Man, Replacements All Shook Down on cassette. Mad respect 
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definitely one of my favorite finds so far. one of my homies i used to live with is obsessed with the replacements so that album was on repeat in our apartment often
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The C-52 looks kinda rad. I imagine it is way out of my budget.
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I know these WAR players aren’t actually all that good, but damn if they aren’t making it easy to forget that by looking so cool…
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I’m just hoping that the quality will go up as cassette popularity grows.
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Somebody posted this beast in the Perkons thread:
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Congrats! THAT‘s a tasty machine.
I am seriously obsessed with any kind of tape (reel-to-reel, Hi8 camcorders and cassettes) -
and also a massive fan of the Nakamichis.
I was super lucky to get the CR4 (fully re-capped for a reasonable price). I use the CR4 for playback and recordings, the Naka 700 for playback.
Revox was always problematic, as the decks were advertised as fully refurbished and calibrated. After short measurements it became clear that this was not the case (bought on eBay - return to seller). Nevertheless, I like the Naka-sound much better.
And I was surprised how good music from a cassette can sound.
Whenever I can find a tape on bandcamp from an artist of interest - I am in.
If no physical release is available, recording old school mix tapes is a lot of fun for me 
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XSPA // 004 -
NEW CASSETTE ALBUM RELEASE
XSPA proudly presents Hemianopia by the artist mw-b.
Hemianopia is a story of a lived experience told through modular synth ambient drones, revealing insights into what happens in the brain, the mind, and the emotional journey of a stroke survivor.
Here are the words from the artist about the creation of this album. Brace yourselves, because this goes deep and it ain’t for the faint of heart;
“In 2020, I suffered two strokes at the age of 43. The resulting brain damage left me with a permanent visual impairment and a year long recovery. Hemianopia tells the story of my experience, a journey of neuronal disruption and failure, hallucinations, loss of sight, loss of self, and emptyness. But also acceptance, reconnections, neuroplasticity, regeneration, and hope, all told through ambient and drone tone poems. A collection of sonic paintings, of harsh noise and subtle beauty. I hope to share my story and lived experience, to build connection through listening and promote understanding of an experience that can be difficult to put into words. I also hope that by expressing the inexpressible through the medium of sound, it can help others that have lived through trauma to process their own experience and start to heal.”
Here is the link to the digital and cassette release:
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Picked up a Foxtex 280 4-track and whooeee, is it noisy on the inputs. I’m not worried about dolby noise reduction when recording or playing back, but I would like the default floor reduced.
I figure I’ll use it for quick recording jobs in the meantime, but has anyone renovated a cheap 4-track like this and upgraded the op-amps? I don’t know if there’d even be space in the case but it would be nice if the lo-fi was more specific to the medium.
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Things to consider: Power supply capacitors could be creating line noise. The noise may be irrespective of the recording function (i.e. only hearing it at the outputs). The latter would still be a pain in the ass, as is happening with my tascam.
If you record to tape, then put the recorded tape into a different tape player, you should be able to tell if you’re actually recording noise to tape or if it’s at the headphones / mix out. If it’s on the tape itself, cleaning the heads and using a higher grade of tape i.e. type II by a brand of reasonable reputation may yield better recordings.
If it’s only at the outputs, could have to do with caps, could have to do with grounding. Do everything you can to make sure you plugged it into your cleanest outlet and try to listen to playback from a foot or two back to eliminate the possibility that your head/headphones are acting as a source of proximal interference.
You might be luckier than me, the fostex 280 was probably their top of the line at the time, it should be able to make recordings that are better than lofi.
Don’t know if that helps at all, but some things to look at perhaps.
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Yeah, I guess I can teach myself to look for line ripple etc. Finally get that merit badge down!
This is generally something that occurs just while monitoring ins, tapes I’ve recorded on a higher quality deck work with less issue. I have somewhat newer of a grid since any old knob and tube was made up to code before I moved in.
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Seeing the Korg Handytraxx gave me an idea. What if Korg put out a new cassette player/recorder? A kid can dream.
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For whatever price they’d charge for that, you can find a working vintage model that plays and records that would be orders of magnitude better than whatever could be manufactured today. If you want that, do some research and find one!
Same could be said about turntables. It’s less about the money and more about companies making quality components and possibly some innovations accessible again and increasing popularity.
Actually, it’s quite different from turntables. There is a huge market for vinyl equipment, and building a quality turntable is far less complicated than building a quality cassette deck (and portable cassette players are far more complicated than the ones that aren’t portable). The market for a cassette deck (portable or not) is not big enough to warrant the kind of investment in manufacturing that would allow for there to be a high quality playback mechanism. Dolby doesn’t even license the technology for Dolby B/C noise reduction anymore.
It’s not necessary to buy vintage to get a quality turntable for a good price.
There are already other people out there making “modern” portable cassette players. None of them are quality, and none of them really have the opportunity to be.
If you want a quality portable cassette player (especially one that can record), you should find one before they become even more scarce.
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I mean you’re not wrong but also realistically we really need just to get the best out of type 1 tape as possible… there actually have been some advancements in the formulation of type 1. only thing that holds new things back is what tape heads are currently in production. Would be amazing to see that change, korg does kind of seems like a company that would explore making a new tape head but yeah probably not realistic.
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£379. Too much for me. Interesting though, especially if the cassette can record from streaming? Didn’t pick up whether or not it could.
Off this topic but still cassette: I recently got a 3 head cassette deck and enjoy making mix tapes from Spotify on it.
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I’m just glad companies are trying to put out better products. Hopefully it inspires some better quality mechanics to be produced.
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