume.
There's a Victrola player for motorcars … called Motorola.
they actually have car record players. I saw a DeSoto Firedome at a show with a record player installed in it. Slid in like a CD, It plays the record upside down in a gyroscopic type springed enclosure, the owner of the car said it never skipped.
I love how your videos don't just talk about the product, and what it is. You breaking them down, and showing us whats inside keeps me intrigued.
"Well I'll be damned if I have my stupid dreams of doing something completely pointless dashed by a piece of plastic." XD
The intro you use to your videos is immensely satisfying. Short and sweet, sounds wonderful, and the LEDs are a great visual touch. I think it's way better than the generic After Effects Tech Demo intro used by so many channels.
OMG! This is something I've dreamed of doing years ago. Glad to see someone finally did! Fantastic!
It would be awesome if the cogs in that Mp3 device spins a generator to charge its battery while being played in a cassette deck!.
Or if it detects the speed of the cogs to automatically play, stop, fast forward, etc...
There is not a generator in existence small enough to fit in a cassette that would generate any meaningful energy at the comparatively slow speeds a cassette plays at, nor do I think it would be possible to make a generator so small in the first place, but it would be a cool idea.
@@Templarfreak It's probably not about the speed but the torque.
@@stephanschmidt2334 im not really a mechanical engineer, but i dont think torque would be a factor in this case. energy generated in an electric motor comes from magnetic fields rotating around copper wiring, moving the fields faster moves electrons through the copper wiring faster.
you want torque in a motor for something like a drill, where you need to apply more rotational force, not faster rotational force
but that's just from my knowledge ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@Templarfreak the speed doesn't matter that much, its trivial to design a gearbox to make it spin fast enough, the problem comes when the motor spinning the cassette doesn't have enough torque to spin it up.
MP3 to cassette to 8 track. That is what I call backwards compatibility. Although something tells me it can't be taken all the way back to records.
Probably not, since records use physical grooves rather than magnetic pulses, although maybe with some very fancy and expensive technology you could create those grooves...
Actually, you might be able to create some kind of device which pushes the needle up and down to simulate the grooves.
a small speaker or piezo element should do fine.
nrdesign1991 Do records work just like that? The needle moves at the same frequency as the sound? Interesting. Definitely doable if so.
Sounds like a challenge! Anyone up for it?
I actually just got a cassette adaptor with bluetooth to use in my car since I always wound up breaking the older, cheaper adaptors with the headphone connection. Even has a little microphone you can pull out of it to dangle from the car's tape deck to use all the fancy hands free stuff, and the quality seems identical. I've been using cassette adaptors for years, even in the early 2000s for a CD player and my first mp3 player and always assumed they never got any better. Had no idea this MP3 reader version existed, but I would have sprung for it super quick back 12 years ago since I only ever used my MP3 player in the car with my silly wired adaptor. Great video!
I'm at a point now where I've watched so many of your videos, I cant remember for sure if I have already seen one or commented on it before. A testament to how good your videos are. In any case its pretty interesting the way the cassette mechanism was powered in the Cassette to 8 Track adapter. If I hadnt watched this, I never would have known, lol.
Yo Techmoan, I just gotta say, when I first watched this video and saw the device at 6:00, I bought one off Amazon right away - my car only has CD and Cassette players, but I listen to a lot of things straight off of UA-cam. About a year later I'm still using it every time I drive, and my friends use it too whenever they're in my car. I was a little skeptical at first, but as far as I can tell it sounds about the same quality as a CD. So thanks a lot for the info!
Hah, that tape mp3 adapter was pretty cool actually, never knew they existed. And putting it into the 8-track cassette adapter was some Inception level material.
Now that's a serious audio mash-up. I own one of those cassette-8 adaptors & yes, I have inserted a line-cassette adaptor connected to a discman. Compact disc to 8 track in 3 clumsy steps. Very happy to see someone else on the internet daft enough to do this!
12:09 You can actually hear it playing before you even pressed play. It must be close enough to the play heads to actually pick up the audio without even being engaged?
abigguitar I noticed that too. I was surprised he didn’t mention it in the video
Thank you, this was actually very helpful, I plan on using these adapters in my 1970 Dodge Charger, which has an 8 track player.
