I'm a host/producer for a radio station in washington dc. In the edit room I use there is a lot of legacy equipment for previous formats, they are maintained in case we need them. Yesterday an engineer told me (after I told him about you) said that they Library of Congress has an entire department that has EVERY SINGLE audio format player perfectly maintained to play and digitize everything possible they are given! Just an fyi if you are ever in the states and curious, cheers.
Oh, isn't there also an electronics museum somewhere around San Francisco that maintains a lot of old equipment as well? I heard something like that quite a few years ago.
I can't recall who it was, but there is a clip of a guitar player somewhere on RUclips talking about his amplifier (was it Frank Zappa?) with a volume setting of 11 and when asked why that is so special he replies with "Well...you know, eleven is one louder than ten..." with a look on his face like "Why do you ask, don't you understand that?"
@@Techmoan I used to have a job in retail. Whenever it was time to close out a drawer from a cash register, we would go into the back office and use a digital counter that weighed the money to count it. Not exactly the stuff of drug dealers in movies, but it was useful in managing the cash at a legitimate business.
As someone who works in Japanese public schools, I can (reluctantly) tell you how important devices like this remain! I still see brand new ones being purchased. I use my iPhone & iPad for these kinds of tasks, but for non-techy teachers, these boomboxes are reliable, simple and easy to use for recording/playing listening quizzes, music, etc... (A quick correction at 18:38. The manual says that ONLY Type I can be used for recording. Same for at 18:50, where the rightmost column says everything but Type I is 対応: 不可 (unsupported) for playback.)
You can use Chrome tape. It just sounds a bit too "bright" I've actually used chrome tapes to playback in type 1 decks to get increase treble response for dull recordings
i see a lot of cassette players here in japan with the buttons turned around. Apparently its meant for presentations (like in classrooms) where you'll have the speakers pointed away from you and at your audience/ students.
*Regarding the FM Radio Tuners* The Japanese model can be turned in to any frequency between 76.0 to 108.0 with 0.1 increment steps. The UK model can be turned in to any frequency between 87.5 to 108.0 with 0.1 increment steps. Both radios pick up all the frequencies broadcast in the UK. The radio tuner on the UK boombox is less effective at bringing in a clear strong signal. This is not to be considered unusual....some radios are better than others, in the same way that reception on different phones on the same network can vary.
I noticed that when I was browsing Japanese auction sites for boomboxes/radios, a lot of them only tuned from 76-90MHz, which I think is because their analogue TV channels interfered with the international FM broadcast band, so they decided to go with 76-90 instead of 88-108. Many older radios and boomboxes also included support for 'TV band' (i.e. audio from a TV signal) which effectively covered 88-108MHz but it wasn't universal. Now that they've switched over to digital TV, they've expanded their FM band to 76-108, but a lot of radios still don't cover the entire range (especially if they're old models that are still being produced). The thing you need to look for when buying Japanese radios is "Wide FM", which would cover the entire international FM band.
This is an incredibly well run channel. You and 8-bit keys are the ONLY audio channels I follow and only because you both make very engaging content for the uninitiated.
15:17 "it's not going to blast any ghettos but it's suitable around the house" ahhh I love you English people, the way you re-murder American English back to British English is wonderful.
When he said that, I got an image of TechMoan strutting through a graffiti-adorned alleyway with this on his shoulder, while wearing a pink satin pimp suit. "What you lookin at fool?"
I am not interested in a boom box, have no intention to buy one... but watched the whole video simply because it is very entertaining and well produced. I must be a bit of a geek :-)
It's gray and rainy outside... I'm sitting on the couch with my dog Rudi and a warm blanket... watching Techmoan. Perfect sunday. :) Thank you & greetings from Germany
This is the first video I've ever watched on this channel and I must say that I enjoyed it very much! I am an old music lover who laments that the quality of sound equipment available nowadays, for less than the cost of a home, is so very low. It seems that no one really cares about true stereo and high fidelity music playback these days. Thank you so much for posting a relevant and enjoyable video!
