-
WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!
How About Creating a Modern Cassette Player?
- Thread starter Fosi Audio
- Start date
Count Arthur
Major Contributor
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2020
- Messages
- 2,428
- Likes
- 5,739
Was the 810 an earlier or later model? It looks fairly similar.
If I still had mine, I would try and fix it, just for fun; I'm not sure why I didn't at the time.
89-90 AD-F 880
91-93 AD-F 810
my 810 has a loose belt... it took me a day to get it off my hands!!! one day I'll have it repaired, but I have other things to fix that I honestly would use more!!!
jeffhenning
Member
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2020
- Messages
- 24
- Likes
- 56
Hmmm… let me think.
Ah, no, thank you.
Ah, no, thank you.
radix
Major Contributor
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2021
- Messages
- 1,447
- Likes
- 1,432
When I engineered at a radio station in the 80s-90s, we only made passing attempt to fix the cassette players. The reel-to-reel and Fidelipac (cart) players were in a different league. I also worked at a video shop for a while, and some VHS players just were not made to be repaired, literally. The fix was just order a new board or mechanism.
solderdude
Grand Contributor
Say hello again to dropouts, wow (when walking/jogging), flutter, head cleaning, azimuth issues when tapes are recorded on another device, Dolby ?, tapes being eaten, aging of the device, battery drainage (of course rechargeable and preferably not user replaceable so that after a few years we need to buy a new player.
Why toy around with a limited amount of tapes ?
Will it be able to record ?
Here's an idea.... make a DAP which ONLY shows a tape running down (smooth animated high-res) and no other info than artist, album in 'hand writing' on it.
When you want to skip a song let it mute a while.
When the album is done you must hit the eject button. Animate the eject function. Then show a (limited) amount of cassette backsides you can choose from.
Pick one, animate it going into the player.
You could always emulate wow/flutter and noise (optional)
Why toy around with a limited amount of tapes ?
Will it be able to record ?
Here's an idea.... make a DAP which ONLY shows a tape running down (smooth animated high-res) and no other info than artist, album in 'hand writing' on it.
When you want to skip a song let it mute a while.
When the album is done you must hit the eject button. Animate the eject function. Then show a (limited) amount of cassette backsides you can choose from.
Pick one, animate it going into the player.
You could always emulate wow/flutter and noise (optional)
Last edited:
Bergante
Member
It doesn't make sense at all.
I must confess I have been searching for a cheap "ancient" recorder but with a single purpose: showing it at a classroom so that new generations know what a pain in the ass it was to use tapes for field recording. Now you have insanely great flash memory recorders at a much lower price and with virtually zero maintenance.
Unfortunately tape has become fashionable so I will just show them pictures
I must confess I have been searching for a cheap "ancient" recorder but with a single purpose: showing it at a classroom so that new generations know what a pain in the ass it was to use tapes for field recording. Now you have insanely great flash memory recorders at a much lower price and with virtually zero maintenance.
Unfortunately tape has become fashionable so I will just show them pictures
And using cassettes is back
www.newser.com
Joining the Retro Revival: Cassette Tapes
Sales are on the rise in Japan as well as in the US
www.newser.com
- Joined
- Aug 18, 2020
- Messages
- 2,233
- Likes
- 3,472
That's a pityAnd using cassettes is back
Joining the Retro Revival: Cassette Tapes
Sales are on the rise in Japan as well as in the US
I don't get it. Even when I was a kid, and pre-recorded cassettes were available no one I knew bought them.
Cassettes were for recording onto from vinyl.
Cassettes were for recording onto from vinyl.
Fosi, you've tapped into the reactive anti-analog dimension of ASR
While I see the appeal of throwing a hat in a money-filled ring, however small, I'm not sure you'll get enough back to make it worth the investment. And it would take some investment, for sure, because the current component technologies won't be able to play back the tapes enthusiasts made back when it was a current technology. Playing back an old library before it's gone altogether is one use case, but it's a demanding use case with lots of difficult requirements flowing from it. Keeping costs less than price would be a serious challenge.
