I did that with my C=64 Datasette, I would write down the starting position of the program and it worked very well as I was only using the one Datasette. It certainly made it easier to find the programs I had saved and I did use like C-60 tapes for it.
When I was much younger, before my teens, I used the counter on my tape deck to mark where each song began on my mix tapes. When I got a new deck, I realised the counters didn't match up. Since then, I assumed the counter was machine-specific and nothing more than a transitory reference. It's interesting to find out there was some consistency across units and even actual attempts at standardisation. I did not expect a Mr. Regular crossover in this video. Nice touch.
Wow, for nearly 40 years my eyes have glazed over watching tape counters and never thought for a moment there was any type of standard. Here are some results from my collection taken from the same NOS Sony HF60 of similar vintage: Digital counters: Technics RS-TR355 = 411 (deck A and deck B) JVC TD-W218 = 1644 (deck A) and 1646 (deck B) Denon DR M12HX = 1369 (I expected a similar result to your M24HX… odd) Akai GX-R60EX = 2054 Tascam CD-A500 = 1724 Mechanical counters: Technics M215 = 410 Luxman K111 = 492 Sony TC-RX410 = 426 Sears Professional Series = 435 (no model # on front of unit) My other 4 decks display only elapsed time. Thanks Kevin for a fascinating video!
This is a thing I always wondered about, but I never had a simultaneous pile of cassette decks on hand to compare. You have performed a public service.
If you told me, this morning, that I was going to watch a video on tape counters I would have laughed. But I did watch it and I have to admit that I have thought about this in the way back past and am glad you answered it.
I was distracted and actually didn't see what happened when he said "pretend you didn't see that". And the best part is: when I rewound and saw what happened I was delighted! I replayed it several times and It was totally worth it! I don't know why it made me so happy, but it did. This channel induces weird and pleasant sensations beyond all rational explanations!
I remember back in the 70s and 80s, VCR's had a 4-digit counter, that didn't mean seconds, minutes, and hours like the more modern VCR's from the 90s and 00s, it was literally just a counter like mentioned in this video.
It was an exciting moment for my mother when our second VCR (late-80s Fisher) had a "Memory" so she could rewind to "0000" when she got home from work and wanted to watch her soaps, since there was often programs at the beginning of the tape she wanted to save. No longer did she need to watch the counter while kneeling in front of the entertainment center and hit Stop at the right time - just hit Rew, wait for it to stop itself, hit Play, all from the comfort of the couch. I was more impressed with the digital tuning, multiple timers, no longer having to convert to "military time" for her, and _cordless_ remote! (Our first, a Mitsubishi, had those twelve annoying thumbwheels, single timer, and corded remote whose wire I always tripped over.) Then, in the future, I was astounded again as manufacturers started using F-connectors on the input/output, and the UHF and VHF inputs were combined. I still have a handful of those old splitters hanging around in my junk bin.
Yes your comment beat me to it. The first VCR my parents owned was a 1986 Sharp model that had the same four digit counter you mentioned with no relation to time. The next VCR bought was a 1994 Craig model for myself, and that VCR had a minutes and hours counter instead. I'm curious as to when the VCRs switched over the counter standards.
I remember before VCR's had time counters, that 3M (Scotch) brand videocassettes had a sticker you could put on the take-up reel side window, which would roughly show how many hours & minutes you had elapsed/remaining. That and the sturdy polypropylene sleeves are the main reasons I tended to buy Scotch videocassettes back in the day.
As a kid growing up surrounded by cassette tapes and cassette recorders I would always wonder what was up with cassette tape counters. All these years lates I finally have an answer. Thank you, VWestlife.
The slight difference in counter results when attempting to Fast Forward the tape a few times can be attributed to friction in the tape spool, stickiness of the tape, as well as loosening of the tape on subsequent FFs. This was common on tape decks with mechanical counters, and even with an Aiwa with 3 heads, with an electronic counter. Basically I used the counter in reverse (the end of the Side was set to 0000 and then rewound to the beginning) so that when I recorded an album or a compilation of songs, I'd know roughly how much tape I had - and I was pretty good at the time at estimating whether I could fit a 3,4 or 5 minute song with the leftover tape the counter would indicate.
@Manalo. Still do that now,did it 45+years ago, annoying when you mess up by a few seconds,and then the dilemma is,do I fade,or fill with another song🙂
@Pixie Pete That's how I worked,could sometimes find a short track.Have been listening to all my vinyl, cassettes and CDs from 1976-now,and some of the tracks I have filled up a cassette with,are Quite a mixture.Kate Bushe's Never for Ever,which I have been playing a lot,has 2 Rolling Stones Tracks,and 1 Paul McCartney.I vaguely remember recording it🙂
Very interesting to all of us tech nerds. Obviously the best use of the tape counter is for convenience in rapid, rough cueing during the production or playback of a given individual tape on the same machine or on one that registers the same, as you've demonstrated. For the real story of exactly where to locate certain passages on a tape, actual observed net elapsed and interval times to the 'hack,' 'mark' or whatever you choose to call the edit point reference are the useful data when you know the tape will likely be played on other noncalibrated machines. When I used to make mixtapes for others I would note both net run time from zero and interval times for individual cuts and write them on the "j-card" next the songs so my friends could find their favorites easier on whatever machine they were using at the time.
I used to mix tapes too (with 1200s) and sell them at swap meets. I used the tape counter to find the end of a tape so I can fade out the last song. I miss those days!
I wrote a program for the Sinclair Spectrum which calculated the tape position counter relative to real time for VHS tapes I used (mostly 180 minutes). I took account of the gearing change from the thickness of the tape. I got it pretty accurate but never completely cracked it. I even contacted JVC to ask what the tape thickness was. (I posted here earlier and then remembered it was a VHS video recorder - it's an age thing) This is a brilliant peice of investigation. I never knew there were people who thought about these things like I do :)
I once made a “tape simulator” that had to deal with similar calculations. Instead of determining tape thickness directly, I estimated the average layer-to-layer distance of the tape spool by taking the radius of the tape spool minus the radius of the spindle, divided by the number of revolutions usually needed to go from one end of the tape to the other. Apparently the raw tape thickness itself is usually a much smaller value which didn't help much. Thing is, this distance can vary depending on how tightly the tape is packed (which may be somewhat different between playback and fast wind, for instance)
I always wondered why they didn’t design in a thin edge track on either side of the tape to store SMPTE LTC (longitudinal time code) or even a rudimentary version of TC. If they put it on the edge of the tape, it would be susceptible to issues due to tape edge damage, and possible bleed into program audio, but pro tape machines do this well… thinking Nagra 1/4 in. That or at the very least they could have standardized the counter using tach from the capstan instead of the reels, but that’s a more complex mechanism to implement assuming the capstan is always running…. Edit: shoot I just realized that tach from capstan won’t work in wind mode. Doh! Love ur vids, mate! Princess power! 👸🏼
I used to try to explain to a friend of mine hoe gear ratios worked on a cassette tape. He looked through the window one time and saw that he still had half of the cassette left to record on. I told him no. When you have a fresh or rewound tape the 1st part of recording is a "higher" gear ratio and therefore as the tape runs the "powered" reel will spin the other continuously faster and faster therefore consuming the tape faster at the end than at the beginning. I really like your content!