@@alkestos "Both are fine" is such a boring opinion. It's okay to have preferences. And there are good reasons for those preferences. Yes, digital does the job. But to show an ignoramus like @M2 Heavy Industries the difference between beautifully warm analog sound and flat plastic-like digital sound can be a very interesting task. And if his brain is still working, the ignoramus might even learn something. :) It's never too late. Greetings from Germany :=)
The S70 as a recorder is quite impressive. I decided to buy one of these for my 3 year old son, but decided to try recording from a cd and from the input on the side. I played them back in my hi-fi and was impressed. Next to no hiss and peaked at +5 with no distortion. Tried with a different type 1 tape and same thing, excellent sounding recordings.
Best puppet segment yet. High quality stuff, and a great review! I have a Sony clock radio from the 90s that I use because I like waking up to music or news. I'd be interested in this new Japanese machine, because I would be a little all-in-one media center for my bedroom.
Matthew Dezii I still want to see a Muppet segment with Jeremy Clarkson, James May and the Stig.....love to see a cameo of Jeremy appear in an actual Techmoan video
I suspect he had cancer. He also has no sense of taste. That really sucks. I have thought about it for a while. Would I undergo treatment which did this? Or just enjoy what time I had left. I guess typing it in this thread puts it in perspective. He clearly has life after a sense of taste. Indeed, his taste is for more than just food.
I can only imagine how annoying it must be to have to include caveats, justifications, and explanations of obvious features to every point you try to make in an effort to stave off the idiotic masses spamming irrelevant questions and corrections, but think about it this way; in two hundred years there will be scholars asking the same stupid questions and quibbling about pedantry to try and better understand our simple, ancient lives. Your channel will someday be looked on as a miraculous trove of knowledge and enlightenment to Earth's future historians. Keep doing what you do, this channel is a boon to humanity.
He should save his videos on some kind of back up-hardware, since RUclips can always decide to delete them or might not even exist 200 years. Stuff on the internet is so fragile; one day you enjoy your favourite movie and the next day some incident happened or the company decides to just shut it down, without making any back up-plans. And you think to yourself, why you didn't save it and why nobody else seem to care. Already happened a lot of times. And when those things, that thought to be lost, get found they usually sell for a high price. Early DLC, for example. The japanese-exclusive Advent-DLC for Sonic Adventure is now said to be lost forever. It's nothing huge or important, but the company SEGA either doesn't care or doesn't have any back ups themselfs and the fans have to suffer. And what about smaller Indie-games that nobody really knows about, but get to be called as "hidden-gems" in the future, while most of the media around them is just gone for good? Don't get too comfortable with the Internet. It's nothing more than a connection through different servers and thus websites, between/on different parts of the world. So don't forget to back up as much as possible and more than once!
Providing RUclips, or at least it's archive of video's survives that long. My prediction is that in 30 years people will think of youtube as people think of compuserve now. An old service that was ok at it's time. ;)
The CFD-S401 is definitely a better class stereo system compared to the other stereos they sell today. The ability to scan thru the tracks on the compact cassette is very rare today. Even though the head transport don't compare to the older models where you can even program which tracks you want to play, it's still a pretty decent mechanism. I'm definitely looking forward to order this stereo to replace it with the one I use in my kitchen.
@@lucasrem Imagine being such a dumbass, you insult people on their hobbies because they are old. No shit a 2019 speaker with a digital MP3/FLAC sounds better. Christ, you're dumb. "Why play board games when you can play video games". Fuck off
Hardly a surprise there, mate. The real achievement would be to find a working, good quality cassette deck made in 2015, for a tenner. Most decks made by Sony, Aiwa, JVC and the like, were of pretty much solid quality back in the 80's.
Alibaba sellers very often put on the wrong prices in order to win the competition when searching for the cheapest. However, when you actually get a quote, prices are a lot higher.
