I tried to record music onto a cassette tape using modern tech

https://swiftrocks.com/i-tried-to-record-music-onto-a-cassette-tape-using-modern-tech

by rockbruno • 5 days ago

21 18 5 days ago

Using your Boss Katana as a DAW was genius.

Tbh this was somewhat underwhelming… I expected using a microcontroller+motor to replace the mechanisms of a regular cassette mechanism, or some other uses of modern tech for the cassette.

Instead, it’s just… a tape recorder connected, in a somewhat convoluted way, to spotify.

cgyvbunji• 3 hours ago

Installing a Linux distro on a laptop is frontpage material so this sounds about right.

leviathant• 3 hours ago

Flagging seems extreme, but this is a very low information post about audio adapters, with a smidge about amplification. I went in expecting some kind of arduino-to-electromagnet jiggery-pokery, but I suppose that just means set myself up for disappointment.

tanseydavid• 5 days ago

This takes me back to the frustrations of trying to record band rehearsals in small spaces using the built-in-mic (a very long time ago).

Poor fidelity of cassette tape medium was the least of the issues. The biggest problem was the built in mic's inability to handle the overall volume.

Lots of experimentation with placement of the recorder (and thus mic) within the rehearsal space would eventually yield results that were no longer useless -- but still pretty, pretty bad. I do not miss cassette.

To be honest I don't really even miss analog -- but this comes to down convenience and flexibility rather than fidelity comparisons.

Said another way: there are no analog DAWs (a redundant and captain-obvious statement, I do realize).

RetroTechie• 5 days ago

I wonder how many of these small tape recorders still exist in the world today. They used to be ubiquitous back in the day. But surely a big % must have been dumped in the trash or a recycling bin @ some point.

Wouldn't surprise me if there'd be a viable market for such devices brandnew. Not just for nostalgic greybeards, also younger folks unfamiliar with yesteryear's tech & curious about it.

HeyLaughingBoy• 3 hours ago

Not while Goodwill and eBay exist.

vitally3643• 2 hours ago

They're still being mass produced today

buildsjets2• 2 hours ago

Walmart sill sells multiple brands of cassette recorders in this specific format. They sounded terrible when they were peak technology, so I have to assume they are even worse now.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Cassette-Player-Tape-Recorder-Por...

https://www.walmart.com/ip/JENSEN-MCR-100-Cassette-Player-Re...

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Craig-Portable-Cassette-Player-Re...

rambojohnson• 3 hours ago

you could have just... pressed record on the casette player.

daneel_w• 3 hours ago

I don't understand the article. It tries to shroud a plain tape recorder in mystery, but the whole thing is just eye-rollingly underwhelming because tape recorders/decks are still easy to find, and so many of them have common line level inputs that are ready to go without any fiddling; just connect your analog output and press record.

shevy-java• 3 hours ago

Despite not being the best medium for music, I find cassettes to be a really impressive piece of technology particularly due to how easy it is to write content to them.

I like old tech too and in the 1990s I recorded a lot of audio stuff straight from the radio, but nowadays with USB everywhere I just would not use tapes anymore. I just find USB sticks so much more convenient. I kind of transitioned into the digital world only and while no transition is perfect, I feel that the trade-offs are in favour of digital only rather than audio.

Even listening to the radio is different, I'd just use mpv and record the stream into a local file, as-is. It is strange how new technology obsoletes old tech but I also don't want to go back anymore. Though old hardware is cool, I love old computers from the 1970s and 1980s. They are so much cooler than the modern computers, even though the modern computers beat them performance-wise with their eyes closed.

charcircuit• 2 hours ago

Even in today's world of modern iPhones, there's nothing that lets you easily jump to a specific part of an audio or video and re-record sections of it in the same way you can with a cassette.

Don't most DAW have a feature like this built in? I've also seen Final Cut Pro have a record button that can do something similar for video.

skydhash• 2 hours ago

You only need a monitor to capture the audio output and use that as the input in the recorder software. Pipewire and macOS have a whole graph as their sound system where you can connect node (input, outputs, dsp) however you want. Don’t know much about PulseAudio and Jack.

stephenhandley• 2 hours ago

TLDR: pressed record on cassette tape recorder and recorded onto cassette tape

buildsjets2• 2 hours ago

I mean, this might have been slightly impressive if he had demonstrated the use of an oscilloscope to correctly set the output level of the DAW/preamp to prevent clipping while still utilizing enough dynamic range to get a decent presence in the recording. This is basically just instructions on how to adapt 1/8 TRS to 5-pin DIN.

Back in the day, my brother and I took the read head out of one of these and re-installed it upside down. That way it read the 2 B-side tracks instead of the A-side tracks, and they are going in the wrong direction, so you can listen to all of the the cool hidden messages from Satan.

(Dance with the devil. Yes.) (Go forth. Yes.) (Boogie, boogie, boogie!) (Now the stars watch their silhouettes. Yes.) (They left Africa dancing. Yes.) (Their apex was dance. Yes.) (Homo sapiens existed for 200,000 years. Yes.)

cube00• 2 hours ago

While this all sounds like a warm and fuzzy nostalgic trip, big music didn't like us doing this when we made mix tapes off the radio.

Spotify certainly doesn't like it and it's second only their prohibition on reverse engineering their own software in their User Guidelines.

  The following is not permitted for any reason whatsoever in relation to the Services and the material or content made available through the Services, or any part thereof:
  2. copying, reproducing, redistributing, "ripping," recording, transferring [1]

It's surprising that a Spotify developer would not only write this up but also self post it to HN. Is there some performance review metric tied to how influential you are for the company or something?

[1] https://www.spotify.com/us/legal/user-guidelines/#:~:text=co...

NetMageSCW• 20 minutes ago

Reminds me of my friend’s Tascam four track recorder that recorded the tracks on cassette.

I tried to record music onto a cassette tape using modern tech

Related Stories