Well done video! I bought a mid-end Denon cassette tape deck in the early 90s. It had an electronic 4 digit counter. I paid $600 very expensive for the time. I no longer use it for obvious reasons i.e., blank tapes are hard to find, I have an electronic recorder that can record for hours. My Denon machine no longer works from disuse and deterioration of the mechanism. It was awesome in its heyday, for sure! Thanks for the video!
I had no idea how very different these counters count from machine to machine. And also had no idea how interesting it would be to get to the bottom of that and that even some standards did exist for this. Thank you so much once more for a great video! Cheers!
@@LapisandHamtarolover Yeah I picked up a BX-300 recently; it looks "expensive", but not classy. The less buttons the better when pulling that aesthetic off.
I operated a radio reading service in the 80s & 90s where we made extensive use of C-60 & C-120 cassette for our programs. As we used several different makes/models, we noted the counter readings at 5-minute increments of the 2 tape lengths from our tape supplier, on each of the deck models. Our programs were all padded with music to fill the 30 or 60-minute clock time slot.
Might be interesting in a future video to see how accurate those "minute:seconds" tape counters are. It really would have been helpful to have a standard!
The answer is..... it depends. Video tape recorders are able to have accurate counters since they read the control track on the tape as a reference. Cassette decks have to guess, especially when you are rewinding or fast forwarding the tape. During playback its semi-accurate since it just counts revolutions of the capstan. Cuing the tape is going to be a guessing game. Some decks let you set tape length to make the guessing a bit more accurate, but most don't have this option.
Yeah, there is, it's called SMPTE time code (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers). It's just too bad it was never used for audio cassettes.
Interesting video. I figured out early on (aged around 10 or so) that tape counters weren't standardised and didn't correspond to time elapsed due to the discrepancies between the big 1970s music centre in our living room and the little portable Realistic machine I used to play tapes in my bedroom. Then I inherited a Sony all-in-one system that, being fairly basic with piano-key transport controls and a fully manual turntable, didn't include a counter, and that was the machine I used for most of my teens (throughout the 90s) to dub mixtapes. Never really missed having a counter - I got quite good at 'guesstimating' when one song ended and the next began. I was recently given another 1970s music centre - a British-made Fidelity - and a Coomber PA system, both with working tape counters - so I'll have to play around with them. I do feel that by not standardising them early on by driving them direct from the motor, Phillips missed a trick, but then I get the impression that they didn't really grasp just how wildly successful the format would turn out to be, especially for music playback / data storage.
Philips originally intended the Compact Cassette as a dictation format, This is the likely reason that they didn't concern themselves with them. Early cassette gear didn't even HAVE counters, You looked at the little numbers below the cassette's window and THAT showed a releative position. I guess for a short tape with a few bits of correspondence for a typist to transcribe, it was deemed good enough!
Excellent video, as usual. Personally, I've only ever paid attention to the counter when using a portable cassette recorder with my ZX Spectrum, otherwise finding programs on a tape was a bit tedious.
What people fail to realize is that the way these tape counters operate is by placing one tiny elf near the hub of the spindle and another one next to the counter device. The first elf watches the hub and counts the rotations and shouts out the numbers to the second elf, who manually advances the counter. The problem arises when these units get old and the elves become hard of hearing. In the more expensive decks they provide the elves with hearing aids but you do not find that in the cheaper decks.
Great video. Could watch another hour of that! I wonder why the counter isn't connected to either the motor, the capstan or to any point inbetween where the speed remains constant...
@@rich_edwards79 From the motor would not work either as FF and REW are geared up, and would also give totally different counter readings from each other as the amount of tape on each reel changed.
And that's why, in general, they're not even properly called 'tape counters'. Because what they do count is, at best, spool rotations. The real quantity of tape depends (non-linearly, we might add) on the radius of the spool. So if, say, you've a 3.5min song, and it's recorded at the beginning of the tape, it will take N counter units, while recorded towards the end of the tape it'd take M tape units with M
Fascinating this is indeed something I've never realized but realized but realized that the condition of the tape counter belt will also affect numbers. Now one of these days I have to go test out my tape players and recorders..........
I recall seeing tape counter values listed on various published music education example tapes, probably dating from the 70s or 80s in the UK. I remember thinking it was odd to see this, as I presumed that no two machines would be the same and so these values would be no use to the majority of users. However, given that these were educational materials perhaps they were taking advantage of the 2x system. Who knew! (I didn't). Thanks for this video.
Back in 2000, I had several ideas to improve compact cassette system to combat better against MP3s. One of them was ti put barcodes on back side of the tape along the tape length, which would serve as timestamps. The tape deck then would be able to determine tape position. As fallback solution for tapes without timestamps the tape deck would have real-time counter. The ratio of the RPMs of takeup spindle and supply spindle would be used as a hint for tapedeck counter, to determine actual tape position.
I think a simpler method would be to encode a data track with a timecode and track info as subaudible tones. That way no new tape hardware would be needed, just a decoder circuit, and you could quickly tell where you were on a newly inserted tape. Subaudible tones were used in several applications on tapes, most notably on slide projectors/film strips to auto advance.
@@straightpipediesel Yes, it can be done so. Another option is to record the data track in different angle than audio track. This principle was used in some Nagra machines for recording of a motion picture camera sync signal.
@@jasonschubert6828 Of course. I was aware of it. But my idea was to expand already existing and well-established music format. DCC nor MD never surpassed compact cassette anyway.
I have an Aiwa AD-S950, and it has an incredibly acute counter that counts in minutes, and somehow knows the length of tape, because the counter digits start flashing when there's five minutes left on the tape when recording.
That's a very nice function. My Onkyo TA-2360 has this too. It shows the time of the remaining tape the whole time. But sometimes it doesn't work, because the belt dessolves and makes the sensor dirty and often you can't repair it completely
I guess it has sensors on both the supply and takeup reel and when the speed ratio between two reels reaches a certain threshold it knows that the tape is about to end.
@@Autian Yeah, I reckon you're right, because it doesn't matter what tape length you're recording on, it always knows when you've got five minutes left.
It is easy math if deck has two sensors on both reels, it only needs one full rotation of one reel to exactly knows how long is the tape. I wish that all decks with digital counters had this option... My Yamaha KX-390 only has 4 digits counter. :(
@@ksrele I don't understand how it is possible to do the math if you don't know the diameter of the reels. I could be mistaken but I don't think that metric is standardized. Also, how does it work with tapes of different thicknesses? I know that long-length cassettes have thinner tape inside and I would expect this to lead to under-estimations.
It's great to see all of your best tape decks here. Still kicking in 2022! ❤️❤️❤️ 10:52 I still enjoyed that Nakamichi 2 review you did back in around 2013. And the Pioneer Double Tape deck (the one eliminates hiss)
interesting video. I've never consider tape counter too much, I better relied on the amount of tape on the take wheel. But this videos show us that tape counter is just an delusion of tape movement
I love your tests and dedication to electronics. I must say, in looking at all your incredible work, that if you ever have a yard sale please let us all know. best to you and thank you.
Great vid! This is a question that had been eating away in the back of my mind since I was 5, listening to those pink Disney book on tape cassettes on my GE cassette radio. Thanks for the vid!
Great and detailed research you have done there and many thanks for that. I have noticed the same issue with some of my reel to reel tape recorders as well. I used to record the start numbers for each song, when recording music of the radio in the 1970's and 1980's, that the numbers of the tape counters didn't match at all, so later on I didn't always bother making a numbered index with tape counter readings, especially when the tape was going to be played on a different machine.