That was a lot of fun ... thanks! The mp3 music playing via cassette adapter via 8-track player made me smile.
I have no idea why I laughed when he pressed play @ 12:09 lol
Sudden loudness distortion?
I laughed a bit because it sounded so horrendous, then he hit play and I was like oh, must not be totally in the player to play correctly.
Just some signal leakage before he activated the amp in the adapter
I laughed because I imagine he was super frustrated when he did it, he smushed that button with such emotion.
Two reasons why I chuckled: 1) He's visibly struggling with the button 2) and once he succeeds, it lets out a horrible noise that only later begins to sound like a guitar
It's always nice to see a lot of adapters. micro SD to SD to casette to 8 track!
This brought back memories from high school when I was driving a 1979 pickup with an 8-track player. I found one of these 8 track to cassette adapters at a rummage sale, got the cassette to 1/8" jack and plugged into a discman so I could listen to cd's in my old truck. Worked well if I held the CD player, but having to shift gears and hold a disc man didn't work too well. Good times.
To those complaining that Techmoan "stole" this idea from databits, I suggest that you actually watch both videos. Same idea, yes, but they each have a different take on it. I'd also point out that databits has several videos that were quite obviously inspired by Techmoan's.
As a sidenote, I recently used a similar series of adapters to connect a mid-'80s portable TV to a modern cable box. Much like in this video, it was completely pointless but I enjoyed proving to myself that it could actually work. :)
You mean I can have an MP3 player that looks like a cassette?! Forget the adapter part, I just want that!
You can find them on eBay or Amazon for about $15.
John Cate The shipping will be from China, and it can take two to three weeks before delivery.
John Cate The shipping will be from China, and it can take two to three weeks before delivery.
Question is; do they make one that is *not* cheap chinese junk...
I have never heard of an 8-track media format. Didn't know that people were using these to listen to music in their cars back then. I was born way after it went out of use and never saw a car that can play an 8-track, but I did see a car with a cassette tape deck before. This is fascinating to watch.
You just needed a CD player to complete the set :D
what about a record player
Ey Larry!
Hello you~
Use an MP3 CD player and you've covered all the bases.
I had that setup in my 77 town car. 8track..cassette adapter...with a cassette adapter for a sony cd walkman😁😂
possibly one of my favourite videos of yours ever! if you EVER for some reason, needed to play a specific track, and it had to be in MP3, and you needed to play it on an 8 track player, youre covered. I love it.
So Carl, How do you listen to music?
Me: Well, I download it off the internet onto my micro sd card. Then I put that into a micro to standard SD card translator, then I put that into an SD to cassette player. I then put that into my cassette-to-8 Track adapter, which I put into my 8 Track player.
How odd.
Me: Well how else would one listen to music?
It's many thing you can learn on Techmoan. More you see on this channel more you learn about the past technology.
I remember those 8 track cassettes when I was a kid, and the betamax.
Support for 8GB SD cards puts the device sometime after the introduction of SDHC in 2006. Prior to that the limit was 4GB, and support for 4GB was iffy (it wasn't *quite* in spec) so 2GB was dominant.
Big seller in the 80's when I worked for Radio Shack. Just made sure they bought the extended warranty.
The one my parents had was far less bulky. It was longer than a typical 8-track, but not by much. The compact cassette actually mostly fit inside the machine when you played it.
I'm also pretty sure it has this small roller at the end. I don't know if it used it to power the cassette, but I do think it was what was used against the heads in the actual player.
a new problem now is having a car stereo with only a CD player and radio. how can I play my music from my cell phone. if it had a tape deck I could use the wired tape audio adapter that was shown in this video.
the car is from 2008 so there is no audio in jack or blue tooth. new cars come with these options now. I am better off changing the while deck.
I have the same thing in my car - I just listen to the radio. Those personal FM transmitters are generally a bit rubbish...and I have enough things plugged in.
I had that same problem with a car I used to own as well. My solution was to purchase an aux in jack that I wired into the car stereo. At the time, the solution was kind of crude, being that I had to splice a few of my radio cables and also use a power switch to turn the thing on and off, but it worked great, and sounded MUCH better than an FM transmitter.
I did a quick search on Amazon for "aux in adapters", and it seems that they've gotten better, as you no longer have to splice them in. Instead, you can just plug them in. They cost around $25-$30US. Hope that helps!
