The basics of cassette recording

ah cassette decks they come in all sorts and shapes and sizes you have double decks and you have single decks and you have single decks with three heads and you have single decks with two already had that one with two heads and that is the major difference between cassette decks and the way they function short as some convenience things but generally they're all sort of the same except for when they have three or two heads a three head machine has one head for erasing one head for recording and one head for playback so the two separate heads for recording and playback allow it to play back while you record and that means you can listen to the tape while it's being recorded so if something goes wrong you immediately hear it and this is called monitoring two head decks have one head that is for erasing and one head that is for recording and playback and it can't do those two things at the same time so if you wanna hear what you just recorded you're gonna have to rewind and re-listen which makes monitoring a bit harder so you have to sort of check up on whether everything is going okay before you record so we're going to use a two head deck for this video because i want to show you what it's like to record the tape on the average deck that you may get which is like not a super high-end deck but not a cheap one either because you're gonna do some research and you're probably gonna get something half decent we're gonna forget all about double decks because they're a bit of a compromise generally same for auto reverse all the reverse decks have a head that rotates and at some point it rotates so much and it gets a bit wiggly and then it gets out of alignment and it starts sounding worse all the reverse decks are usually a bad idea so what you really want is a single deck because less compromises there are some good dual decks but maybe don't and you don't want it to be all reversed unless it's one of those quirky ones that rotates the whole tape like the nakamishi rx series those are great but those are bloody expensive and rare these days so let's assume you're gonna go for a two head deck like this yamaha here that's reasonably good but nothing overly fancy and let's use that for this video on how to record cassette tapes first things first little housekeeping you need to clean the heads of the cassette deck about every 20-25 tapes ish it's kind of hard to get to them as you can see so many decks have the option to remove the cassette door it's not going to give you a lot of space but sometimes you can actually stick your q-tip underneath the door and get to the heads that way it works with this deck as you can see sometimes you can stick your q-tip through the hole in the cassette door it doesn't really work with this deck but you can easily get to it from the top once the door is removed use 100 alcohol clean both of the heads carefully but thoroughly and then maybe add a little light clean the cap stand which is that little metal thing there and the rubber roller underneath it making sure you rotate it as you go you may not get to all sides of it but if you do it regularly bit by bit you'll keep it clean anyway and then you put the door back of course now connecting up a cassette deck is a bit confusing because you got your input and your output and you want to send signal from the amplifier's output to the cassette deck's input yeah you see where that goes wrong now some decks specify a line in line out and some decks specify rack and play so recording you do with the incoming signal so that's line in and playing back you do with the outgoing signal that's line out this deck actually mentions them both which is kind of practical for this demo so your amplifier should have a tape out or a tape rack and you connect the tape out or tape rack to the line in or record input of the cassette deck and then you connect the line out or play output of the cassette deck to the tape in or playback of the amplifier you may want to watch this segment five times in order to figure it out on the amplifier you can decide what you want to record from the input you choose so be it phono for the record player or cd for cd player is also what the cassette deck is going to record from unless your amplifier has a dedicated record out switch then you have to set that to the device you want to record from obviously none of this is an issue if you record from a single device like your computer or your phone or whatever but if you use an amplifier that's sort of how it works now that i've confused you with the inputs and outputs of the amplifier here are tape types so not every tape is created equal some have different kinds of iron in them than others as i'm sure you know tapes are magnetic so there's little bits of iron on the tape that move about and that can then be read by a reverse magnet which is the heads pretty much and depending on what kind of tape you use the heads need to magnetize the tape differently the og tape the first kind of tape type was type 1 and it contained ferro so if you see the word ferro or the word type 1 you know to set your cassette deck to type 1. another word that they sometimes use is normal normal position was like the standard tape position then later came type 2 tapes and they used chromium in that tape formulation they are called position high or type 2 and then there came weird hybrid tapes that were compatible with type 2 so you had to set your cassette back to type 2 or high position but they did not contain chrome so you won't see the word chrome in this case you see super evelyn but it's still a type 2 tape some tapes like this one are just overly obvious and they say type 2 chromium 2 position high bias 70 microseconds eq chrome class wow well at least you know what to set it to type two we're gonna skip type three because it's an extremely rare formulation by now that you're probably never gonna find and even if you do chances are your deck is not going to be compatible with it should you find one try to record it with any of the other settings and see if it works we do here have type 4 which is the metal position which is the most upmarket tapes and for that obviously you have to set your cassette deck to type 4 or metal many modern cassette decks have automatic tape type detection there's little notches on the top of your cassette shell that will tell the deck whether there's type 1 2 3 or 4 tape in it if your cassette deck does not have any switches for tape type you don't have to set them it will automatically do it for you now if you look at these notches you will notice that they are a bit inconsistent you have the bottom tape which is ferrotape type one closed notches then the second tape is chromium tape the same closed notches but with the hole next to them the third tape is metal type 4 tape it has the same notches as chromium type 2 tape but it has two more in the middle but then if i add a pre-recorded tape you will notice that it also has the two notches like the bottom one so it's also ferric but they're opened that is because the outer two notches are not actually for tape detection they are for erasing prevention if you break them out the little tabs that are in there you cannot put the deck into record mode no deck will record when the tabs are removed so if you want to re-record the tape that you broke the notches out of you're going to have to put a little tape over it same goes for pre-recorded tapes you can reuse them if you want to but you have to first put tape over the notches make sure you only put the tape over the outer notches because if you use a deck with automatic tape detection and you also put it over the chromium 2 or even the type 4 metal notches it will just completely