I'm not sure what I'm more amazed about. The fact that I just spent 25 minutes watching a video about tape counters in a completely obsolete audio technology medium. Or the fact that you own so many different cassette player/recorders. HA HA About the only time I seriously used tape counters was for my TI-99/4A computer to be able to find a specific program I had written and saved to cassette tape. Great video as always!
An Austrian company named Eumig made cassette decks (FL-1000) with such awesomely accurate tape counters that they could be used reliably to cue tapes to within 0.1 seconds, making them perfect for music and commercials in radio automation systems.
that eumig is a marvel. I love its goto function where it searches a given counter position and gradually slows down the winding speed when close ... made in 1978, hard to believe.
Never thought I'd enjoy 25 minutes of watching a bloke fast-forwarding cassette tapes!! :-D Brilliant! It was a fascinating experiment, and I have to say, those two Pioneer decks shown are gorgeous!! Stunning! Seriously - in a way, I've always found tape counters pretty hopeless! You reset to zero, play or record the tape, then rewind, and it's either at 0004, or 9993, or thereabouts! So those decks with the RTZ (return to zero) function will never get the tape where you want it!! And if you rely on the counter to guide to a clear spot ready for recording more tracks, well, you stand a good chance of wiping the end of what you've just done if you don't manually check it first! :-D Great video anyway!
@@vwestlife : Yes, I've seen that video several times (it's great viewing!), and similar can be said for the TEAC AD-850 CD-Cassette deck, however, many of the older tape decks could be woefully inaccurate! More inaccurate because of 'slippage' from the take-up reel when going in reverse? Maybe the counter belt now going backwards too? I've seen it with my Technics, Sony, and JVC decks - all with digital counters... 🙂
Interesting. You learn new stuff every day. My old Sanyo Beta VCR which has a mechanical counter advances by 2 digits per one full rotation of the take-up spool.
I used to use my Akai CS-F12 -(1983) cassette deck with my Yamaha QX-21 music sequencer. It had Tape out for storing Data. The tape counter was really useful for getting to a specific set of song data quickly!
I didn't really care about cassettes as a kid born in the early 80s, but have recently been dabbling with setting up a ridiculous stack, including a minidisc recorder, record player and a 300cd changer (for now). After finding a cassette deck for $10, I figured why not, it just seemed to need belts. I came across this video while trying to answer the question of why the tape counter only seemed to increment, never rewinding "with the tape". Thanks to your repeated highlighting of the counter running off the takeup or supply reel, I finally had that DUH moment and realized the counter won't work when rewinding if there isn't a tape in it.
I'm so happy someone finally did a decent video about tape counters, and i'm even happier that it is you, i love to watch your videos, thanks for the interesting contents that you always upload
i love that sankyo, i've never seen a cassette deck that judges your taste in music - what an unusual feature! looks like it doesn't want your tape in and absolutely spits it out at you just as soon as it can! 😂
11:15 Pretend you didn't see that. I immediately repeat that part to see what fall off. 😂🤣 I always had the question laying in my head, what's with the tape counters? I never knew it had so much history to it. Really nice and interesting tests. Thanks for showing us.
You just solved a question of mine of which I've never found an answer to in 35 years... I asumed I'm simply to stupid to understand what and how tape counters are actually measuring. So I only use(d) them for realitve measuring mostly with language courses. At the beginning of a lesson I set the counter to zero, that I can easily rewind the lesson again. And no, my late 1980's "ITT SL-531"* that I still use for studying is not 2X compatible. *identical to the Nokia (!) SL-531 and half a dozend other companies.
I really appreciate the extensive testing you did! It's actually something I've wondered over the years, so it's nice to know there was some attempt to standardize things! Am I wrong in thinking that some really fancy decks use a realtime counter, like VCRs? (AFAIK, VCRs count the sync pulses on the control track to calculate the time)
Yes, as I mentioned in the beginning, some cassette decks, including the Philips FC931 and Pioneer CT-616DR I showed, have an optional real-time counter, in addition to the numerical counter.
@@vwestlife I'd be curious to know how accurate those are, considering the normal counters seem to vary from run to run. I think it might be interesting to know how accurate the VCR ones are from run to run, and across different decks with the same tape. Follow-up video idea perhaps?
@@adriansdigitalbasement Most of them only keep track of time when you're playing or recording. Once you rewind or fast-forward, the time counter resets to zero. The exception are DCC decks, which are able to keep a time counter when fast winding on both analog and digital tapes, by sensing the motion and relative speed of both reels.
I bet that deck that has the counter that goes to 24XX has a sensor that generates exactly 3 pulses for every 2 pulses on the sensors of the 16XX decks. By the way, DCC recorders have tachometers on both reels and by comparing the numbers of rotations of the reels while playing, they can accurately guess the real time location on analog tapes within 5 seconds or so.
@@thedave7760 DCC tape records time code, yes. That's not the point. DCC can also play analog tape so for those, tape time is not available but the deck figures out very quickly where it is by reading the deck tachos
Video Cassette Recorders(VCR'S) from the 70's and 80's had a similar tape counter system that wasn't consistent across makes and models as well. Around the mid 90's however, VCR's went from using a tape counter that was dependent on the spindle position to finally using the SMPTE time code system. STC information was recorded directly on the the control track of the tape. By using the STC system. VCR's that supported STC would give consistent results across all makes and models. Plus, instead of just getting some arbitrary number. STC gave you an actual time lapsed reading of HH:MM:SS.
Pro video decks (mainly used for editing) always used that system, but sadly consumer decks (VCR's) never did, unless they were prosumer models like Panasonic's AG-1950 editing VCR, for example. (Even then, it might have used a time counter only, I think, rather than recording true SMPTE time code on the tape.)
Back in the 80's, we had to use the take up reel for the tape counter because the IR sensors we used was not only to drive the tape counter, but also for the MCU to detect whether the take up reel was actually rotating. As you may know, failure to rotate on the take up side marks the start of a small scale disaster.
I've got a Tascam 302 and despite the fact it displays minutes and seconds, the counter is entirely arbitrary and doesn't actually reflect minutes and seconds. It seems to do this weird thing where the counter is driven by both reels instead of just one.
This video reminds me how back in the early '90s I made a chart for each kind of tape from different manufacturers, just so I would know how much time was left on it when recording songs from the radio. This was especially helpful when they would broadcast live concerts so I could switch tapes when I was pretty sure the next song would not fit on the tape anymore. (Later on I got a decent HiFi stereo video recorder and I would start recording such concerts from the radio to it instead of cassette tapes just because the recording time was so much longer and then copy the music to cassettes later for use in my Walkman. This had the added bonus of being able to cut out any kind of ads or some stupid DJ talking between the songs... and the VCR could be programmed to start recording at any time during the next month or so, which meant I didn't have to be home at all. Ahh, good old times... 😉) But, yes, there was never any consistency between different tape decks I or any of my friends had over the years. Quite annoying at times.
The most satisfying tape counter reset button was on the Commodore computer datasette 1530, the newer rounded body horizontal model. The sound and vibration felt on the finger tip was unmatched.
