Cassette - Your Analog Gateway Vitamin

If you're fortunate enough to pick up a well maintained hi-fi cassette deck from the early to mid 90s with Dolby HX Pro and Dolby C, you'll soon realise that cassette recordings don't have a "sound" as such as they're very close to being perceptually transparent. I have two sitting right here that can record from 20Hz to 20kHz within 1dB in Dolby C with humble TDK FE cassettes, so it's not even necessary to buy expensive chrome or metal tapes to make excellent recordings.

One of the biggest marketing mistakes in cassette deck history was to not make it clear to people what Dolby C actually was. It wasn't just a far more effective noise reduction system than Dolby B, it also allowed any tape type to operate far more linearly at high frequencies. This made full 20kHz bandwidth recordings commonplace and not always easy to differentiate from a CD unless listening at very high volume levels so the small amount of tape hiss left was still audible.

The stories of how awful compact cassettes were all come from people who never owned a decent deck in their life or didn't understand the fundamentals when it came to looking after them. Pre-recorded cassettes usually sound awful compared to recordings you can make yourself from a good source, so that may have skewed people's perspectives too. If you want to hear cassettes at their best, do your research. There are still some great vintage decks out there for sensible money.

creepy dude..

dobley

Great video! I was fortunate to have purchased and used brand new cassette multitracks in the late 80's and early 90's. The best I owned was a Tascam 488 that I synced via FSK to a Roland MV30 sequencer/sound module. Your creative video has almost inspired me to look for another 488 or a 688 (still have the original 7 and 8-track masters safely stored).

Great video! Nice to see the M-7 microphone. I still have an old M-7 with the mics, but only one mic works. I should try and use that for recording again. Thanks for the inspiration.

fostex xr7 only supports chrome cassettes, recording on type 1 cassettes will have a wrong bias which results in a low amount of bass frequncies and low mids.

I've been going every day and still nothing for 3 months. If I don't find anything I'm going to sue

Could you let me borrow one of those tape decks when I graduate

Damn this video rules

Hey man have you got original music somewhere on the internet? Great content!

amazing

This is a way of life. Freedom in doing it for yourself.

Amazing! I just went on a trip to Colombia South America, to visit some relatives (I grew up in Canada pretty much my entire life), and some older cousins who are musicians there gifted me a TASCAM Porta 07 Ministudio 4-Track Cassette Recorder (it looks very used but it powers up and works!). This is video is an inspiration for me to get this thing going and trying it out. I'm going to see if I can order some of those RTM tapes on Amazon!

Every single thing I've heard from this channel has the absolute warmest analog sound with great stereo separation. I know the way its recorded/ mic'd up has a big amount to do with it as well, but the overall end product is so tasty.

For some reason your guitar and beats tracks helped my ADHD. I downloaded the video and trimmed those part to listen to later. Thank you sir, you are a genious! :D

Dope suit.

You're so inspiring! Keep it up!

Cool video man, I too love my cassette decks. 🎶🙌🎹

I have the library of congress tape machine. It is pretty cool!

A lot of bands are now moving to selling tapes as merch due to high price and waiting list for vinyl .
Recently purchased a double JvC tape deck. This was from Ebay ,and cost €30 . Will be using this for my bands demo tapes and live recordings . Will be selling at our gigs.

what a lovely channel :*

Whats the mic youre speaking in??? Love the slightly crunched out sound!

Outstanding. I have several tape decks, including reel to reel and cassette.

I'm old enough to have had an original Sansui WS-X1 6-track cassette recorder back in the early 90s. It was sweet, double tape deck and everything. Bouncing down, flipping for backward stuff. I was more creative with that thing, an Alesis SR16 drum machine and a Juno 106 than I've ever been since. Now going for around £800 on Reverb. Also had an ADAT 8-track, which was less interesting. Wish I'd kept them both. I did keep my original Akai S3000, which is similarly vibey for re-sampling. keep it up man, your channel is super inspiring!

The production quality is amazing holy shit, you’re gonna make it big if you keep goin on like this dude! Such a chill mix of information and entertainment.

Meanwhile I’m gonna go buy a couple several ish cassettes and recorders (they will absolutely be my gateway to more physical media formats)

your amazing

Teach me, master.

Mate, I'm so happy to find this channel. Btw, I'm also tapehead, playing and recording my RTM, Basf, Agfa, Zonal tapes on my Revox B77 (factory restored, brand new). Collected over 200 reel tapes over the past 5 years (10.5 inch reels, with various designs and window shapes).
So I understand your passion, keep making music and videos. This is art (at least for us) :D
🙏Please, make a playlist with all these instrumentals that you used in your videos, You have such great taste in music 😍

Bro the voiceover is out of this world, I can tell from my phone speaker how beautiful it sounds

Hey man, great stuff, new subscriber here, you mentioned there are cassettes with a “sun baked flavor” are there any brands and specific tapes you recommend? I want something Lifi but not too. Any recommendations welcome thank you!

Great video! I enjoyed it a lot! Cassettes aren't a bad format at all, it depends on how much money you want to invest. it is actually a format that reached "analog perfection" few years before it fell into oblivion

I have an old C-1 I purchased at a thrift store YEARS ago for like $5, it turns on but I think the belt doesn't work, I was meaning to get it repaired and this video may have just inspired me to. Thank you!

I was able to get a library of congress C1 tape player for $20 on FB Marketplace because the guy who had it said it wouldnt play right even with the power cable. For some reason, when the battery in the machine is dead, it will not play the tape right even on a power supply. I took the battery out and it worked just fine. Also changed the belts.

Similarly, i also found my tascam 424 mkii 4 track recorder. It was like $22. It wouldnt start but all it needed was a new capacitor. Changed the belts and it works perfectly. Already used it as an instrument and recorded a few songs on it. So fantastic.

This guy is right, you can just get lucky. Keep trying.

Absolutely in awe of your approach with terrific humble retro gear! Keep on keepin' on!
And the duds complete the theme! Great stuff!

Thank you for drawing the public's attention to the alternative record and, as for me, the real sound. your channel is a storehouse of similar and mostly useless thematic channels. I love old-school analogue gear. I have been painstakingly assembling an analog studio for 8 years, it was very exciting..

Just brilliant !❤

Is this directed by Wes Anderson?

Huh? Not sure if this is a Spinal Tap kind-of joke. If so, well done Lad!!

Really amazing video 👏

I'm pretty sure the price gauging has been coming up to speed for a few years ;-;

Beautiful video! Again, all your tracks during the video sound amazing, focused, spacemen, probably thanks to a meticulous mixing process... it would be great to have some tips. Ok, subscribed! :)

Have you tried recording onto VHS tapes on a stereo vhs player/recorder? Apparently sounds nearly as good as reel-to-reel, some even call it the poor mans reel-to-reel. I haven't tried it myself. It only works with s-vhs or stereo vhs player/recorders though.

4 multitrack recorders, one reel to reel. 3 digital recorders from the eighties and daws gathering dust because tape is so much better

Amazing video! Thank you! Question from a rookie. What's your process for taking your tape masters and converting them back into digital for streaming, replication, etc?