In almost every measurable way, a lossless digital audio file is superior to any analog media. This doesn’t mean that analog audio isn’t valuable though; plenty of people appreciate the compression, ambiance, and other side-effects of listening to a vinyl record or a cassette tape despite the technical limitations. To combine the audio technology of the modern world with these pleasant effects of old analog media, [Julius] built a cassette-based media streamer.
The music playback device takes input from a Bluetooth stream of some sort, converts the digital stream to analog, combines the stereo signal into a mono signal, and then records it to a cassette tape. The tape is then looped through to a playback device which outputs the sound to a single speaker. This has the effect of functioning as a tape delay device, and [Julius] did add input and output jacks to use it as such, but in its default state it has the effect of taking modern streaming through a real analog device and adding the compression and saturation that cassette tapes are known for.
The design of the device is impressive as well, showing off the tape loop and cassette front-and-center with a fluorescent vu meter on the side and a metal case. Getting all of this to work well together wasn’t entirely smooth, either, as [Julius] had to sort out a number of issues with the electronics to keep various electric noises out of the audio signal. Retro analog music players are having a bit of a resurgence right now, whether that’s as a revolt against licensed streaming services or as a way to experience music in unique ways, and our own [Kristina Panos] recently went down an interesting rabbit hole with one specific type of retro audio player.
Needs vacuum tubes (“valves” for the Commonwealth crowd) to give it that “warm fat” sound.
The version of Bluetooth has more legitimate importantance here than the retro effect intended. 5.0 or it’s crap, a cassette can do better.
It uses a “T66 Bluetooth 5.3 Audio Receiver Transmitter”
I just used the analog line out of my sound card to a good quality deck … for the last 30 something years.
Why are we introducing blutoof, the flusiable wipe of audio into the mix? Hack crap audio converion and another layer or 4 of horseshit
Seeing the tape pulled out next to a big cylinder made me wonder if this was doing helical scan recording (like a VCR) for a second there.
Hehe, that’s just how they positioned the motor in the original deck
This is so dumb and I love it so much. Here’s hoping someone does this with a wax cylinder that keeps getting melted back to smooth before being cut again.
I was thinking of making a loop of glow-in-dark tape and making a tape echo using a pulsed UV LED and a photosensor.
It’d be a long echo, since it takes 10-20 minutes for the glow to fade out.
That’s a great idea. I wonder what’s the “resolution” of that.
I wonder what sort of a delay effect you’d get by stringing up just bluetooth transmitters.
Just one link is enough to cause a chorus effect between a TV and wireless speakers, though the massive input lag of televisions also contributes so it’s hard to tell which makes it worse.
Yeah, that’s definitely not what a cassette tape is supposed to sound like.
I suspect the degradation of the rather short tape loop to be the main cause, but you also shouldn’t compare to cassettes recorded in a mastering setup with expensive equipment.
At the first stages of the Sony discman, they offered something called recoton (or something like that) which was a cassete with a cable ending on a standard audio plug, you can use the same cassete device plugged into any modern Bluetooth receiver and will do the job, I still have one of those laying around