That COMPUTER! interlude made me wonder if someone spiked my coffee. Anyway, most tape counters (at least, the mechanical ones) are belt-driven so some of them may have gotten a bit saggy over time. I know I never put any faith in the counters so if I have to replace a belt on one, I just choose one that fits, not really worrying if it's slightly small or slightly large to where it would affect the accuracy of the reading. As others have noted, some of the M:S counters are really good. I have several high-end decks with them and, assuming I'm using a standard length tape (I prefer using the longer 100s and 110s when available) and have it set accordingly, it's quite consistent. Really helpful for figuring out exactly how much time I have left on a blank tape when formerly I'd sit there with a stopwatch.
If you leave the door closed on the Sankyo, the cassette will land in front, behind the door. The door is still able to be opened and the tape can be removed. I had a Pioneer CT-F2121 that had the same design and did the same thing when a tape was ejected.
This one is a Sony HF 60-minute cassette that I believe is from 1999 or 2000 which was near the last generation Sony HF. I have a few of these and I might get some soon when I have to collect my Old Time Radio collection.
Maybe the "defacto standard" is trying to get approximate number of seconds? 1650 seconds would be 27.5 minutes, which is fairly close to the 30 minutes per side of the tapes. Could never be perfect since it is driven from the takeup reel, but at least for a C60 it seems to give a rough approximation.
Thanks for this test. No 👎 two tape recorders are created equal. There will be a slight difference with the results of the tape counters. Your friend, Jeff.
I had a Sony B and C deck in the 1980's that really counted time, but its accuracy depended on the length of the cassette, such as a C-60 cassette. Other lengths would throw off the accuracy of the time counted for the cassette.
Man, I thought I was the only one who was fascinated by tape counters as a kid. Does the fact I wrote for myself a computer simulation to explore what happens with a take-up-, supply-, or linear-driven counter with a tape of any desired spindle size and tape thickness/length make me a nerd? I had no idea there was a 2X counter standard. But I have a fairly recent (late-2000s or early-2010s) portable Sony voice recorder that has a counter that meets the standard (though not advertised). It counts exactly once for every pair of revolutions. Funny enough, I also have a Sony microcassette recorder from about the same era which has the same properties except it counts the take-up reel rather than the supply reel… though it /would/ be the supply reel if it were a compact cassette, since microcassettes run in the opposite direction. I also have a dual-deck Onkyo which has electronic counters that run into the 2400s territory with a C60, so they're apparently counting 3 for each revolution. I personally find the Marantz one that counts actual revolutions pretty oddball-with only three digits, that counter is going to roll over simply playing a 90-minute cassette.
I never even entertained the thought that there might be consistency between various makes and models. For the most part I almost never even looked at the counters on the many different cassette players I've had over the years.
It doesn't matter if different models or brands have different standards. Most people only own ONE tape deck, so that's all they know - and they know it VERY well over time. They know that "100 on the tape counter is this many minutes, so..." and how far to fast forward or rewind. That's all that matters, the individual user of their own machine.
LOVED the RCR bit from the 1988 Chrysler New Yorker review. Classic! 👍😂👍 P.S. The Sankyo would give a nice visceral tactile rejection of a tape full of music you hate. YEET!
I remember a short old video of yours that showed the violent eject mechanism of some top loading cassette deck. The sankyo takes it to the next level lmao
Tape counters are for ad-hoc location indexing only during playback and recording, kind of like disposable yellow-sticky notes as you read a book. You're supposed to jot down the number in reference to a position on a tape like a song which otherwise has no way to index it's location. It works for recording and playback made on the same deck.
I have a Pioneer CT-676 MkII 3head deck with a digital tape counter. Sometimes when I record my own music I want some saturation or distortion effects on the separate audio tracks. I use the digital tape counter to write down at which point is what on the tape.
I have to assume that the de-facto Japanese standard came about due to cassette mechanisms and components being outsourced to the same factories as the 90s progressed.
Contact me via the e-mail link on the About tab of my RUclips channel if you might be interested in either the Philips FC931 or Pioneer CT-W616DR decks. I've done videos about both of them.
I have a Pioneer CT-W616DR taken apart on my desk right now. (I took it apart because the motors are noisy - good to know they're all like that). Looking at the tape mechanism I think it's just some fraction of rotations of the motor. The same is probably true for the decks that conform to the defacto '1640' standard except they probably have a motor pulley and takeup wheel that are a more even fraction. Like maybe they're 4:1 and the pioneer is 4.25:1. I have to take it apart again because now it's not playing on the left deck (the takeup wheel just turns about a quarter turn and stops) so I'll take some measurements and hopefully get it playing again so I can see what the relationship of motor turns to counter digits is.
If you think THOsE are not standardized, try the reel to reel decks from whence they came! Not just different mechanical drive ratios, but different reel hub sizes. And, some counters connected to supply and some to take-up. There may have been some standardization on hub sizes between various reel sizes. At least an idea for a future investigation. I seem to remember some 8Track counters calibrated in minutes and seconds.
I think the 8-track counters were fairly easy to calibrate in that manner because they were driven entirely by the capstan from a single reel, and only ever in one direction. Not much different from making an electric clock.
They’re really useful for Datasettes as you can put several games onto one cassette and mark down the counter on the beginning of each data stream.
Exactly, I don't think I've ever used it anywhere else.
Are different datasette models consistent?
@@FlyingSurprise I doubt it. They’re little more than a belt on a spindle. No way telling how the counter is geared or the size of the pulley.
I did that with my C=64 Datasette, I would write down the starting position of the program and it worked very well as I was only using the one Datasette. It certainly made it easier to find the programs I had saved and I did use like C-60 tapes for it.
Exactly what sprung to my mind as well. Will see if they're counter is - by pure chance maybe - within the specs mentioned here.
When I was much younger, before my teens, I used the counter on my tape deck to mark where each song began on my mix tapes. When I got a new deck, I realised the counters didn't match up. Since then, I assumed the counter was machine-specific and nothing more than a transitory reference. It's interesting to find out there was some consistency across units and even actual attempts at standardisation.
I did not expect a Mr. Regular crossover in this video. Nice touch.
You needed to use real time, that's how old people did that back then.
please forget Tape, it was always crap, still is
@@lucasrem only to you Bro
Wow, for nearly 40 years my eyes have glazed over watching tape counters and never thought for a moment there was any type of standard. Here are some results from my collection taken from the same NOS Sony HF60 of similar vintage:
Digital counters:
Technics RS-TR355 = 411 (deck A and deck B)
JVC TD-W218 = 1644 (deck A) and 1646 (deck B)
Denon DR M12HX = 1369 (I expected a similar result to your M24HX… odd)
Akai GX-R60EX = 2054
Tascam CD-A500 = 1724
Mechanical counters:
Technics M215 = 410
Luxman K111 = 492
Sony TC-RX410 = 426
Sears Professional Series = 435 (no model # on front of unit)
My other 4 decks display only elapsed time. Thanks Kevin for a fascinating video!
This is a thing I always wondered about, but I never had a simultaneous pile of cassette decks on hand to compare. You have performed a public service.
If you told me, this morning, that I was going to watch a video on tape counters I would have laughed. But I did watch it and I have to admit that I have thought about this in the way back past and am glad you answered it.
I was distracted and actually didn't see what happened when he said "pretend you didn't see that". And the best part is: when I rewound and saw what happened I was delighted! I replayed it several times and It was totally worth it! I don't know why it made me so happy, but it did. This channel induces weird and pleasant sensations beyond all rational explanations!