lose its there's a lively market of second-hand tapes these days but we're going to use a brand new tape this is the recording the masters fox 60 n90 the orange 160 the yellow one is 90. it's a perfectly fine tape the only tape that they make in europe right now and it's based on the old basf 910 reel-to-reel recorder tapes pretty compatible with most modern cassette decks ah continuity error yes the yamaha was giving us a hard time so we traded it for a nakamishi which is actually also really nice so we turn on our source and we put our cassette deck in record pause mode this will cause the input of the cassette deck to start working now depending on your amplifier that you're using or depending on whether you have headphones plugged into your deck you can hear the incoming signal coming through the cassette deck out of the headphones or out of the output of the cassette deck so you can sort of at least monitor whether sound is going through how to put a cassette back in record pause differs a bit sometimes you only have to press record sometimes you have to press record and pause and sometimes you even have to press record play and pause depending on the brand of the deck with this nakamishi cr1e that you see just pressing record puts it into record pause mode beware some decks immediately start recording when you press the record button so you may want to find this out before you accidentally erase your tape now that the cassette deck is in record pause mode we can start monitoring our input levels we start the source which is conveniently located at track 21 of the cd and then we see the meters dance there's a scale on the meters and the zero db point is usually what people use but most tapes these days can record a bit louder and we'll get into why you want to do that it is safe to say that most modern tapes can record easily up to three dbs maybe more best way to find it out is by trying and listening i will demonstrate later what goes wrong if you record too loud or too quietly for now we're just gonna go for plus three dbs because we know that is safe the sound you now hear is coming from the output of the cassette deck directly into my computer so you can hear that the sound is coming through nicely also yes yes you were paying attention we forgot to set the tape selector to type 1. never mind the ex sx zx that's a nakamishi specific thing that you can completely ignore right we have our level set we are ready to record right let's let's run this tape and start the music no well yes but no every tape has a leader and that's about five to nine seconds long and it is meant to protect the tape from getting crumpled because it's wound so tightly against the reel also the leader tape is a bit stronger should your cassette deck pull really hard at the end of the tape when it stops so you want to make sure you only start the music after 9-ish seconds a bit later is fine too we're not in a rush and the beginning of the tape is usually a bit more iffy than the bit a bit later on especially when the tape gets more use with the leader out of the way let's start our swords and let's start recording [Music] every cassette deck has a tape counter and you can reset that at the beginning of each new recording so you can rewind if you make a mistake and find where you started recording on this tape deck the counter is a bit iffy so we're not using it but that's what it's for also what you can do if you want to is write down the counter markings of every new track on the box of your tape and then you know when new tracks start bear in mind that these counters usually don't have any link to any sort of time so if you write it down make sure you keep using the same cassette deck otherwise the markings will make no sense which is why i don't use them right our recording is done let's rewind and see how it sounds [Music] do [Music] do [Music] that sounded completely acceptable i would say so i wouldn't have had to make this video if you couldn't do anything wrong so let's do another recording and let's get it all wrong let's set it up properly first and then do weird stuff [Music] okay this is getting boring let's turn that volume all the way up [Music] okay that seems like enough for this test now let's record properly for a bit again [Music] and now let's turn it down so only the first two leds are blinking because you know maybe it's a good idea to give yourself some overhead okay and back to normal again next up the tape switches [Music] this is a type 1 tape let's record type 2. [Music] [Music] and now let's record on type 4. [Music] back to type one it is [Music] okay this is where the counter would have come in handy because i continued recording after that first recording and i have no idea where to hold spoilers spoilers ok here we are this is the end of what i recorded first let's listen to what are messing about created [Music] [Music] i'm pretty sure some guitar players would be really happy with this but it's it's a bit much it's not really how this track is supposed to sound is it [Music] back to normal it is okay now let's see how it sounded when we turn it all the way down [Music] this is very quiet but what if we turn the volume up [Music] okay we have noise we have loads of noise captain and there's a good reason for that the noise floor level of a tape remains the same no matter how loud or quiet you record so if you have to turn up the volume to get to the same music level you will also turn up the noise so there's a very good reason to record as loudly as you can best way to do this is to record a bit first see how far you can go just stay slightly underneath that and just use your ears to decide how loud you want to record right we're back to normal and in a minute from now we're going to play with the tape switches what is this going to be like [Music] oh that's that's chromium on a on a ferric tape type 2 on a type 1 tape it sounds pretty muddy doesn't it will it get worse if we switch to [Music] oh yeah no it got much worse oh now it's actually there's all sorts of dropouts it's a mess [Music] back to type 1 and everything is back to normal again so there you go you want to make sure you get those switches right and believe me it's even worse the other way around if you use a type 2 tape and you record on the type 1 setting it's going to sound incredibly harsh and chances are the tape won't even be erased properly if it's a reused tape so careful with those switches if your deck has them ok that's this madness over let's rewind this tape and store it safely in its box for future use cassette deck off let's take our good friend royalty free music out of the cd player there it is cassette deck oh already did that cd player of bye it said bye hello nothing to see just me at 3 15 a.m making sandwiches after hours and hours of video editing i figured i deserved this so um yeah that's that this was like a basic introduction to recording cassette tapes i'm very aware that there's way more to know but this should get anyone started and they'll probably find the rest out as they go so if you want any of the stuff that i used in this video any of the stuff that is still available there are some links in the description to for instance the audio recorder that i used to record the voice over and the camera i used and the lenses also tea first milk after and have a good night

Channel: The Rolling Troll

Views: 1,297

Keywords: analog, tape, cassette, compact cassette, audio cassette, analog tape, vintage, recording, tape recording, rtm, rtm fox, tdk, maxell, basf, sony, taperecorder, cassettedeck, howto, how to record, tutorial, explained, basics

Id: 6hEzvX3WL5k

Length: 18min 36sec (1116 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 07 2022