I have the same problem. 2007 Astra only has radio or CD. I now have a huge stack of burned CDs in the car since empty discs are cheap as dirt nowadays.
Usually there is a port on the backside of car stereo unit to connect the cd changer. I have Yatour mp3 player that simulates the changer and it works perfectly in this situation. Sometimes you need a special Y adapter cable to put inbetween. Everything depends on the stereo model.
Benisteinzimmer I have actually done that too. I feel like I am in the 1990s! I guess we could add a CD changer lol
I still listen to my 8 tracks and have that cassette adapter and still works. I love old technology. Still the best older stuff. Built to last.
Instead of taking off the piece of plastic, you should have made an even bigger monstrosity by plugging one of those headphone-to cassette-adapters into the device and put that in the 8-track player.
Or a simple nail file would have solved it I bet
the limitations written in manuals are just a list of what SD cards it has been tested with. some companies like Canon or Nikon make extensive tests with basically every SD available atm. others will just test a couple of basic ones. it's the writing speed and format which is important here.
Dear Mr Techmoan. Could you please review an adaptor to play my 78 shellac disks on my car mini disk player?
if you rip out the recorded audio from your own youtubevideo from just
about 12:10, transfer that piece of digitalaudio on the SDcard, put the
SD card in the cassette adaptor and play that with the 8 track adaptor
in an 8 track player, the universe will implode. Great video. Made me smile. Thanks
16gb is probably the limit of what it can read. Once you get into 32gb you're talking about SDHC. More than likely 8gb was the most widely available size at the time.
Oops, I meant SDXC. My numbers were wrong anyway. 32gb would be max. 🤐
I was going to post something about card sizes, but +Techmoan really hates redundant comments. I sure am glad I found yours on the first page.
Yeah, they glitch out. Songs get cut off halfway through, some are completely corrupt, others play perfectly.
One can format a 64 GB card into FAT32, one just needs a special program for it.
The only difference between SDHC and SDXC is that SDXC comes formatted as exFAT. You can just reformat it to FAT32. I use a 128GB card in my 3DS this way, even though Nintendo lists the maximum card size as 32GB.
We still have one of these running around here somewhere. I remember going on vacation with my family and listening to cassettes with this contraption hanging out of an eight track player in a 1981 Cadillac Fleetwood. My parents want us to listen to their eight tracks like Lynn Anderson, John Denver and "Torn Between Two Lovers"... Over and over again. This device saved us so we could listen to Springsteen, Zeppelin and the Dead.
"Yo dawg, I heard you like adapters."
Wot, no puppet? I missed that dude. Your banter with him was quite cheeky.
The mp3 cassette would have been more clever if they used the tape deck motors to recharge the battery.
or skip the middle man and have it self powered
Love that you're subtly featuring the great black artists of our day in this vid. Thank you for that.
Talking about cheap power adapters:
Could you tell us which car cigarette to usb adapter is worthwhile?
i found many create a lot of HF noise and my radio reception drops.
Just pay a decent amount from a recognisable brand - or a company you trust. E.g. Belkin, Griffin - perhaps pick one up in a proper electronics or phone store, even an Apple store.... just avoid unbranded or cheapo devices from a market stall or a random ebay seller. Too many people buy a dash cam or action cam for £100+, then cheap-out on the SD card and charger and blame the device.
Thank you, will do!
Have you ever heard of Databits?
He does content similar to yours.
Anker. Hands down, the best USB charging solutions (including cables) I've ever come across. Readily available on Amazon. Maybe slightly more than some of the alternatives, but you get what you pay for...
Tronsmart has HF noise like crazy on their car (samsung compat fast charge) adaptors fwiw, good and cheap though
I played CDs thru my car's cassette player for years with an adapter, it was a fantastic cheap alternative. Also had one of those cassette mp3 players, good times. Thanx for bringing back these memories 🤓
I'm so happy I found your channel.
Have you taken your retro hifi apart just for this video?
No - I've been doing some re-organising.
I used to have one of these, in fact this exact model. It had terrible wow & flutter, even when it was new. I also had a variant of this, an FM tuner/8-track adaptor. This had a tiny socket on the front to plug in an external aerial.