MrMonotone Leave that to people who do buy in bulk... I don't know about the $1 radio...but the few cents 4GB usb flash drives.... yupp thats how much they cost in engross
@@saltysoysauce954 Having bought various things from Alibaba, yes, the low end of the price range is often nonsense. For sellers that play that game, the only way to get the pricing at even the high end of the range is to buy their entire monthly production. So it's reasonable to guess that the wholesale price is $15.
I love the beige one... it just screams Japanese to me. Something really great about Japanese designs when it comes to electronics, I've been thinking about finding an old 90s Japanese PC and using the case to put a computer in just because they have an extremely retro sci-fi fashion about them that looks specifically Japanese and still very stylish.
Looks like a nice unit. Thanks. On portables, it's a good idea to put on a shelf with a wall 5-6 inches away, and listen standing several feet away. That's how many people (not all) store them and listen to their boomboxes. That sort of environment probably factors into the design parameters, especially like the UK SONY unit you reviewed which has a rear facing bass section. Being on a shelf (shelves above and below) tends to make most thin sounding boomboxes, sound 'boomier' and richer. Give it a try.
Given it plays cassettes and looking at the size of the display and the beige colour option I suspect that is marketed at pensioners in Japan. My 76 year old Japanese mother in law would love it!
A few months ago I was looking at reviews of the UK unit. Over half of them were along the lines of "I bought this for my 93 year old Mother who loves the fact that she can play her Vera Lynn tapes again"
I actually like the Japanese cassette player mostly because of servo controller mechanism which resembles the good old decks. Didn't expect that in a boombox! Very well done review, thanks!
I loved the old Hitachi 3D Superwoofer ones that came in various models, had a few over the years including the newer CD models. Also big old Sharp ones like the GF-777. Classics.
Ha ha, maybe the cocaine was imported inside the tape machine? The loose bit of plastic broke off in his eagerness to open the cassette tray and get at the stash! :D In all seriousness though, Techmoan does not strike me as a cocaine kind of chap. Doughnuts, yes.
I've got the CFD-S70 in my garage workshop and really like it. It's not easy to find a reasonably priced boombox that plays tapes, CDs and AM/FM radio. And honestly, in that setting, both the sound quality and volume are fine. The Japanese model seems better but if you are looking for a versatile sound source for your shop or a similar location I'd recommend the CFD-S70. By the way, I didn't realize until watching the review that these would play MP3s. So I burned a lengthy classical music MP3 disc and it works fine. First time I've burned a CD in years. Thanks for reviewing this item!
@@mikeangelo6667 No. True Mega Bass was a low pass filter/amp that boosted a narrow range of bass frequencies. Tone is merely a high frequency attenuator, rolls of the treble. Class dismissed.
@@RWL2012 bass heavy music or often any music sounds too flat without bass boost on. Although you're correct in a way that especially at louder volumes bass boost can sound too boomy even to the point of distortion possibly even leading to speaker damage if they're not designed to handle a lot of bass at high volume.
@@dodecahedron1 bass boost is called loudness on mostly older or higher end equipment. Designed to give more depth to sound at lower volumes as depth in bass isn't really heard at lower volumes without a boost to the bass or what sometimes is called loudness which can also include a boost or thickening to other frequencies as well.
The cassette sound is quite good, even on the cheap UK model. I detected a bit of 50Hz hum (hints at a half wave rectifier setup vs full wave) during the track fade out on both of the Sony portables and the Aldi portable, and not on the hi-fi deck.
We all did! But while TiVo type devices came along to replace VHS for recording off the television there is no real modern equivalent for recording off the radio...
I got the "UK" model as a gift last Christmas, It was around $100 then, from a big box store. I use it in my food truck to jam while cooking/prepping. Bass Boost is a must and it plays CDs pretty well and gets ok AM/FM reception despite being inside a large aluminum box. Tape controls reversed from every other deck I've ever owned and still has to be looked at to get right. Annoying that the thing doesn't remember last station tuned, tired of having to take the time passing a bunch of other stations to get to the one I like every time I power it on. Have not tried the headphones with it. It plays loud enough I have to turn it down once I start getting customers or they won't be heard. It plays over the noise of my commercial vent hood so not as bad as the slagging you gave it I think. In that environment it gives me something to tap my toes to while working, fidelity would be wasted there anyway.
