[HN Gopher] Blank cassette tape types and how to choose the righ...
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Blank cassette tape types and how to choose the right one
Author : derwiki
Score : 35 points
Date : 2023-01-03 16:10 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theaudioowl.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theaudioowl.com)
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| You know, there was a time when we used to save our programs on
| cassette tapes. I don't wanna go back there, but maybe some of
| the youngsters who are nostalgic for cassettes would like to try
| that out?
|
| Maybe GitHub could have a 'save to cassette' button on repos and
| then make money by sending you the cassette? ("Only $9.95 +
| shipping & handling")
| fatnoah wrote:
| I had the cassette drive for my C64, and I remember just how
| amazingly long it took to load and save even the most trivial
| things.
| robohoe wrote:
| As a youngster, I did not enjoy aligning the cassette tape
| drive heads.
| buildsjets wrote:
| GitHub has some old software-on-cassette already. The best part
| is you don't need a cassette player to use it, just connect the
| headphone jack of your cellphone (if the manufacturer wasn't
| courageous enough to remove it) to the casette-in port of your
| favorite 8-bit machine and hit play on the WAV file from
| GitHub.
|
| https://github.com/sonic2000gr/TI99
| taylodl wrote:
| What we need is an audio playback tool allowing you to select VST
| plugins into the playback chain. We already have VST's mimicking
| tape playback (and they're good!). We even have VST's mimicking
| LP vinyl playback - complete with dust and hiss. Plug those into
| your audio playback app and voila! You can re-create any of the
| old sounds you want!
| lancesells wrote:
| Have any VST's to recommend for those things?
| palmaltd wrote:
| Soundsource [0] on macOS can do this! I run Chow Tape [1] and
| it performs quite admirably. I've never measured the latency
| but it has never affected me much. I'm certain a similar
| solution is available on Linux.
|
| To be fair, (quite janky, ime) VST hosts are available for
| Windows, via the music player (e.g. Musicbee) or system-wide,
| but those have never been reliable. Your mileage will vary.
|
| [0] https://rogueamoeba.com/soundsource/ [1]
| https://github.com/jatinchowdhury18/AnalogTapeModel/tree/dev...
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I got into watching techmoan and similar YouTubers who got me
| interested in vintage audio. I thought seriously about getting
| into tapes because I have nostalgia for them and saw you could
| make really great recordings w/ metal tapes and a deck that
| supports Dolby S.... Decks like that can be had on ebay but the
| metal tapes are crazy expensive, for what a deck like that costs
| plus two metal tapes you could probably get two minidisc
| recorders and 100 discs.
|
| Today the new decks all use a cheap mechanism that is reliable
| but sounds awful. New tapes are 'type 0' frequently. On top of
| that it is really no fun to rewind so I gave up on getting a
| cassette deck but who knows, if a really elite deck shows up at
| the community reuse center I might grab it.
| derwiki wrote:
| Do you have tips on a good tape deck model, or manufacturer
| that consistently made high quality decks? A friend gave me his
| old Sony TC-W365 which worked admirably, until recent
| mechanical failures.
| itintheory wrote:
| Nakamichi is widely regarded as the highest quality
| manufacturer. The decks can be expensive and some of them are
| extremely complex to service.
|
| /r/cassetteculture is a decent resource for info.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I would repair the one you have or get a refurbished Sony
| from ebay like
|
| https://www.ebay.com/itm/185721049456
|
| those Sony(s) do need maintenance more than some decks but
| they are very available.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| I have a TC-WE525 circa 1999 or 2000 that stopped working -
| when I would start a tape playing, it would play for a
| second, then stop, like it got to the end of the tape.
|
| The belts disintegrate over time and must be replaced. I
| successfully repaired mine from a belt kit I was able to get
| on Amazon. It's not terribly easy to replace the belts but I
| did manage to do it.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| The best ones seemed to use direct drive motors.
|
| In my opinion, the "god-tier" would be Revox B215
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revox_B215) and the Nakamichi
| Dragon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakamichi_Dragon).
|
| I've personally used the Revox in the late 80's and early
| 90's as a DJ in a college radio station. It was super durable
| (it had to be, in a punk environment). I don't have any
| experience with the Dragon but it looks cool and I see it has
| good performance.
|
| I think anyone who adopts a tape deck these days had better
| be ready for getting it serviced. Aside from the mechanical
| stuff that just wears out, the electronics are likely to need
| work after 30+ years. Capacitors, mainly.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| > it is really no fun to rewind
|
| You gotta make a game of it. I crafted a tape rewinder made
| from an old ballpoint pen and bent paperclip that held the
| cassette as I whirled it around. Like a '80s fidget spinner.
| aliqot wrote:
| i use two hands on a pencil and race. have to remember to
| slow down at the end though.
| caned wrote:
| New production, Type II cassette tapes are available from ATR
| Magnetics, e.g.: https://www.atrtape.com/products/atr-magnetics-
| colbalt-silve...