Wow. MP3 on an 8-track. Now I've seen everything.
I do recall the radio announcement when the very last vehicle produced in North America rolled off of the assembly line with an 8- track player as standard equipment. It was a Ford pickup truck. I was just a boy. My generation grew up with transister radios, record albums, and cassettes. I have never owned an 8-track but saw some and thought that their continuous play was neat! Or "neato," as we used to say.
I would love to jam out in public holding only a cassette tape haha.
Imagine how Starlord would react to that.
I use a walkman on a daily basis and, to be honest, it doesn't sound bad at all, but most people don't really pay it much attention.
Love it! MP3 > Cassette > 8 Track playback! This had to be done, nice work!
Obviously ignoring the first thing you mentioned (the cassette to 8-track converter), do you know if I could use any of these on an old computer like an apple ii or c64 with a cassette drive? I'm beginning to collect older computers and while I eventually want to get authentic software for them, I want to be able to get programs from "alternate" sources first to see if I like them.
I suppose it should work - play an mp3 recording of a copy of a tape. Getting the original recording would be the issue though.
Techmoan Thanks. I recently saw a video from 8bitguy that made it sound like it wasn't hard to find the MP3's, but I haven't searched them out yet, so you may be right about them being difficult to find.
Also, with the SD card one, what if I just put the programs on the card without using the MP3 method? Is there a chance that could work?
No chance! The MP3 player has no idea how to convert computer programs into the correct audio format.
That should work, but is more complicated than needed. Most people do is just hook up the audio out jack of their PC/smartphone/MP3 player into the cassette in jack on their retro computer - no need for an actual cassette deck.
rjhelms Well I do want authentic cassettes eventually, and a 3.5mm-cassette is about the same price as a male-male cable, and the former is much more noticable in stores.
0:37 Nice selection of 8-tracks right there!
Now what we need now is a way to convert from iPhones to hand-cranked phonograph, that will get you from oldest to newest lol
Daniel Daniels oh but that's too easy now, isn't it?
I suppose you could wire iphone sound through a piezo piece, and have the steel needle sit on that :P
Bruh, if Apple themselves make that, they'll make it expensive as hell lol
You should have gotten one of those bluetooth cassette adapters they have now.
Thanks for doing 8 Track > Tape > MP3 though. I had anxiety thinking you might not do it.
MP3 on an 8 Track... what madness IS THIS!?!?
That mp3 to compact cassette player is brilliant. I would love to see a vhs version of it.
8 track to tape to micro tape to aux to Bluetooth dongle then back to aux to chromecast to smart TV to external speakers to a wire voice recorder.
Do you accept the challenge?
Everybody replace this
I use a Sony WM-FX38 Tape Walkman at work, and the SD to Cassette adapter in this video has been a godsend for me as of late. Higher ups just see me using a tape player, which is allowed, and I don't have to carry my tape case everywhere. Love the Pre-Amp in this old Tape player, as it works wonders with my AKG K550 Mk II over ear cans.
Very disappointing, where is the green Muppet man at the end, the review was great, as per usual but the end was lacking that certain aplomb, ;-)
Maybe Techmoan has exorcised idiocy from YT, and Muppet-man is no longer needed?
Maybe Techmoan has exorcised idiocy from YT, and Muppet-man is no longer needed?
Your name fits you well but let's hope you are wrong & muppet man was on holiday or at his psychiatrist or something, :-)
Your name fits you well but let's hope you are wrong & muppet man was on holiday or at his psychiatrist or something, :-)
+David Johnson I think he is. We'll just have to see
I got the same thing that I've got off of eBay today. It plays MP3's on a cassette. It works with all of vintage cassette deck of your choice, one of the shoebox cassette recorders, cassette deck, children's cassette recorder or an 8-track adapter thatI have is a Sparkomatic. I tried it on my Panasonic RS-803US 8-track player & recorder and it plays and sounds so good than an ordinary 8-track tape and cassette.
11:57 - 12:35 sd card in cassette in 8 track. Musiception.
the 8-track to cassette adapter I had had a rubber wheel driven off the 8-track player's capstan that ran the mechanics on the 8-track adapter & it always ate my cassettes all the time so this one you show is a little higher end than the one I had years ago as it has the motor built in to run the cassette transport!