I remember back in the 70s and 80s, VCR's had a 4-digit counter, that didn't mean seconds, minutes, and hours like the more modern VCR's from the 90s and 00s, it was literally just a counter like mentioned in this video.
It was an exciting moment for my mother when our second VCR (late-80s Fisher) had a "Memory" so she could rewind to "0000" when she got home from work and wanted to watch her soaps, since there was often programs at the beginning of the tape she wanted to save. No longer did she need to watch the counter while kneeling in front of the entertainment center and hit Stop at the right time - just hit Rew, wait for it to stop itself, hit Play, all from the comfort of the couch.
I was more impressed with the digital tuning, multiple timers, no longer having to convert to "military time" for her, and _cordless_ remote! (Our first, a Mitsubishi, had those twelve annoying thumbwheels, single timer, and corded remote whose wire I always tripped over.)
Then, in the future, I was astounded again as manufacturers started using F-connectors on the input/output, and the UHF and VHF inputs were combined. I still have a handful of those old splitters hanging around in my junk bin.
Yes your comment beat me to it. The first VCR my parents owned was a 1986 Sharp model that had the same four digit counter you mentioned with no relation to time. The next VCR bought was a 1994 Craig model for myself, and that VCR had a minutes and hours counter instead. I'm curious as to when the VCRs switched over the counter standards.
I remember before VCR's had time counters, that 3M (Scotch) brand videocassettes had a sticker you could put on the take-up reel side window, which would roughly show how many hours & minutes you had elapsed/remaining. That and the sturdy polypropylene sleeves are the main reasons I tended to buy Scotch videocassettes back in the day.
So happy to see one of my favorite RCR moments on this channel.
As a kid growing up surrounded by cassette tapes and cassette recorders I would always wonder what was up with cassette tape counters. All these years lates I finally have an answer. Thank you, VWestlife.
The slight difference in counter results when attempting to Fast Forward the tape a few times can be attributed to friction in the tape spool, stickiness of the tape, as well as loosening of the tape on subsequent FFs. This was common on tape decks with mechanical counters, and even with an Aiwa with 3 heads, with an electronic counter. Basically I used the counter in reverse (the end of the Side was set to 0000 and then rewound to the beginning) so that when I recorded an album or a compilation of songs, I'd know roughly how much tape I had - and I was pretty good at the time at estimating whether I could fit a 3,4 or 5 minute song with the leftover tape the counter would indicate.
That reverse counter trick is a great idea, wish I had have known it 35 years ago when I was recording songs from the radio! 😝
I just liked pushing the button to make the numbers reset 😆
@Manalo. Still do that now,did it 45+years ago, annoying when you mess up by a few seconds,and then the dilemma is,do I fade,or fill with another song🙂
Make sense 👍🏻
@Pixie Pete That's how I worked,could sometimes find a short track.Have been listening to all my vinyl, cassettes and CDs from 1976-now,and some of the tracks I have filled up a cassette with,are Quite a mixture.Kate Bushe's Never for Ever,which I have been playing a lot,has 2 Rolling Stones Tracks,and 1 Paul McCartney.I vaguely remember recording it🙂
Very interesting to all of us tech nerds. Obviously the best use of the tape counter is for convenience in rapid, rough cueing during the production or playback of a given individual tape on the same machine or on one that registers the same, as you've demonstrated. For the real story of exactly where to locate certain passages on a tape, actual observed net elapsed and interval times to the 'hack,' 'mark' or whatever you choose to call the edit point reference are the useful data when you know the tape will likely be played on other noncalibrated machines. When I used to make mixtapes for others I would note both net run time from zero and interval times for individual cuts and write them on the "j-card" next the songs so my friends could find their favorites easier on whatever machine they were using at the time.
I used to mix tapes too (with 1200s) and sell them at swap meets. I used the tape counter to find the end of a tape so I can fade out the last song. I miss those days!
When I saw the title, I said: "Man... a 26 minute video about tape counters??". Turned out to be pretty interesting. As usual. 👍
FYI, I take a lot of my channel inspiration from yours. Chill, informative, and not overly produced. Just right
Goldilocks channel for sure
I can't believe that I got fascinated by a 25 minute video about tape counters
Thank you for your hard work and rigor.
I wrote a program for the Sinclair Spectrum which calculated the tape position counter relative to real time for VHS tapes I used (mostly 180 minutes). I took account of the gearing change from the thickness of the tape. I got it pretty accurate but never completely cracked it. I even contacted JVC to ask what the tape thickness was. (I posted here earlier and then remembered it was a VHS video recorder - it's an age thing) This is a brilliant peice of investigation. I never knew there were people who thought about these things like I do :)
I once made a “tape simulator” that had to deal with similar calculations. Instead of determining tape thickness directly, I estimated the average layer-to-layer distance of the tape spool by taking the radius of the tape spool minus the radius of the spindle, divided by the number of revolutions usually needed to go from one end of the tape to the other. Apparently the raw tape thickness itself is usually a much smaller value which didn't help much. Thing is, this distance can vary depending on how tightly the tape is packed (which may be somewhat different between playback and fast wind, for instance)
I always wondered why they didn’t design in a thin edge track on either side of the tape to store SMPTE LTC (longitudinal time code) or even a rudimentary version of TC. If they put it on the edge of the tape, it would be susceptible to issues due to tape edge damage, and possible bleed into program audio, but pro tape machines do this well… thinking Nagra 1/4 in. That or at the very least they could have standardized the counter using tach from the capstan instead of the reels, but that’s a more complex mechanism to implement assuming the capstan is always running…. Edit: shoot I just realized that tach from capstan won’t work in wind mode. Doh! Love ur vids, mate! Princess power! 👸🏼
I used to try to explain to a friend of mine hoe gear ratios worked on a cassette tape. He looked through the window one time and saw that he still had half of the cassette left to record on. I told him no. When you have a fresh or rewound tape the 1st part of recording is a "higher" gear ratio and therefore as the tape runs the "powered" reel will spin the other continuously faster and faster therefore consuming the tape faster at the end than at the beginning. I really like your content!
Well done video! I bought a mid-end Denon cassette tape deck in the early 90s. It had an electronic 4 digit counter. I paid $600 very expensive for the time. I no longer use it for obvious reasons i.e., blank tapes are hard to find, I have an electronic recorder that can record for hours. My Denon machine no longer works from disuse and deterioration of the mechanism. It was awesome in its heyday, for sure! Thanks for the video!
I had no idea how very different these counters count from machine to machine. And also had no idea how interesting it would be to get to the bottom of that and that even some standards did exist for this. Thank you so much once more for a great video! Cheers!
Nice cassette deck collection! That Nakamichi is classy as hell, love that understated late 80s/early 90s style.
Not so much with their higher-end monster decks in their late 70s/mid 80s style.
@@LapisandHamtarolover Yeah I picked up a BX-300 recently; it looks "expensive", but not classy. The less buttons the better when pulling that aesthetic off.
@@bazzle592 I'm talking about their high end decks like DRAGON/ZX-9/CR-7 which looked less understated.
The Pioneer tape deck reminds me of the CT200 we used to have. Gorgeous looking player
I operated a radio reading service in the 80s & 90s where we made extensive use of C-60 & C-120 cassette for our programs. As we used several different makes/models, we noted the counter readings at 5-minute increments of the 2 tape lengths from our tape supplier, on each of the deck models. Our programs were all padded with music to fill the 30 or 60-minute clock time slot.
