How I record my cassette tapes (The hard way).

Those were some very satisfying device sounds (and one very unsatisfying HDD sound) Love the dedication. Nice music by the way 😇

You put a lot of care into this and I love your setup. I can't even remember when I last recorded a tape, but it wasn't in this century. 😅😊 That went out the window as soon as CDs became an option for a reasonable price (that was in the 90s) and once i bought a PC in 2000 I never looked back. I recorded all my vinyl onto CD and once phones could play music (my first was a HTC Sensation) in the 2010s I never burnt another disc for myself. Mobile phones, mp3 and streaming turned the music business upside down and inside out and I'm there for it. And i admire the little works of art you create on tape.

Now that's dedication. I haven't made a tape in 30 years. I just burn the music onto a CDR and call it a day

I want to get one of those Pavo A4 paper cutters! What a gorgeous, simple but practical piece of tech.

I watched the video normally until I was amazed at what you were recording, Posy!

It would be cool to get some explanation as to what you're spefically doing with tuning the deck, for instance

Awesome how much work and dedication you put into your recordings. I'm recording tapes myself since 30years+ (in fact, I have never stopped using cassettes). I still use my Aiwa "walkman" as a portable sound source since I bought it in high school (I'm almost 45 now). For recordings I mostly use my Sansui deck (with original belts!) from the mid 80s which sounds great and a beautiful Fisher 'Studio Standard' deck (also from the 80s) which I bought for 5€ and fully restored. I also record radio shows on tape and digitize them later to mp3s so I can listen to them in the company car (via usb). sounds weird but that's how I roll

The Best way to prepare a " old stock" casette before recording is to wind or rewind the tape completey, this way a more smooth tape flow is possible, as a mather of fact that is the method old ( archivel) reel to reel mastertapes are held, played to the end so you have to rewind them fully before playing...

Nice job! I love to see that you use the noise reduction!

Noticed IKEA Fjällbo shelve… 👍 Working great. I do have almost similar set.. but stereo set is different 👌

i have the same type of guillotine but three meters wide for maps or carts with soil quality at any level, bought it in the 70´s

Good job Jeff and and symptomatically i'm listening from AIWA AD-F850 Jeff -Tyzik if you are familliar . And b.t.w great deck you got there Jeff this TEAC is the 2nd flagship the 1st is the 8030 .

A lot of method in the making. The advice I want to offer you is to not remove the tabs from cassette: they are not easily replaceable and at some point you might want to change your music. If you are manually getting past the leader to avoid it scraping on the heads chances are you also don't want your leaf spring contacts to go beyond their usual bending point because some bulging cap has been fitted in the tabs or even stay closer to their opening point for the slack in the covering tape. I usually start my recordings far later than just past the leader as the first few turns inevitably develop audible kinks in the tape where the hub tape retention tab has been pushing. In my renewed years of dealing with decks and cassettes it never happened to me that I accidentally erased a tape with regular use. It happened that I erased some of my test tapes because I manually activated the record switch while working on decks with a mechanical multiswitch, something that would have happen even if the recording tabs were still intact. The levels are indeed of a concern. Personally I use foobar2000 which is very sweet with EQ, peak and level meters, but you can't auto-level your tracks without modifying them, for that I might use my TEAC W-6000R with ARLS. Otherwise I resort to my other decks, usually of the 3 heads variety, in any case the tracks are laid out on a playlist file and spaced apart with 4 to 8 seconds of silence (except for limited titles) to let the automatic track detection systems of various decks do their job.

Aww cassettes. Buy a new album and record it on a cassette to play in the car, work or at a friend's house. Dug out some cassettes the I recorded in about 1980 on that very same type of Maxell XL II 90 tape. Still clear. Like your set up.

Okay, interesting. But why didn’t you adjust the track volumes in the original WAV files in the first place? This would have saved you alot of manual rec level adjustment in between tracks. Personally i like to prepare 1 WAV file per each tape side, where you are in full control over the play length, volume, track flow, etc. After that all you have to do is press record on your tape deck and let the tape run untill the end. Groeten :)

you have to start a great deck , this teac was to die for allthough i already had the Z-7000 i had to buy something newer as the old one had thousands of hours of recording and playing, but always with maintenance done today it still works perfect either than the B215 from revox maybe the two best cassette recorders ever made also the CT-F1250 from Pioneer and the GX-630D MKII from Akai, nice set up by the way, you shouldn´t put the tape on the start ,just see the numbers on the meter counter or time counter as they need to be stretched perfect to record all equal, were my favorite cassettes at the time, those maxell and still perfect today

impressive job with awsome result. I also record to tapes - to casstettes I record from FM radio. I record interesting me AM radio to tapes on tube mono R2R just to have that nostalgia at hand in day time when is no enough reception. For LPs and some brand recorded (also by me in past) on past casette recorder and thus 90% having faulty azimuth I copy them after correcting azimuth to to my bigger stereo R2R to listen to it's one setting Unfortunately I find that only may be 40% of brand recorded casette tapes have any common azimuth so for recordings done not on my recorder I correct head to every casette. Also to secure full band I have two the same separate recorders - one of them only for recording, other for hard use. Anyway I am far from dedication to technical perfection here shown. I wouldn't do it because no matter how good technicaly is source of recording it is still not all to asure final impression in listening. The list of conditions is long and bumpy. For example I just corrected my cassette recorder recording and reproduction levels without test tape and it took me some 5 hours . Before it was very erratic and because I purchased damaged casette recorder 44 years old it obviously was played by unkonown servicemans. I use own concept of speakers and own concept tube amplifier and two other solid amplifiers with two way tone corrections and loudness corrections and expanded space option.

I more like mechanic cassete players, for example Vega BRG 326, but it not plays very good. Also i more like large reel to reel players, because they are easiers to fix

Haha, writing down recording levels in advance, I sometimes do that too if I notice there's a particular track sounding much louder than the rest. One thing I noticed: you didn't recalibrate the deck before recording on Side B. I've noticed with my recordings there can be quite a substantial difference in levels between Side A and B, so I always calibrate again before recording on the other side.

if in digital format there´s a software to level all your digital tracks