Adapterception...
I had one of those cassette - 8 Track adapters that I purchased at Radio Shack back in 1978. I popped in my Dark Side of the Moon tape, and it played back in fantastic monaural. It was for my home deck. I immediately returned it and purchased a proper cassette deck.
OMG it's micro SD to SD to cassette to 8 track
Or the Micro SD, to SD to cassette in a Superscope Storyteller kiddie cassette player.
Great to know that you can go through 3 media and the 8 track still worked. They don't make them like the use to.
Spoiler: the sound quality is going to be crap.
Spoiler: your fucking wrong
the music is from the you tube library anyway which means it's mp3 and not the devices shown
+Chainsaw Dude you do realise its possible to record it onto a casette right? this isnt rocket surgery
Spoiler, it's a microphone recording that has been compressed recompressed and processed multiple times before it plays through your laptop speakers. You are dumb.
GeoNeilUK Right, the cheap mp3 player sound converted into casette signal, through a cheap casette deck's head, into 8-track signal and to 8-track player's head is fantastic. That's all the microphone, editing software and youtube's fault.
Many thanks. I just bought one of these 8-track adapters off eBay - it didn't seem to work, so with the help of your video, I took it apart and found that the belt has disintegrated. I was about to write it off as yet another eBay failure when I wondered if it would still work with a cassette-to-3.5mm jack adapter. Guess what, it did! Even without any of the mechanism turning the head was still reading the cassette and passing the output to the 8-track. Result! I guess it would also probably work with a cassette-to-bluetooth adapter.
You missed the opportunity to use a Micro SD in a MicroSD to SD Adapter
But he did though
I used to have one of these, this brings back memories. I also had a cassette which played AM radio when you put it into a cassette machine. It have a tuning dial on the outside. You don't see many of them around nowadays. I wish I had kept it.
Please, don't throw your crappy power adapters out, recycle them
there's so much useful parts on those worth saving, but for sure creating ewaste is not the move.
Where do you live where you can recycle such complex pieces of electronics? I can't even recycle broken glass here, forget about electronics.
@@x--. Canada, where we actually care about the environment
@@munkpuppy Count yourself lucky. Were I King, I'd gladly impose a fee for companies and the waste they create, that'd motivate more recycling options. Here, though, the list of "cannot be recycled" is long.
the natural wow and flutter that occurred when you used the 8-track to cassette converter was beautiful lol. not even being sarcastic. I just love that shit.
Possibly the most perverted amalgam of electro mechanical sound formats..that I have ever observed, online..!
Only equalled by Lazygamereviews playing hdmi out games thu a old black and white UHF tv...
now if they'd taken the LCD module from an LCD UHF tv and put it in a slide projector...
An lcd uhf tv..what manner of electronic perversion was that!? I used to put lcd monitor screens in overhead projectors, so I'm just as much an offender, I guess!!
The worst "offense" that I could imagine would be, trying to play doom thru a Baird televisor, someones gotta try that, one day!!
"I used to put lcd monitor screens in overhead projectors"
Thats.... i mean.... eehm.... WHY THE HELL DID I NEVER THINK OF THAT :D
Fantastic video! It made me smile. I installed a 4-track in my car, then when 8-track came out I swapped it. I bought one of those pinch roller adapters so I could play my 4-track tapes... 👱🏻
I hate to be 'that guy', but there is a lesser known channel called Databits that did this a couple of months ago.
See the info in the video description - the origin of the video was this tweet twitter.com/techfinnell/status/715530074028699648
Ow no, someone on youtube doing the same thing as someone else! How dare they!
Similar? Maybe. Our boy Techmoan went much further in depth as to how it worked. As per always. He improved upon the video without ever seeing it. Bravo!
you for real. he's a very good guys. data bits is snotty
Valentina Farrugia, that’s a bit much.
