I’m still doing that in 2024. Get on my level.
Respect. The casette-aux is way better than the radio transmitters, if you don’t have bluetooth nor an aux input. I was using one up until about 2015 (with my ipod instead of a cd Walkman though), before my car finally gave up the ghost. Now I just use bluetooth
Boss
I always thought these things were brilliant but was never sure how they worked. They basically had a recording head that sat against the playback head of the tape player and sent a signal into it, right? I was never even sure of that.
Gonna drop this here for those interested.
So normally the magnetic tape would spin by the reader in the player. However instead of a tape they put an electro magnet there. Then they use the same technique to simulate a magnetic tape. Tadaa you made digital audio into electromagnetic audio
That’s what I always thought - I think it would work to use a recording head as the electromagnet, treating the player’s playback head like tape.
There’s actually no digital audio involved anywhere in this process. It’s all analog.
A magnetic tape cassette holds raw wave data of the sounds it records. Just like a vinyl record, except the groove is in the magnetic field instead of physically etched into the surface of the tape, and the needle is an electromagnet instead of, well, a needle.
An audio cable using a standard 3.5mm jack also transmits raw wave data. It has to, because the electromagnetic pulses in the cable are what directly drive the electromagnets in whatever speakers they’re hooked up to. If it’s coming out of a digital player, the player has to convert the signal on its own using an onboard digital-to-analog converter (a DAC).
The neat part is that since a tape deck read head is looking for an analog wave signal, and an analog wave signal is what an aux cable carries, the two are directly compatible with one another. If you actually crack one of these tape deck hacks open, you’ll find the whole thing is completely empty, save for the audio cable wires going directly to the write head that mimics the tape. Beyond that, there’s no conversion equipment, no circuit board, nothing. It’s a direct pass-through.
The body of the thing is nothing more than an elaborate way to trip all the mechanisms in the tape deck to trick it into thinking it’s holding a valid cassette, while simply holding the write head fixed in the proper spot.
I’m sure you already know all of this. I just think it’s really cool and I enjoy talking about it. Analog tech is amazing.
And the best part is, because the signal is so clean, and there’s no crappy tape grinding across the head adding noise, the audio quality is damn near on par with just connecting the aux directly to the amplifier.
1995? … I keep this adapter for my old 2004 GM Truck … and no one I don’t want bluetooth. The atrocious sound quality is nostalgic to me and reminds me of being a teenager.
Yup! I have a drawer of these things because my brother & I used to fight over them. Still use one in my dad’s truck when I steal it from him.
Leave those air pods in your pockets kids. Nothing brings the heat like the annoying clacking of the auto reverse on a cassette deck, constantly trying to flip over a cassette that doesn’t flip, while matching the rhythm of your current jam.
I think yours might be broken.
noo… you’re not moving the wire right. You have to move it back left when it does that & then hit the ff button twice.
fuckinghingworksjuatfinedroveacrossthreedamncountiestofindafyckinradioshack25goddamndollarsassholewouldnttakediscover
See. Told you it works!
shitbirdbettersitstillandnotjostlethatdamnwireifuckinlovethissong
… or the faded degraded sound of ‘Appetite For Destruction’ from the worn down cassette you’ve been playing over and over again for the past ten years.
I heard the sound quality was really good because it was a direct feed to the reader.
this is very very wrong. the sound quality was a dumpster fire
Na, forget CDs and check out my sweet minidisc player! Waaazaaaaaaaa!!??!
Peasant.
My CD player had an FM transmitter that I tuned the car radio to.
And I just broadcast my own radio station…
My Nokia N97 had that too it was so sweet
What I wouldn’t give for a modern N series. Those phones rocked.
Joke’s on you - that’s literally what I use in my 03 Jetta 😂
That’s new tech. I had a Radio Shack adapter to play cassettes that plugged into my car’s 8-track system.
Better yet, play your phone audio through your 8-track system!
This is blowing my mind lmao. At what point just buy a new radio deck. They make modern ones that look vintage. Has HD radio and BT…
These were so much better than the radio transmitters. That brief period where cars only had CD players, no AUX or Bluetooth was the worst.
I was rocking one of these plugged into an mp3 player circa 2007-2010.
keep it steady? did you neglect to install the shock absorbing plate?
Damn I remeber my dad built it’s own shock absorber plate with springs and everything…
My new hotness has a 30-sec anti-slip feature!
Not gonna be anti-slip when girls see it 💦
Mid 80’s me had a cassette player that plugged into the car’s 8track tape player
Aw hell yeah, Sparkomatic!
Mid-’80s* me
My buddy in the 80s drove a shit station wagon from the 70s that his parents gave him that had only an 8 track.
My best friend in high school in the '80s had something on his home stereo I’ve never seen before or since: an 8-track tape recorder. We would make 8-track mix tapes and take them to parties … which we promptly got kicked out of because they were tapes of stuff like Yes, King Crimson, Laurie Anderson, Tangerine Dream and Vangelis, and didn’t nobody want to listen to that kind of shit back then.
Techmoan on YouTube covers stuff like this. Here’s a video for anyone interested.
My first car had a cassette storage tray on the transmission hump. I made a mount for my portable CD that fit there, and ran the adapter wire underneath the dash. So fly…
I had one of these and somehow it also picked up a radio station, so no matter what I played it’d be mixed with some random techno music
Thanks for reminding me. I always wondered how exactly those worked, so I looked it up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH4n8fUjtLQ
I always found them so cool for some reason. Kinda felt like magic back then, which I guess magnetism is the closest thing to it anyway.
I still used one of these daily until at least 2009 to play music from my 2006 5th gen iPod video on my 1993 Buick regal because it sounded 100x better than any fm transmitter could produce at the time.