Thanks for another thoroughly entertaining and informative video as always. The only problem I have with it (and many of your other videos) is that I come away with a burning desire to buy whatever it is you're reviewing! Keep up the great work anyway!
Already bought a Walkman WM-D6C after watching that video. Nixie clock is now on the top of my wishlist along with a FlipClock and that little build your own calculator project he did. No regrets here either! :-)
The current cassette market is so crappy because it's mainly for hipsters who weren't alive during the actual cassette era, and have no idea that chrome tape and dolby noise reduction even exist. They're just like "It's a cassette tape. It's supposed to sound bad"
To be fair, the average cassette deck during the format's prime wasn't much better than what these boomboxes come with. That and the vast majority of blank tapes sold were Type I anyway. Growing up with the format, I don't think I ever heard a Type II tape, let alone owned any. Type IV metal tapes were non-existent then and now!
i grew up with type 2 mixtapes compiled from my father's LPs... but then he had a very extensive, very high end (i think, it was all matching brand) hifi system - records, tape, CD, radio, and an amp that was bigger than any of the other units, all in a big rack - and flanked by speakers as tall as the whole assembly. i don't think he knew much about the specs himself, but he had a pal who would hook him up and know what's what. i think the pal fixed things when they went wrong too? like when i was 4 and turned the volume dial way too far and messed up the variable pot. whoops! later on, he ignored my advice when he asked me about making a home cinema system in a later house (i was 15, and had come to know what's what myself). he was out of touch with that friend, otherwise i presume he would've asked him. he ended up just going for what hi-fi magazine's number 1 products that month, not really grasping that they try to have circulation of new things each month, and have no consideration for how each part works together. oh well. i never really knew how well off my family were until i moved out. i had a very basic walkman when i was about 7 but it was still a sony, y'know? so i'm guessing there's probably a class divide on what types of tape were common in the household. my father worked in finance. i had no idea that was a particularly fancy job when i was 6.
Attila theHun yeah. Their shop seems to be down today. I just checked. But i've been buying some tapes from them this spring, and i don't think they went down. Try just headlessduplicatedtapes.cz
Oh boy we got our selves a HALF HOUR... I WOULD BE EXPLICIT WITH MY EXCITEMENT, BUT I WANT TO KEEP THE COMMENTS CLEAN BC PEOPLE HAVE BEEN GETTING DEMONITIZED FOR COMMENT SECTIONS BEING FOUL. Thanks for your hard work, research and time dude!!
Great show! Thank you, really love your videos, much better than most shows on TV, to say nothing of the fact that there are no such type of shows on TV. 30 minutes passed like 3)))
They're all engineered and manufactured by one Taiwanese company, Hanpin Electron Co Ltd. All Denon, Audio-Technica, Stanton and Pioneer are built by them too or come from their parts bin. Now i don't mean to say that they're the same, the company has at least 3 motor types, 4 or so types of tonearm mechanisms, etc, but have fun with their catalogue and spotting which is which, and after a handful, you'll have seen them all. They're not terrible, but just about anything from the 80ies, Japanese, German or even Soviet made ones, is going to be better.
You're not wrong, but I'm pretty happy with my Audio Technica LP60. It was only £100, sounds decent and USB out means that I can faff around with digitisation. Am planning a Raspberry Pi project to pipe audio from it to all my Chromecast Audios in the house, which is fun.
Cool testing and review. This makes me want to play my cassettes! I still have many of my cassettes I bought in the 80s and use a very high end cassette deck from the 80s connected to a 90s surround sound analog stereo. The problem with using cheap cassette decks or cheap portable players is they don't slow the tape down at the end when you fast forward or rewind so they end up stretching or snapping the tape. Also their rollers and mechanisms are cheaply made and tend to missthread tapes and mangle them a lot more than a high end tape deck or high end portable player. Anyway great review and cheers! 😎
You often forget just how good cassettes can sound! But the cassette mechanism needs to be of reasonably good quality, and properly aligned to get the best out of them.