Might be interesting in a future video to see how accurate those "minute:seconds" tape counters are.
It really would have been helpful to have a standard!
The answer is..... it depends. Video tape recorders are able to have accurate counters since they read the control track on the tape as a reference. Cassette decks have to guess, especially when you are rewinding or fast forwarding the tape. During playback its semi-accurate since it just counts revolutions of the capstan. Cuing the tape is going to be a guessing game. Some decks let you set tape length to make the guessing a bit more accurate, but most don't have this option.
@@NJRoadfan We are two of a dozen-or-so people who know what a control track is! 😆
Yeah, there is, it's called SMPTE time code (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers). It's just too bad it was never used for audio cassettes.
@@ebinrock Baby Snakes!
I never knew this. How facinating. My Sony TC-K808ES has a minutes and seconds digital counter (apparently uncommon) and very useful too.
OMG one of my favorite clips from RCR - my brother and I reference this all the time when we are looking at retro computers.
just knowing somebody has a 5x set of test Sony cassettes out in the world makes me smile. I love this content, keep it up!
Nice test, Kevin. I tested my Marantz SD-63 with a TDK B60 (yes, B60) and it went to 2102 and 2098.
Interesting video. I figured out early on (aged around 10 or so) that tape counters weren't standardised and didn't correspond to time elapsed due to the discrepancies between the big 1970s music centre in our living room and the little portable Realistic machine I used to play tapes in my bedroom.
Then I inherited a Sony all-in-one system that, being fairly basic with piano-key transport controls and a fully manual turntable, didn't include a counter, and that was the machine I used for most of my teens (throughout the 90s) to dub mixtapes. Never really missed having a counter - I got quite good at 'guesstimating' when one song ended and the next began.
I was recently given another 1970s music centre - a British-made Fidelity - and a Coomber PA system, both with working tape counters - so I'll have to play around with them.
I do feel that by not standardising them early on by driving them direct from the motor, Phillips missed a trick, but then I get the impression that they didn't really grasp just how wildly successful the format would turn out to be, especially for music playback / data storage.
Philips originally intended the Compact Cassette as a dictation format, This is the likely reason that they didn't concern themselves with them. Early cassette gear didn't even HAVE counters, You looked at the little numbers below the cassette's window and THAT showed a releative position. I guess for a short tape with a few bits of correspondence for a typist to transcribe, it was deemed good enough!
Sorry the impatience with the slanted load mechanism at 7:59 made me laugh out loud. I apologise.
Ha Ha Ha! I was briefly confused when your sample of Regular Car’s content played.
Excellent video, as usual. Personally, I've only ever paid attention to the counter when using a portable cassette recorder with my ZX Spectrum, otherwise finding programs on a tape was a bit tedious.
What people fail to realize is that the way these tape counters operate is by placing one tiny elf near the hub of the spindle and another one next to the counter device. The first elf watches the hub and counts the rotations and shouts out the numbers to the second elf, who manually advances the counter. The problem arises when these units get old and the elves become hard of hearing. In the more expensive decks they provide the elves with hearing aids but you do not find that in the cheaper decks.
Interesting tests for sure! Also, I perked up when you did that regular car reviews reference after showing that computer compatible deck
Great video. Could watch another hour of that! I wonder why the counter isn't connected to either the motor, the capstan or to any point inbetween where the speed remains constant...
It would have to be direct from the motor as the capstan isn't engaged when FF or RW.
@@rich_edwards79 From the motor would not work either as FF and REW are geared up, and would also give totally different counter readings from each other as the amount of tape on each reel changed.
And that's why, in general, they're not even properly called 'tape counters'. Because what they do count is, at best, spool rotations. The real quantity of tape depends (non-linearly, we might add) on the radius of the spool. So if, say, you've a 3.5min song, and it's recorded at the beginning of the tape, it will take N counter units, while recorded towards the end of the tape it'd take M tape units with M
Fascinating this is indeed something I've never realized but realized but realized that the condition of the tape counter belt will also affect numbers.
Now one of these days I have to go test out my tape players and recorders..........
I recall seeing tape counter values listed on various published music education example tapes, probably dating from the 70s or 80s in the UK. I remember thinking it was odd to see this, as I presumed that no two machines would be the same and so these values would be no use to the majority of users. However, given that these were educational materials perhaps they were taking advantage of the 2x system. Who knew! (I didn't). Thanks for this video.
They might assumed a standardized system, with schools all using the same equipment.
Back in 2000, I had several ideas to improve compact cassette system to combat better against MP3s. One of them was ti put barcodes on back side of the tape along the tape length, which would serve as timestamps. The tape deck then would be able to determine tape position. As fallback solution for tapes without timestamps the tape deck would have real-time counter. The ratio of the RPMs of takeup spindle and supply spindle would be used as a hint for tapedeck counter, to determine actual tape position.
I think a simpler method would be to encode a data track with a timecode and track info as subaudible tones. That way no new tape hardware would be needed, just a decoder circuit, and you could quickly tell where you were on a newly inserted tape. Subaudible tones were used in several applications on tapes, most notably on slide projectors/film strips to auto advance.
@@straightpipediesel Yes, it can be done so. Another option is to record the data track in different angle than audio track. This principle was used in some Nagra machines for recording of a motion picture camera sync signal.
It seems like all of these problems had already been solved in 1992 by DCC and to an even greater extent in Mini-Disc.
@@jasonschubert6828 Of course. I was aware of it. But my idea was to expand already existing and well-established music format. DCC nor MD never surpassed compact cassette anyway.
That jingle in-between sections feel nostalgic makes me think of those old vhs setup tutorials you see in various products
Detail to detail holy moly! Excellent job!
From now on I'm going to call you professor!
I have an Aiwa AD-S950, and it has an incredibly acute counter that counts in minutes, and somehow knows the length of tape, because the counter digits start flashing when there's five minutes left on the tape when recording.
That's a very nice function. My Onkyo TA-2360 has this too. It shows the time of the remaining tape the whole time. But sometimes it doesn't work, because the belt dessolves and makes the sensor dirty and often you can't repair it completely
I guess it has sensors on both the supply and takeup reel and when the speed ratio between two reels reaches a certain threshold it knows that the tape is about to end.
@@Autian Yeah, I reckon you're right, because it doesn't matter what tape length you're recording on, it always knows when you've got five minutes left.
It is easy math if deck has two sensors on both reels, it only needs one full rotation of one reel to exactly knows how long is the tape. I wish that all decks with digital counters had this option... My Yamaha KX-390 only has 4 digits counter. :(
@@ksrele I don't understand how it is possible to do the math if you don't know the diameter of the reels. I could be mistaken but I don't think that metric is standardized. Also, how does it work with tapes of different thicknesses? I know that long-length cassettes have thinner tape inside and I would expect this to lead to under-estimations.
Very interesting video! I've wondered about tape counters for decades. In fact, since the late 70s.
It's great to see all of your best tape decks here. Still kicking in 2022! ❤️❤️❤️ 10:52
I still enjoyed that Nakamichi 2 review you did back in around 2013. And the Pioneer Double Tape deck (the one eliminates hiss)
interesting video. I've never consider tape counter too much, I better relied on the amount of tape on the take wheel. But this videos show us that tape counter is just an delusion of tape movement
I love your tests and dedication to electronics. I must say, in looking at all your incredible work, that if you ever have a yard sale please let us all know. best to you and thank you.
