The cassette player is back!

Philly_Q

darthed1981 said:

theatreanchor said:

Minidisc next. 

My Dad still has my old minidisc deck, still works!

Minidiscs were so cool!

I've still got a MiniDisc player, and it should still work, unless it's died from simple disuse.  It felt like MiniDisc was only a "thing" for about six months before it vanished, although I remember there were actually a few pre-recorded discs available in the shops.  Probably Phil Collins.

Cassettes?  No.  They were OK for (illegally) copying albums, but they always sounded shit.

TTony

Who wants the VHS player I’ve just dug out of storage?

Teetonetal

TTony said:

Who wants the VHS player I’ve just dug out of storage?

Nah, only interested in Betamax

elstoof

I’ve started selling cassette tape adjustment tools for £15 each

Philly_Q

TTony said:

Who wants the VHS player I’ve just dug out of storage?

I've still got one of those too.

revsorg

A few weeks ago I remembered that my mum had an old Walkman.  Turned out in fact that she held the repository for all the cassette players our family owned and didn't throw away, so I took the best ones to play around with.  I'd forgotten what a pain it is to repeat and skip tracks, and the treble is terribly splashy and imprecise, but it was nice to go back and listen to tapes I recorded decades ago.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cyfn-k4ozlG/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

hollywoodrox

Philly_Q said:

darthed1981 said:

theatreanchor said:

Minidisc next. 

My Dad still has my old minidisc deck, still works!

Minidiscs were so cool!

I've still got a MiniDisc player, and it should still work, unless it's died from simple disuse.  It felt like MiniDisc was only a "thing" for about six months before it vanished, although I remember there were actually a few pre-recorded discs available in the shops.  Probably Phil Collins.

Cassettes?  No.  They were OK for (illegally) copying albums, but they always sounded shit.

I liked mini disc they had quite a long life actually I remember seeing them in the early mid 90s  and getting a portable one myself around 2001 . I remember a guy using them for backing tracks who played in a local pub 

scrumhalf

An essential companion to the Walkman was one of those hand winder things so you could rewind a tape back to the beginning, it used to take half the life of a set of batteries to do it in the machine.

There used to be a kiosk in the concourse of Leicester Square station that sold blank tapes at fantastic prices. Unfortunately they also sold some utterly crap ones where the music had to battle with the tape hiss to be heard. In my memory the first Stiff Little Fingers album always had a background "sssss". 

elstoof

You never needed blank cassettes, just whatever free ones you had from magazine covers and a couple of bits of sellotape

Axe_meister

I always wondered if they could have made them properly hiss free by using all 4 tracks (single sided) with 2 tracks out of phase. A bit like a balanced cable or humbucker.

Sporky

Teetonetal said:

TTony said:

Who wants the VHS player I’ve just dug out of storage?

Nah, only interested in Betamax

Video 2000 is the discerning choice. 

TTony

None of these were too far out of reach ...



My original cassette walkman had a very hard life through my Uni years and beyond, so that was retired long ago.  That AIWA model, with an external mic, was quite effective at recording gigs.

The Pod mini still gets use, as does the Sony mp3 player.   

From 90mins on a dodgy tape to about 2yrs worth of mp3s on the 1TB microSD card.  I find that quite amazing.

Supportact

theatreanchor said:

Minidisc next. 

I really liked minidisc. It was like CD but they'd solved the main problem by giving it its own plastic housing so it won't get scratched. Also recordable like tape. Brilliant! 

Axe_meister

I still have an iPod mkII somewhere in the house. Tempted Todo the SD card mod with a new battery. But would I use it.
Wait until it's 25 years old and vintage and then sell.

Sporky

Supportact said:

theatreanchor said:

Minidisc next. 

I really liked minidisc. It was like CD but they'd solved the main problem by giving it its own plastic housing so it won't get scratched. Also recordable like tape. Brilliant! 

And track names. 

And my Minidisc player was a lovely shade of blue. 

exocet

Axe_meister said:

I always wondered if they could have made them properly hiss free by using all 4 tracks (single sided) with 2 tracks out of phase. A bit like a balanced cable or humbucker.

You just required Dolby Noise Reduction for that? Only the higher end Walkmans had Dolby - without it, the problem was worse because commercially recorded stuff featured Dolby encoding - playing that back without Dolby just made things very "bright". 

ICBM

Axe_meister said:

I always wondered if they could have made them properly hiss free by using all 4 tracks (single sided) with 2 tracks out of phase. A bit like a balanced cable or humbucker.

No, because hiss is random across a wide range of frequencies. Hum cancellation works because there’s one frequency (or a small range with a fixed relationship to each other).

crosstownvamp

Axe_meister said:

I still have an iPod mkII somewhere in the house. Tempted Todo the SD card mod with a new battery. But would I use it.
Wait until it's 25 years old and vintage and then sell.

I've got a 4gb iPod nano  - I use it as my car player. I don't want music on my phone, too complicated! 

But there's used nano's on  ebay going for £250 . I better flog it!

I've got a decent Denon cassette recorder in a box somewhere - and heaps of our band tapes.

Can't beat that graunchy sound of music off crinkled tape.

Sassafras

These'll be the next big thing:

mudslide73

Sassafras said:

These'll be the next big thing:

We had a couple of 8 track players and didn't get a cassette deck until 1983 - quite rare in the UK. I used to record the charts onto them and everything. They were pretty bad even compared to worst cassettes.