The other is to appeal to the young and foolish who are scratching an itch, and I suspect the products already in the market will saturate that demand.
Where there is potential for money addition (NOT multiplication!) is in restoring well-made vintage decks, which is not, of course, your business model. But these will happen one at a time and keep the technicians who still remember how to work on them busy until retirement. I don't see any opportunity for scaling, unless one programs up the key parts and 3D-prints them in metal to replace the plastic bits that break.
I sustain a cassette playback capability for a couple of reasons: 1.) I do have an old library of live-music tapes that I have not yet transcribed, and 2.) it's enjoyable enough as a hobby to see what can be accomplished with old tech in full recognition of its limitations. It's a lot more fun for me to fiddle with an old Nakamichi deck than it is to try to program a computer to act as a streamer, which to me seems a whole lot more like work. It's fun because there's so little at stake. To those ends I have a Nakamichi BX-300 three-head deck, a Nakamichi 481 because it looks nice and uses the classic Nakamichi transport, and a Nakamichi Cassette Deck 2, because I'm sometimes more stupid than anyone else here. And I have an old Yamaha K-27 that actually still works.
Neither of these impulses suggest a market for products of moderately high price points (that is, three digits). Hobbyists like me will buy vintage gear to tinker with, and young hipsters won't want to spend that much. I'm sure there's a market for high-end products, because a guy who is, for example, brilliant at corporate finance and has made a fortune may still be credulous and gullible when it comes to audio, or at least loves the look of a bit of classic mechanical technology in his otherwise super-minimalist white-on-white-on-white-on-white Manhattan apartment. For that market, I think I would buy up old Nakamichi decks, refurbish them (which may well require remanufacturing some parts), and put them in modern high-endish cases. A price point of, say, $30,000 sounds about right and provides the headroom for the high costs. (That's the only headroom you'll get from cassettes.) Again, not your business model.
Rick "who has indeed picked a hundred feet of tape out of a cassette player, so no need to admonish my foolishness" Denney
While I see the appeal of throwing a hat in a money-filled ring, however small, I'm not sure you'll get enough back to make it worth the investment. And it would take some investment, for sure, because the current component technologies won't be able to play back the tapes enthusiasts made back when it was a current technology. Playing back an old library before it's gone altogether is one use case, but it's a demanding use case with lots of difficult requirements flowing from it. Keeping costs less than price would be a serious challenge.
The other is to appeal to the young and foolish who are scratching an itch, and I suspect the products already in the market will saturate that demand.
Where there is potential for money addition (NOT multiplication!) is in restoring well-made vintage decks, which is not, of course, your business model. But these will happen one at a time and keep the technicians who still remember how to work on them busy until retirement. I don't see any opportunity for scaling, unless one programs up the key parts and 3D-prints them in metal to replace the plastic bits that break.
I sustain a cassette playback capability for a couple of reasons: 1.) I do have an old library of live-music tapes that I have not yet transcribed, and 2.) it's enjoyable enough as a hobby to see what can be accomplished with old tech in full recognition of its limitations. It's a lot more fun for me to fiddle with an old Nakamichi deck than it is to try to program a computer to act as a streamer, which to me seems a whole lot more like work. It's fun because there's so little at stake. To those ends I have a Nakamichi BX-300 three-head deck, a Nakamichi 481 because it looks nice and uses the classic Nakamichi transport, and a Nakamichi Cassette Deck 2, because I'm sometimes more stupid than anyone else here. And I have an old Yamaha K-27 that actually still works.
Neither of these impulses suggest a market for products of moderately high price points (that is, three digits). Hobbyists like me will buy vintage gear to tinker with, and young hipsters won't want to spend that much. I'm sure there's a market for high-end products, because a guy who is, for example, brilliant at corporate finance and has made a fortune may still be credulous and gullible when it comes to audio, or at least loves the look of a bit of classic mechanical technology in his otherwise super-minimalist white-on-white-on-white-on-white Manhattan apartment. For that market, I think I would buy up old Nakamichi decks, refurbish them (which may well require remanufacturing some parts), and put them in modern high-endish cases. A price point of, say, $30,000 sounds about right and provides the headroom for the high costs. (That's the only headroom you'll get from cassettes.) Again, not your business model.