| arielweisberg wrote:
| Can I get a DSP filter or something to simulate tape and skip the
| tape :-)
|
| It seems like everything about records and tape is not really
| technically superior and the sound signature could be emulated.
| squidsoup wrote:
| Yes, there is some great tape emulation out there (uHe's Satin
| is killer https://u-he.com/products/satin/), but tape machines
| aren't desirable for the sound alone - they can be instruments
| in their own right. Allesandro Cortini from NiN is an artist
| that uses tape very effectively in his live performances for
| example (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdbgEHsPkes).
| trynewideas wrote:
| See also looping tapes:
|
| https://www.guerrilladigital.cc/2021/03/10/i-spent-the-
| last-...
|
| and anything AMULETS does:
|
| https://cdm.link/2017/01/heres-make-tape-loop-cassette-tape/
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@amuletsmusic/videos
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Yeah, I really don't get the nostalgia, but maybe it's because
| I lived much of my life in the vinyl and then cassette tape
| eras. There are so many downsides to both. Vinyl records take
| up a lot of space and they degrade just a little bit every time
| you play them unless you have a very expensive laser player and
| even then...). Cassettes also degrade quite quickly and the
| sound was never that great with cassettes. Of the two, though,
| vinyl nostalgia is a bit more understandable because you can
| watch the record rotate and the theory of operation is quite
| simple.
| kid64 wrote:
| How do you figure? An analog impression directly mirrors
| reality, digital is just an approximation. So digital seems
| inherently inferior.
| caned wrote:
| An analog signal recorded to tape is subject to all manner of
| distortions that don't apply to digital recordings, including
| frequency-dependent phase shift, crosstalk between tracks,
| print-through, tape hiss, and saturation.
|
| I can never buy the argument that analog recordings are
| better _because_ they are more faithful. I do think they can
| sound very beautiful and be aesthetically pleasing, however.
| arielweisberg wrote:
| The two analog mediums I mentioned are both pretty flawed and
| difficult to get clean sound out of.
|
| Digital isn't inherently bad. There was a time when recording
| engineers salivated over stereo CDs and all the problems that
| just went away. Sure we use compressed audio now, but I can't
| really tell the difference in any real listening scenario if
| I am being honest.
|
| Even with a headphone amp and some nice headphones.
| kid64 wrote:
| Not trolling, but can you elaborate on vinyl's flaws? My
| understanding is that the width of the groove corresponds
| directly to the frequency. Issues of dust etc are just
| implementation problems, which can be resolved by placing a
| small vacuum near the stylus (for example). But maybe I
| don't fully understand how it works.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Temperature and Humidity literally warps the Vinyl.
|
| Even if you had perfect humidity control + temperature
| control vacuum chambers storing these things, they'll
| still degrade over time due to other aging issues.
|
| It doesn't even take that much time before these older
| technologies (vinyl, tape, etc. etc.) degrade
| permanently.
| mnd999 wrote:
| I think implementation problems is a good summary of
| vinyl's flaws. In theory, it's great.
| squidsoup wrote:
| For some genres of music, clean sound is not what you want.
| mnd999 wrote:
| You want you music to sound less like what was recorded?
| That doesn't make any sense to me.
| squidsoup wrote:
| I think we're talking across purposes, I was referring to
| recording on tape.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| They're both approximations. In this case and most cases, the
| digital approximation is much closer to the original than the
| analog approximation.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > An analog impression directly mirrors reality
|
| A clay impression directly mirrors your hand by directly
| mirroring reality... but its a terrible storage mechanism in
| practice. In practice, a picture of your hand, or a 3d-model
| of your hand, stored on a reliable hard drive or USB stick,
| will hold the information more reliably.
|
| Analog impressions, be they clay, or vinyl, are destroyed
| little-by-little each time you read from it. Simply measuring
| / reading from film, vinyl, and even tape, causes the
| magnetic fields to break, or the vinyl to warp and change
| shape.
|
| Digital impressions of course have the same issue. Except we
| have these things called "error correction codes" that can
| reset / wipe-out any such accumulation of errors (to a
| point). So long as the digital record is reread, and
| rewritten, before the error-correction codes wear out, you
| can perpetually store data without any loss. CDROMs and DVD-
| ROMs are written with absurdly huge amounts of error-
| correction codes, ensuring that they'll almost never wear out
| under reasonable circumstances. (Hard drives, and Flash
| drives have different error correction codes, but the process
| is the same. Modern filesystems, like ZFS, can even read,
| analyze, and rewrite data as it degrades automatically)
|
| --------
|
| In contrast, I watched Star Wars maybe... 20 times? Before
| the tape started to significantly degrade on my old VHS
| player. These are technologies that can only be read dozens
| of times before wearing out.
|
| Not only that, but "copying" tapes, trying to preserve them,
| doesn't work. The act of reading innately damages the tape,
| so its not like you actually are "gaining more reads" by
| copying them.
|
| Only digital has the benefit of error correction codes that
| _PERFECTLY_ replicate data within a given time frame.
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