Great vid! This is a question that had been eating away in the back of my mind since I was 5, listening to those pink Disney book on tape cassettes on my GE cassette radio. Thanks for the vid!
Great and detailed research you have done there and many thanks for that. I have noticed the same issue with some of my reel to reel tape recorders as well.
I used to record the start numbers for each song, when recording music of the radio in the 1970's and 1980's, that the numbers of the tape counters didn't match at all, so later on I didn't always bother making a numbered index with tape counter readings, especially when the tape was going to be played on a different machine.
That Sankyo eject mechanism had me roaring. Woke up the baby actually!
The RCR bit caught me by surprise! Love his stuff. Love your stuff.
:D
I'm not sure what I'm more amazed about. The fact that I just spent 25 minutes watching a video about tape counters in a completely obsolete audio technology medium. Or the fact that you own so many different cassette player/recorders. HA HA About the only time I seriously used tape counters was for my TI-99/4A computer to be able to find a specific program I had written and saved to cassette tape. Great video as always!
Man, I learn something new with every video!
The Regular Car Reviews "cameo" got me good! 😂
An Austrian company named Eumig made cassette decks (FL-1000) with such awesomely accurate tape counters that they could be used reliably to cue tapes to within 0.1 seconds, making them perfect for music and commercials in radio automation systems.
Eumig also made excellent home movie projectors.
that eumig is a marvel. I love its goto function where it searches a given counter position and gradually slows down the winding speed when close ... made in 1978, hard to believe.
@@Enigma758 My father has one! A 8mm home projector.
Never thought I'd enjoy 25 minutes of watching a bloke fast-forwarding cassette tapes!! :-D
Brilliant! It was a fascinating experiment, and I have to say, those two Pioneer decks shown are gorgeous!! Stunning!
Seriously - in a way, I've always found tape counters pretty hopeless! You reset to zero, play or record the tape, then rewind, and it's either at 0004, or 9993, or thereabouts! So those decks with the RTZ (return to zero) function will never get the tape where you want it!! And if you rely on the counter to guide to a clear spot ready for recording more tracks, well, you stand a good chance of wiping the end of what you've just done if you don't manually check it first! :-D
Great video anyway!
The return to zero function on the TEAC W-1200 is accurate within 1 digit, in my experience.
@@vwestlife : Yes, I've seen that video several times (it's great viewing!), and similar can be said for the TEAC AD-850 CD-Cassette deck, however, many of the older tape decks could be woefully inaccurate! More inaccurate because of 'slippage' from the take-up reel when going in reverse? Maybe the counter belt now going backwards too?
I've seen it with my Technics, Sony, and JVC decks - all with digital counters... 🙂
@@stevesstuff1450 The belts could be stretching with age.
Interesting. You learn new stuff every day. My old Sanyo Beta VCR which has a mechanical counter advances by 2 digits per one full rotation of the take-up spool.
I used to use my Akai CS-F12 -(1983) cassette deck with my Yamaha QX-21 music sequencer. It had Tape out for storing
Data. The tape counter was really useful for getting to a specific set of song data quickly!
I didn't really care about cassettes as a kid born in the early 80s, but have recently been dabbling with setting up a ridiculous stack, including a minidisc recorder, record player and a 300cd changer (for now). After finding a cassette deck for $10, I figured why not, it just seemed to need belts.
I came across this video while trying to answer the question of why the tape counter only seemed to increment, never rewinding "with the tape". Thanks to your repeated highlighting of the counter running off the takeup or supply reel, I finally had that DUH moment and realized the counter won't work when rewinding if there isn't a tape in it.
One of my favorite channels uploads a video on the very same day I started wondering about this exact subject. Wow.
I'm so happy someone finally did a decent video about tape counters, and i'm even happier that it is you, i love to watch your videos, thanks for the interesting contents that you always upload
i love that sankyo, i've never seen a cassette deck that judges your taste in music - what an unusual feature! looks like it doesn't want your tape in and absolutely spits it out at you just as soon as it can! 😂
You have a real impressive collection of tape machines! Nice video!
11:15 Pretend you didn't see that.
I immediately repeat that part to see what fall off. 😂🤣
I always had the question laying in my head, what's with the tape counters?
I never knew it had so much history to it.
Really nice and interesting tests. Thanks for showing us.
You just solved a question of mine of which I've never found an answer to in 35 years... I asumed I'm simply to stupid to understand what and how tape counters are actually measuring. So I only use(d) them for realitve measuring mostly with language courses. At the beginning of a lesson I set the counter to zero, that I can easily rewind the lesson again. And no, my late 1980's "ITT SL-531"* that I still use for studying is not 2X compatible.
*identical to the Nokia (!) SL-531 and half a dozend other companies.
I really appreciate the extensive testing you did! It's actually something I've wondered over the years, so it's nice to know there was some attempt to standardize things!
Am I wrong in thinking that some really fancy decks use a realtime counter, like VCRs? (AFAIK, VCRs count the sync pulses on the control track to calculate the time)
Yes, as I mentioned in the beginning, some cassette decks, including the Philips FC931 and Pioneer CT-616DR I showed, have an optional real-time counter, in addition to the numerical counter.
@@vwestlife I'd be curious to know how accurate those are, considering the normal counters seem to vary from run to run. I think it might be interesting to know how accurate the VCR ones are from run to run, and across different decks with the same tape. Follow-up video idea perhaps?
@@adriansdigitalbasement Most of them only keep track of time when you're playing or recording. Once you rewind or fast-forward, the time counter resets to zero. The exception are DCC decks, which are able to keep a time counter when fast winding on both analog and digital tapes, by sensing the motion and relative speed of both reels.
@@vwestlife Ah ok. DCC decks should have a control channel that could be read, even when moving fast.
I bet that deck that has the counter that goes to 24XX has a sensor that generates exactly 3 pulses for every 2 pulses on the sensors of the 16XX decks.
By the way, DCC recorders have tachometers on both reels and by comparing the numbers of rotations of the reels while playing, they can accurately guess the real time location on analog tapes within 5 seconds or so.
DCC would have had timecode I would think.
@@thedave7760 DCC tape records time code, yes. That's not the point. DCC can also play analog tape so for those, tape time is not available but the deck figures out very quickly where it is by reading the deck tachos
@@JacGoudsmit Ahh yes I forgot about that.
I’ve very much enjoyed seeing so many of your cassette decks. Great video!
Video Cassette Recorders(VCR'S) from the 70's and 80's had a similar tape counter system that wasn't consistent across makes and models as well. Around the mid 90's however, VCR's went from using a tape counter that was dependent on the spindle position to finally using the SMPTE time code system. STC information was recorded directly on the the control track of the tape. By using the STC system. VCR's that supported STC would give consistent results across all makes and models. Plus, instead of just getting some arbitrary number. STC gave you an actual time lapsed reading of HH:MM:SS.
Pro video decks (mainly used for editing) always used that system, but sadly consumer decks (VCR's) never did, unless they were prosumer models like Panasonic's AG-1950 editing VCR, for example. (Even then, it might have used a time counter only, I think, rather than recording true SMPTE time code on the tape.)
Back in the 80's, we had to use the take up reel for the tape counter because the IR sensors we used was not only to drive the tape counter, but also for the MCU to detect whether the take up reel was actually rotating. As you may know, failure to rotate on the take up side marks the start of a small scale disaster.