Unfortunately for people such as yourself, these videos, especially at the start, are made for intelligent people. But don't worry too much googleboughtmee, there are cartoons you can watch elsewhere. Now stick your thumb back in your mouth and SUCK.
Thank you for this very well made explaination video as always! But I would add that the Japanese manual is saying that the CFD-S401 is complatible "only" with Type I (Normal) cassettes in recording and playback. Type II (CrO2) cassettes are not compatible (Note : Playing a Type II cassette on this device gives more hiss and slightly distords the sound).
So now you've done a video on cheapo old boomboxes and very recent releases. Maybe it's time for a video on older, supposed "higher end" boomboxes, like the AIWA Strasser CSD-SR8 or the Panasonic RX line?
From what I've heard, even a chrome tape without Dolby B is quite good. It's a shame that Dolby doesn't licence it anymore, and no one has made an open source alternative that can be used on any new tape decks.
Soft touch tape controls on a modern cassette player? Take my money! I really want one of these things but it's impossible to get one. Will be great if Sony would be selling these all over the world. Thanks for sharing :)
I was taught (many years ago) NOT to use the track skip function on tape decks (where it looks for a quiet patch to indicate the next song position when fast forwarding or rewinding). Reason was that the read/write head stays in contact with the tape as it moves the tape quickly - placing extra wear on the head and the tape itself, instead of retracting and allowing the tape to pass without contacting the head. Thoughts?
In cue/review/track skip, the head does indeed remain in contact with the tape , but it is retracted so that it is just close enough to pick up the magnetic signal. The amount of extra wear is thus minimal. People tend to worry far too much about this. I have been working on language learning machines for years which always have these modes, and they do not suffer unduly. In fact it is surprising how robust the tapes and machines can be. In one installation, the c60 tapes only began to show audible wear after 4 years of weekly use. More importantly the heads of the decks were like new -after all that cueing!
These modern products are inexpensive devices to be fair. For three or four times the retail price, I am sure Sony could produce a very nice unit in a metal case --- but would there be any interest? Sony produce plenty of higher-end speakers, I am sure they could slot in some nice coaxial drivers with silk dome tweeters, instead of these full range 3.5-4" jobbies that seem to be in these.
actually, there is one company in Malaysia still making chrome tape, and one in China, so I've been told, but they are the last ones as far as I'm aware, hopefully the re-take-up of the cassette format will lead to more demand for chrome tape, thus maybe lead to another company picking up the production of chrome tape. Also in a previous video you linked to tapeline.info for metal tape, but they've since run out of them, do you have any new sources, or tips for metal tape? As I've recent;y won an ebay auction for a sony, 90's era double cassette deck that has all the bells and whistles including support for Dolby NR B, C, S HX pro and all types of tape, ferro, chrome and metal. so I'd really like to record on the best format of the day...
a good way to spot a genuine sony product is by the arrows they put on every quality (and crappy) product they make. you can tell its rebadged or a knockoff because the molds dont contain them.
I don't know if someone else has mentioned this, but there IS a company here in the USA that still makes Chrome cassettes: nationalaudiocompany.com/ In fact, they make three grades of them - 751 Chrome (minimum quantity of 100), 771 Chrome Plus (minimum 10, C-60 only), and 799 Studio Master (minimum 10, C-60 and C-90). I haven't used them myself, just thought this might be useful info for cassette fans. They also do duplication, etc.
I've been told (and I hope this is wrong) that there is no factory producing audio cassette tape in any other formulation other than ferric. NAC and others spool the tapes made by these factories into their cassette shells. As far as I know they are running on finite stocks of chrome & metal tapes. Ferric is still being made by factories. NAC have started to produce their own super ferric formulation tapes from scratch with the help of retired tape engineers..but if you want chrome...I suggest you stock up now as just like metal before it...it appears it will run out.