5:47 - "But let's move the same problem on perhaps 20 years or so later, if you've got an older vehicle with a Compact Cassette player, but you want to play MP3s on it." Yup. I actually bought two adapters for doing that. The first is the cassette adapter you showed right here, and it worked pretty well, but I'm surprised you didn't mention the second: an FM transmitter that attached to an MP3 player's headphone jack and played on any of several channels on the car's FM radio dial. The FM transmitter definitely had a sound quality advantage -- when it worked, that is. That, of course, was the problem. There were several things that sent me back to the cassette adapter. First, in places that have a lot of radio stations, like the city where I live now, it could be hard to find an FM frequency that wasn't being used by a commercial radio station, which the radio would pick up more readily than my little transmitter. Second, my FM transmitter tended to go through batteries quickly, and while it had an adapter that would plug into the cigarette lighter power plug, the car I bought this thing for didn't have a cigarette lighter. (On that car, the cigarette lighter and ashtray were optional, and since nobody in my family smokes, we didn't want to pay extra for it.) Third, even if there weren't any FM stations interfering with the signal, we found the range of the FM transmitter to be quite limited, and also very sensitive to where in the car it was sitting. So, while it sounded great when it worked, all too often, it DIDN'T work. So, back I went to the cassette adapter. That is, until the tape deck in the car broke, at which point I gave up and just listened to the radio.
omfg. Look at the picture of the "Car Audio Cassette Adapter" at 6:08
"Mini-Disc" "DCC Digital Compact Cassette" "Compact Disc Digital Audio" "Auto Reverse"
Wtf. That's a lot of logos.
"Made in China"
Oh, that explains it.
That cassette mp3 player is beautiful, cheap but beautiful :D
I'm glad you put the mp3 cassette in the 8 track, i would have been disappointed and upset otherwise.
38 dislikes from iPhone 7 users triggered by no headphone jack...
Don't forget about MP3 and WMV CDs! I bought a special aftermarket car stereo that could play those. Now they all can, but that was not the case in 2006 or so. My particular aftermarket stereo didn't have an AUX jack, and SD card slot, or a USB input (something I came to regret later), but I could at least play multiple albums without having to change discs in the car.
And, of course you could plug a Discman into a cassette adapter so you could play CDs on your cassette stereo.
That might be the first time an MP3 has ever been played in an 8-track player!
Review the Bluetooth cassette adapter
I'll just add a couple pieces of trivia here. I used to work for Radio Shack (Tandy in the UK) and clearly whoever the actual manufacturer of that 8-Track to cassette adapter was also made the one that we sold. Ours was EXACTLY the same except that the three buttons were molded in different color plastic. They sold for (IIRC) $35.00 and worked fairly well. You had to experiment with which "track" selection on the 8-track it was inserted into was on to see what produced the best sound. There was at least one such adapter here in the U.S. (marketed by Sparkomatic) that used a weighted flywheel drive system so as to avoid using an electric motor at all. Unfortunately, they had a LOT of flutter and wow and depended on the 8-track deck to have a decent functioning drive system to work. The problem there was that a lot of old 8-track decks had worn or broken drive belts, so turning that weighted flywheel (especially at the correct RPMs) was out of the question. The type of adapter shown here didn't rely on the drive working at all. Lastly, the Sparkomatic adapter used batteries for the electronics, so that was just another possible point of failure. And finially, you mentioned using the cassette adapter for MP3 players but don't forget that the first use for them was to hookup portable CD players to cassette decks when CD's first became the norm.. Good video as always! 👍
Yes, I did have a look at the referenced 'original' video. But as always, I prefer your video even if you discuss the same devices. But you go more into depth on the devices and even open up on of them. That is more than just a simple review and THAT is why your way of reviewing does it for me... Keep up the good stuff !
I love the second one, the sd card to audio cassette adapter. Great bit of kit, I might get one for my old Honda. The only disappointment is I was hoping it used something like a small dyno to draw power from the turning of the spool motors. I wonder if there was ever one made to do that.
In addition to these 8-Track to cassette adaptors, there were also mechanical models that transmitted motion from the deck to the adaptor via a fake idler wheel. These tended to be much more compact than the ones equipped with their own electric motors for the tape mechanism, but suffered from speed issues the moment there was bad physical contact between the deck and adaptor wheels, or if the 8-Track deck ran too fast or slow to start with. Dimension-wise, my "Sparkomatic" adaptor is maybe only one inch longer than a real 8 track cartridge, it is properly convenient for playing digital music through an 8 track deck. In fact, that's what I do on my old Hi-Fi system since it's already maxed out on audio inputs from various analogue formats.