Cassette adapters! How do they work?

My first Sony CD Walkman came with one of these, worked great and as long as the road wasn't too rough the anti-skipping buffer on the Walkman worked great too!

WildMartin

Ouh a thermal camera that will open a lot of cool new possibilities for videos!

Patricia

I made one of these for my 8-track car player out of an old 8 track cartridge and an 8 track head. Worked great.

John Comtois

I've never seen a generator run at 2 rpms or whatever the cassette speed is...

Raphaël

Why is it that you need to recharge the Bluetooth version of the cassettes via USB, instead of having the gears turning generate power?

Leo Herzog

I had genuinely wondered this for a while. So thanks for saving me the effort of Googling it :)

Chris Crowther

https://i1.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/002/395/magnets_c.jpg

Count Duckula

Had a ‘96 Civic and the original Fujitsu head unit didn’t come with a CD changer, so yep I used that adaptor with my brother’s CD walkman. Or at times I just bought tape albums as they were only a third of the price compared to CDs.

As a pedant, I thank you for going back and getting a proper Type I tape. 😂

Travis Snoozy

You better talk about the in-shirt Sony Reon Pocket! Love the channel

Me too.. was surprised how much better it sounded from my CD player than a tape.

clickallnight

yeessss

evistre

I used one of these back in the day when I had a cassette player in my car.

Brett Walton

It's pretty much that, yep. Tiny swamp coolers.

Technology Connections

Too bad you couldn't have gotten Robert to play the comedy relief character for your intro gag. Please make that happen sometime you guys.

Mark Hesse

So its possible to use 2 of these heads and create a "magnetic coupler" for audio transmition

Mauricio Mariano

That is usually solved by using a small FM adapter. Plus you instantly get that rich "FM quality" sound from the 80s on your own music collection, isn't that cool?

Raphaël

Aren't these so-called "portable personal air conditioners" just a marketing trick variation on the good old evaporative coolers (aka "swamp coolers"... with all their pros and cons), or is it something different?

Raphaël

if only they could invent a CD version of this. A lot of cars have build in model specific radio's that NEVER have an aux connection....and anything made in the last 15 years has a cd player, but no USB just yet. My last three cards had this crappy setup. I could rip it out and put in a standard 1 din radio....but that would 1. ruin the look and 2. make the remote control on the steering wheel useless.

Buzzin

Not only did we get a Techmoan reference to what recorded audio looks like on tape; but, Techmoan recently did a video on a diagonal-loading cassette deck. 👍🏼 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ONtCoB0L70

Linh Pham

It was a joke about how he “moved the cursor” to get the YouTube video controls to appear, which showed the entire video to be 9:31 long.

Sean Hearrell

Oh very excited for this topic. I only wish I could've watched this when I was 15.

Nick S

Thanks for another interesting video.

Robert McCullough

The device you describe seems to be a MobiBlu DAH-220 which apparently no longer exist :(

The simpler the technology, the harder the lay person can nerd out at it. I'm still upset at my toaster.

Anyone remember on Secret Life of Machines when they made their own audio tape with sticky tape and rust?

Dave Hunt

Huh, I was just thinking about this the other day.

Huh, neat! Though I'm not sure it's that useful to me personally as someone who both has a cassette collection, and lacks a drivers license. I remember having one in my mom's old purple 98' Saturn station wagon. Yes, it was as ugly as you're imagining it to be.

SovietBear

How do you read my mind on things I've wanted to learn about??? Edit: Please make a video explaining this mind reading device.

Sypwn

I used one of those adapters for years so I could listen to podcasts in my old car. I left it in the tape player when I sold the car, so it's probably still out there in the world somewhere.

Michael Dunn

Is it the new YouTube rule that any reference to analogue audio or dead formats has to be accompanied by a Retro Grooves album? If so, I wholeheartedly approve. They're great albums and would be my choice even if the YouTube music library wasn't the abysmal load of rubbish that it is.

David

Here's another Techmoan "Cassepter" video--for 8-tracks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppo3IgHWDzA

Mark Hesse

Holy coincidences!!! I had looked up videos on how these bad boys are made just yesterday and ended up ordering a bluetooth tape! My Grand Marquis (more like Grandma-quis, amr??) has a lot of nice features, but a cd player is not one of them, so... yeah. My friends would just call them Philips tapes, as they were the only brand you could get of these at our local stores for the longest time. Another great vid, Alec!

You talkin' about Evapolar? I've been trying to find some way to get an air cooler into my apartment, but there seems to be no way to combine actual cold with quiet. :/

Arni Bjorgvinsson

I'd suggest against ordering the mp3 one unless you have 6 months patience, but here is the mp3 player one I ordered. (Clean link - https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/292221750652 )They were commonplace 3 years ago, now, supplanted by bluetooth. Rather basic quality device, uses the same tiny JingLue chip as my $1.79 iPod shuffle knockoff. The AUX jack ones did vary somewhat, yours looks like a real stinker $1 store one! Most at least had springs for the head, a full-size head and one even has the 4-channel head. Typically they have a thin plastic layer over the head as well to stop scracthing the ,ummm, other head.

Anton

A mouse cursor appears in the top right from about 11 seconds to 14 seconds in, am I missing something?

Fred Leckie

I had absolutely no idea they were that simple. That's remarkable. I have a bluetooth one - the microphone on mine is crap, at least. Interestingly I still seem to get a fair bit of hiss when I use it....

zephyrmo

But you need to now explain for the clowns in your audience how magnets work. Also, can you install that TEAC tape deck in a Trabant? Maybe an older, top-loading deck would be more appropriate.

Mark Hesse

Yeah its mechanism is just terrible. The actual sound quality is absolutely fine, though!

Technology Connections

And that Maxell XL II isn't even a chrome tape either :-P Thanks for making me laugh again ;-). I'm surprised that the fidelity is actually that good, but I guess the cheap one is kind of noisy mechanically?

MrHammond

Techmoan did cover a cassette-based MP3 player a while back in his video that also had a cassette adapter to go in an 8-track player. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppo3IgHWDzA

Jason Wellband

Well they're tiny evaporative coolers, often called swamp coolers in the US. They do technically work, but only when the air is very dry. Their ability to cool is directly related to the dew point, so calling it an air conditioner is absurd. It's borderline scam and deserves someone explaining it.

Technology Connections

I see. Someone hat fun with t-shirts in this video :D

Tobias Faller

I feel like this is most of his videos for me, lol.

Nathan

Are you saying your head doesn't usually align with his puns?

Matt Tester

I have never heard of "portable personal air conditioners". I looked at google images and to me they look an air humidifier combined with a fan. :D Do they work by the evaporation of the water on your skin?

Tobias Faller

most of your puns are tedious, but i gotta admit, "not groovy but particular" is nerdy genius

I did like that the gag used a different shirt for each question.

Mike Bird

I have one of these right next to me, used it for testing a 1960s Lucas cassette player but the idea of using it both ways never occurred to me. I did think about using four of them on 1" 8-track tape to store 8-bit data though but I think those tracks are too wide...

Matt Tester

Unpossible? And not in the Ralph Wiggum voice? :P

Jason Wellband

Funnily enough I was in the process of adding that when you wrote this. Sorry for making you feel old!

Technology Connections

The reference to Techmoan's video at ~2:20 doesn't have a card, if it was supposed to. This is my only comment other than griping that this excellent video makes me feel old.

This is a topic I didn't even realize I was interested in. Thanks!