The old pancakes they are using came from Don Morris who is the RTM rep here. They load tapes but do not as of yet produce them. They are suppose to release a new Ferric tape soon but only time will tell if it is any good. I have used a tape called 799 studio tape and it was low grade garbage while the 771 is like Maxell XL II. I repair and calibrate decks so I have more knowledge about performance than most.
NAC, Tapecity, Tapeline etc. they all sell old stock of chrome tapes bought from Basf, Maxell or even Saehan. There is no and there will be no producer of chrome/metal tape in the future..
I am new to your channel and I enjoyed it. I am not at all surprised that the Japanese model is far superior to the United States model. And that is very sad, but it is the way things are now. Enjoyed the video very much!!!
To be fair prior to the Atari I my dad had bought a Dragon 32. I loved it because it was our first computer but I knew it was rubbish and couldn't hold a candle to much back then.
Maxx, in this context to clarify, "quality" refers to the cassette decks as having decent sound and operation. I suggest you look up the definition and usage of the word "quality" in order to properly understand my comment.
Maxx Fordham, I'm not talking about manners and intelligence. I'm talking about quality cassette decks, which will soon go up in value. I'll ask you again to look up the definition of the word "quality".
I wouldn't be so sure. Vinyl is now popular and has one advantage recording studios might like - it has good protection against physical copies. There are no Vinyl-R or Vinyl-RWs :-) around. But with cassette, anyone with a tape deck can make physical copy. Try buying a machine that creates vinyl records.
Maxx Fordham, you came on here to make a nit-picking, pedantic criticism of my perfectly valid and reasonable, and grammatically correct comment about my view that "QUALITY cassette decks" will go up in value in the future. Not only that, but you can't even be bothered to properly look up the definition of the word you seem to have so much objection to. Then you reveal your absolute ignorance and, quite frankly bad manners by resorting to petty and groundless insults. You do realise that resorting to insults in a discussion is an admission that you are the one in the wrong??
cblusb, good point about the inherent copy protection of vinyl. In the 70's and 80's the recording industry was panicking about home taping :- "Home taping is killing music" adverts with a skull and crossbones cassette. This was unfounded as vinyl and commercial cassette sales increased as did CD's in the 80's and 90's. The difference is, however that a cassette copy of vinyl audio is not a perfect copy and you do not have the instant access to all the tracks as you do with a record. Not so for the internet and downloading which has all but killed the music industry.
![ARGENTINA vs. BOLIVIA [6-0] | RESUMEN | ELIMINATORIAS SUDAMERICANAS | FECHA 10](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/C3wPtKNbAOA/mqdefault.jpg)
I'm a host/producer for a radio station in washington dc. In the edit room I use there is a lot of legacy equipment for previous formats, they are maintained in case we need them. Yesterday an engineer told me (after I told him about you) said that they Library of Congress has an entire department that has EVERY SINGLE audio format player perfectly maintained to play and digitize everything possible they are given!
Just an fyi if you are ever in the states and curious, cheers.
Oh, isn't there also an electronics museum somewhere around San Francisco that maintains a lot of old equipment as well? I heard something like that quite a few years ago.
banihex I hope they have saved everything in realplayer?
That program? I perhaps have it somewhere on DVD as part of some total backup.
LOL, real player was amazing, a true breakthrough technology that basically started streaming audio and video.
Amazing!
Default volume level of "11" - sounds like the single creative outlet for some overworked electrical engineer in Japan.
Probably, lol
Exactly what I thought. I wish them well, wherever they are :-)
Well they had to have something showing. Knowing some RUclips viewers they'd complain no matter what it displayed.
I can't recall who it was, but there is a clip of a guitar player somewhere on RUclips talking about his amplifier (was it Frank Zappa?) with a volume setting of 11 and when asked why that is so special he replies with "Well...you know, eleven is one louder than ten..." with a look on his face like "Why do you ask, don't you understand that?"
Are you thinking of the film "Spinal Tap"? It's a parody of a rock band.