I've got a Tascam 302 and despite the fact it displays minutes and seconds, the counter is entirely arbitrary and doesn't actually reflect minutes and seconds. It seems to do this weird thing where the counter is driven by both reels instead of just one.
This video reminds me how back in the early '90s I made a chart for each kind of tape from different manufacturers, just so I would know how much time was left on it when recording songs from the radio. This was especially helpful when they would broadcast live concerts so I could switch tapes when I was pretty sure the next song would not fit on the tape anymore. (Later on I got a decent HiFi stereo video recorder and I would start recording such concerts from the radio to it instead of cassette tapes just because the recording time was so much longer and then copy the music to cassettes later for use in my Walkman. This had the added bonus of being able to cut out any kind of ads or some stupid DJ talking between the songs... and the VCR could be programmed to start recording at any time during the next month or so, which meant I didn't have to be home at all. Ahh, good old times... 😉) But, yes, there was never any consistency between different tape decks I or any of my friends had over the years. Quite annoying at times.
The most satisfying tape counter reset button was on the Commodore computer datasette 1530, the newer rounded body horizontal model. The sound and vibration felt on the finger tip was unmatched.
Nice to see a bit of Mr Regular in this video
That COMPUTER! interlude made me wonder if someone spiked my coffee. Anyway, most tape counters (at least, the mechanical ones) are belt-driven so some of them may have gotten a bit saggy over time. I know I never put any faith in the counters so if I have to replace a belt on one, I just choose one that fits, not really worrying if it's slightly small or slightly large to where it would affect the accuracy of the reading.
As others have noted, some of the M:S counters are really good. I have several high-end decks with them and, assuming I'm using a standard length tape (I prefer using the longer 100s and 110s when available) and have it set accordingly, it's quite consistent. Really helpful for figuring out exactly how much time I have left on a blank tape when formerly I'd sit there with a stopwatch.
Project Farm would be so proud of your work! (that's a massive compliment)
If you leave the door closed on the Sankyo, the cassette will land in front, behind the door. The door is still able to be opened and the tape can be removed. I had a Pioneer CT-F2121 that had the same design and did the same thing when a tape was ejected.
I just so happen to have some Sony HF Type 1 60 cassettes, so I did the test. On a dual deck Sanyo RD W340, I get an average of 435 on the counter.
This one is a Sony HF 60-minute cassette that I believe is from 1999 or 2000 which was near the last generation Sony HF. I have a few of these and I might get some soon when I have to collect my Old Time Radio collection.
An Ultrx (Sanyo) RD C21 reads from the takeup reel, yet would otherwise comply with the '2X' specification (10 revs/5 counts).
Maybe the "defacto standard" is trying to get approximate number of seconds? 1650 seconds would be 27.5 minutes, which is fairly close to the 30 minutes per side of the tapes. Could never be perfect since it is driven from the takeup reel, but at least for a C60 it seems to give a rough approximation.
YES SOMEONE REMEMBERS THAT RCR CLIP THANK YOU. that was PERFECT.
I'm living for the sassy narration. 😂
I'm reminded of the old saying: A man with one watch knows what time it is, a man with two watches is never sure.
Thanks for this test. No 👎 two tape recorders are created equal. There will be a slight difference with the results of the tape counters. Your friend, Jeff.
When the RCR cut in I was convinced that RUclips had skipped to the next recommended video 😂
I had a Sony B and C deck in the 1980's that really counted time, but its accuracy depended on the length of the cassette, such as a C-60 cassette. Other lengths would throw off the accuracy of the time counted for the cassette.
Man, I thought I was the only one who was fascinated by tape counters as a kid. Does the fact I wrote for myself a computer simulation to explore what happens with a take-up-, supply-, or linear-driven counter with a tape of any desired spindle size and tape thickness/length make me a nerd?
I had no idea there was a 2X counter standard. But I have a fairly recent (late-2000s or early-2010s) portable Sony voice recorder that has a counter that meets the standard (though not advertised). It counts exactly once for every pair of revolutions. Funny enough, I also have a Sony microcassette recorder from about the same era which has the same properties except it counts the take-up reel rather than the supply reel… though it /would/ be the supply reel if it were a compact cassette, since microcassettes run in the opposite direction.
I also have a dual-deck Onkyo which has electronic counters that run into the 2400s territory with a C60, so they're apparently counting 3 for each revolution. I personally find the Marantz one that counts actual revolutions pretty oddball-with only three digits, that counter is going to roll over simply playing a 90-minute cassette.
Very interesting. I used to have a Sharp cassette deck with a real time tape counter and a real time display.
I never even entertained the thought that there might be consistency between various makes and models. For the most part I almost never even looked at the counters on the many different cassette players I've had over the years.
It doesn't matter if different models or brands have different standards. Most people only own ONE tape deck, so that's all they know - and they know it VERY well over time. They know that "100 on the tape counter is this many minutes, so..." and how far to fast forward or rewind. That's all that matters, the individual user of their own machine.
Learning something new every day.
LOVED the RCR bit from the 1988 Chrysler New Yorker review. Classic! 👍😂👍 P.S. The Sankyo would give a nice visceral tactile rejection of a tape full of music you hate. YEET!
I remember a short old video of yours that showed the violent eject mechanism of some top loading cassette deck. The sankyo takes it to the next level lmao
That's one heck of a tape ejection lol
Tape counters are for ad-hoc location indexing only during playback and recording, kind of like disposable yellow-sticky notes as you read a book. You're supposed to jot down the number in reference to a position on a tape like a song which otherwise has no way to index it's location. It works for recording and playback made on the same deck.
I have a Pioneer CT-676 MkII 3head deck with a digital tape counter. Sometimes when I record my own music I want some saturation or distortion effects on the separate audio tracks. I use the digital tape counter to write down at which point is what on the tape.
I have to assume that the de-facto Japanese standard came about due to cassette mechanisms and components being outsourced to the same factories as the 90s progressed.
Damn dude has all those nice tape decks and I can’t even find one anywhere for a decent price. 😩😆
Contact me via the e-mail link on the About tab of my RUclips channel if you might be interested in either the Philips FC931 or Pioneer CT-W616DR decks. I've done videos about both of them.
My Technics RS-BX 606 also uses the 2x counter method. Just checked.
I have a Pioneer CT-W616DR taken apart on my desk right now. (I took it apart because the motors are noisy - good to know they're all like that). Looking at the tape mechanism I think it's just some fraction of rotations of the motor. The same is probably true for the decks that conform to the defacto '1640' standard except they probably have a motor pulley and takeup wheel that are a more even fraction. Like maybe they're 4:1 and the pioneer is 4.25:1.
I have to take it apart again because now it's not playing on the left deck (the takeup wheel just turns about a quarter turn and stops) so I'll take some measurements and hopefully get it playing again so I can see what the relationship of motor turns to counter digits is.
If you think THOsE are not standardized, try the reel to reel decks from whence they came!
Not just different mechanical drive ratios, but different reel hub sizes. And, some counters connected to supply and some to take-up. There may have been some standardization on hub sizes between various reel sizes.
At least an idea for a future investigation.
I seem to remember some 8Track counters calibrated in minutes and seconds.
I think the 8-track counters were fairly easy to calibrate in that manner because they were driven entirely by the capstan from a single reel, and only ever in one direction. Not much different from making an electric clock.