Rick "who has indeed picked a hundred feet of tape out of a cassette player, so no need to admonish my foolishness" Denney
mhardy6647
Grand Contributor
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2019
- Messages
- 12,458
- Likes
- 27,335
I'm not anti-analog at all -- just anti-cassette.
Responding to the title, cassette tapes are making a little bit of a comeback. My son's band releases their music on CD, vinyl and cassette tapes, and cassette tapes sell quite well. They probably will not ever come again to prominence among audiophiles and other critical listeners, but some people apparently like cassettes to get the "old school" sound. With that comes the appreciation for cheap cassette players found at yard sales, etc. I doubt, though, that those currently into cassettes will be willing to fork over much money for state of the art cassette players - that runs contradictory as to why they like cassettes.
- Joined
- Aug 18, 2020
- Messages
- 2,233
- Likes
- 3,472
I'm not anti analogue. I worked with top of the line professional reel-to-reel machines. They worked OK but digital performed better. Even with 1/4" at 15ips, they had performance challenges. I also worked on cassette machines. They were poor.
DavidEdwinAston
Addicted to Fun and Learning
- Joined
- Nov 18, 2021
- Messages
- 814
- Likes
- 613
So you are the man to service my CR7 then Rick?Fosi, you've tapped into the reactive anti-analog dimension of ASR
While I see the appeal of throwing a hat in a money-filled ring, however small, I'm not sure you'll get enough back to make it worth the investment. And it would take some investment, for sure, because the current component technologies won't be able to play back the tapes enthusiasts made back when it was a current technology. Playing back an old library before it's gone altogether is one use case, but it's a demanding use case with lots of difficult requirements flowing from it. Keeping costs less than price would be a serious challenge.
The other is to appeal to the young and foolish who are scratching an itch, and I suspect the products already in the market will saturate that demand.
Where there is potential for money addition (NOT multiplication!) is in restoring well-made vintage decks, which is not, of course, your business model. But these will happen one at a time and keep the technicians who still remember how to work on them busy until retirement. I don't see any opportunity for scaling, unless one programs up the key parts and 3D-prints them in metal to replace the plastic bits that break.
I sustain a cassette playback capability for a couple of reasons: 1.) I do have an old library of live-music tapes that I have not yet transcribed, and 2.) it's enjoyable enough as a hobby to see what can be accomplished with old tech in full recognition of its limitations. It's a lot more fun for me to fiddle with an old Nakamichi deck than it is to try to program a computer to act as a streamer, which to me seems a whole lot more like work. It's fun because there's so little at stake. To those ends I have a Nakamichi BX-300 three-head deck, a Nakamichi 481 because it looks nice and uses the classic Nakamichi transport, and a Nakamichi Cassette Deck 2, because I'm sometimes more stupid than anyone else here. And I have an old Yamaha K-27 that actually still works.
Neither of these impulses suggest a market for products of moderately high price points (that is, three digits). Hobbyists like me will buy vintage gear to tinker with, and young hipsters won't want to spend that much. I'm sure there's a market for high-end products, because a guy who is, for example, brilliant at corporate finance and has made a fortune may still be credulous and gullible when it comes to audio, or at least loves the look of a bit of classic mechanical technology in his otherwise super-minimalist white-on-white-on-white-on-white Manhattan apartment. For that market, I think I would buy up old Nakamichi decks, refurbish them (which may well require remanufacturing some parts), and put them in modern high-endish cases. A price point of, say, $30,000 sounds about right and provides the headroom for the high costs. (That's the only headroom you'll get from cassettes.) Again, not your business model.
Rick "who has indeed picked a hundred feet of tape out of a cassette player, so no need to admonish my foolishness" Denney
How close to Shepperton, West London is your workshop?
I said "hobby", which means not for others. That would seem a lot like "work". And I'd probably screw it up.So you are the man to service my CR7 then Rick?
How close to Shepperton, West London is your workshop?
Rick "who can break his own stuff without consequences" Denney