If Techmoan starts reviewing precision digital scales and purity testing kits we'll know the real motive.
I've always thought those digital money counters looked cool in the movies.
I ordered this batch from silk road ......
@@Techmoan I used to have a job in retail. Whenever it was time to close out a drawer from a cash register, we would go into the back office and use a digital counter that weighed the money to count it. Not exactly the stuff of drug dealers in movies, but it was useful in managing the cash at a legitimate business.
As someone who works in Japanese public schools, I can (reluctantly) tell you how important devices like this remain! I still see brand new ones being purchased. I use my iPhone & iPad for these kinds of tasks, but for non-techy teachers, these boomboxes are reliable, simple and easy to use for recording/playing listening quizzes, music, etc... (A quick correction at 18:38. The manual says that ONLY Type I can be used for recording. Same for at 18:50, where the rightmost column says everything but Type I is 対応: 不可 (unsupported) for playback.)
@@AnonymousGentooman so I gather from your comment that John Smith is _not_ your real name? 😱
You can use Chrome tape. It just sounds a bit too "bright" I've actually used chrome tapes to playback in type 1 decks to get increase treble response for dull recordings
i see a lot of cassette players here in japan with the buttons turned around. Apparently its meant for presentations (like in classrooms) where you'll have the speakers pointed away from you and at your audience/ students.
There was actually a Sony boombox meant just for that- the CFD-E100.
Saga is a great comic
To me it's perfectly logical that a device made for the UK or Japan has the controls reversed. It's the same with the cars.
@@BustaHymen they have right hand drive cars in Japan, same as in the UK .
Then why do all the other buttons still face forward?
"It's cocaine"
That caught me so off guard! lol
It was actually mdma
How else would he make so many videos that are 15 or more minutes in length on a regular basis??
It was all so perfectly serious, until that moment, I was like " wait, whut? "
Ahh my old friend, Mike Volume.
We go way back..
Eddie Luck i knew his brother Max
I have never met this man before in my life.
You know : Japan import "hi-fi" -> KARAOKE FTW ! :D
Are you Eddie! I think we met at Mike's wedding?
Karaoke, eh?!
I've been watching TechMoan for some time, but I still think he's James May in disguise.
Or James May is TechMoan with a wig.
It's his voice! He sounds very similar to James May many times i thought! I like listening to them both actually!
@@mileshigh1321 Has anyone seen James May and Techmoan in the same place at the same time?
It can’t be James May, his jacket doesn’t fit right
Or he's an alternate reality James may, who fell in love with retro tech and clever gadgets instead of cars, both of them are cool either way XD
*Regarding the FM Radio Tuners*
The Japanese model can be turned in to any frequency between 76.0 to 108.0 with 0.1 increment steps. The UK model can be turned in to any frequency between 87.5 to 108.0 with 0.1 increment steps. Both radios pick up all the frequencies broadcast in the UK. The radio tuner on the UK boombox is less effective at bringing in a clear strong signal. This is not to be considered unusual....some radios are better than others, in the same way that reception on different phones on the same network can vary.
Techmoan that is a let down since my country's radio frequency are from 80-120mhz
Techmoan do you have anything on music on hold for a house telephone
Techmoan hi have you heard the ruark r1 mk3 ? I like to hear your opinion on it
I noticed that when I was browsing Japanese auction sites for boomboxes/radios, a lot of them only tuned from 76-90MHz, which I think is because their analogue TV channels interfered with the international FM broadcast band, so they decided to go with 76-90 instead of 88-108. Many older radios and boomboxes also included support for 'TV band' (i.e. audio from a TV signal) which effectively covered 88-108MHz but it wasn't universal. Now that they've switched over to digital TV, they've expanded their FM band to 76-108, but a lot of radios still don't cover the entire range (especially if they're old models that are still being produced). The thing you need to look for when buying Japanese radios is "Wide FM", which would cover the entire international FM band.
And in Norway the FM is being shut down in favour of DAB+ :/
Great video as always, thank you! :D
This is an incredibly well run channel. You and 8-bit keys are the ONLY audio channels I follow and only because you both make very engaging content for the uninitiated.
same pitch
Can't forget Technology Connections.
@@lucasrem Lucas, what the FUCK are you talking about?
12voltvids is my favorite channel
15:17 "it's not going to blast any ghettos but it's suitable around the house" ahhh I love you English people, the way you re-murder American English back to British English is wonderful.
When he said that, I got an image of TechMoan strutting through a graffiti-adorned alleyway with this on his shoulder, while wearing a pink satin pimp suit. "What you lookin at fool?"
Haha I love that kind of wordplay. It's like a subtle, wry insult to the slang. (Probably not how he meant it, but still)
I am not interested in a boom box, have no intention to buy one... but watched the whole video simply because it is very entertaining and well produced. I must be a bit of a geek :-)
Peter Rafeiner do you play animal jam cuz I do
Please refrain from unironically referring to yourself as a geek.
Yes
me too hehehehehe :)
Peter Rafeiner k
It's gray and rainy outside... I'm sitting on the couch with my dog Rudi and a warm blanket... watching Techmoan. Perfect sunday. :)
Thank you & greetings from Germany
This is the first video I've ever watched on this channel and I must say that I enjoyed it very much! I am an old music lover who laments that the quality of sound equipment available nowadays, for less than the cost of a home, is so very low. It seems that no one really cares about true stereo and high fidelity music playback these days. Thank you so much for posting a relevant and enjoyable video!
And digital sux too, nothing like analogue
@@manFromPeterborough Thanks boomer, way to show your age
@@m2heavyindustries378 FYI I'm 48 yo
Both are fine, digital and analog.
@@alkestos "Both are fine" is such a boring opinion. It's okay to have preferences. And there are good reasons for those preferences. Yes, digital does the job. But to show an ignoramus like @M2 Heavy Industries the difference between beautifully warm analog sound and flat plastic-like digital sound can be a very interesting task. And if his brain is still working, the ignoramus might even learn something. :) It's never too late.
Greetings from Germany :=)
''It's the cocaine....''
LOL I love this channel.
You mind not to make fun of him
@7:45 I thought he was talking faster than usual...
Nice to see the patreon dollars are going to good use then.
I was not expecting that and I have seen alot of videos from this channel lol
She don't Lie
She don't Lie
She don't Lie
Cocaine........
The S70 as a recorder is quite impressive. I decided to buy one of these for my 3 year old son, but decided to try recording from a cd and from the input on the side. I played them back in my hi-fi and was impressed. Next to no hiss and peaked at +5 with no distortion. Tried with a different type 1 tape and same thing, excellent sounding recordings.
Best puppet segment yet. High quality stuff, and a great review! I have a Sony clock radio from the 90s that I use because I like waking up to music or news. I'd be interested in this new Japanese machine, because I would be a little all-in-one media center for my bedroom.
Matthew Dezii it'd be awesome if it also had Bluetooth functionality or something. Just an all in one device for my room.
Matthew Dezii
I still want to see a Muppet segment with Jeremy Clarkson, James May and the Stig.....love to see a cameo of Jeremy appear in an actual Techmoan video
watershed44 I'd get a laugh if Jeremy actually voiced it.
The Aldi one has bluetooth.
"it's cocaine" - best thing ever said in a RUclips video
That did make me laugh. One of my top RUclipsrs. Keep up the good work TechMoan!
pmodern2000 I'd like to know just how many of us watching this cracked a smile on the Charlie comment ? 😂😂😂😂
now we know why he has sinus problems LOL
I suspect he had cancer. He also has no sense of taste. That really sucks. I have thought about it for a while. Would I undergo treatment which did this? Or just enjoy what time I had left. I guess typing it in this thread puts it in perspective. He clearly has life after a sense of taste. Indeed, his taste is for more than just food.
@Peter Lamont I have a constant sinus problem but I don't have cancer.
Somewhat sad to hear that you quite often get feedback on videos not being 'right'. I think they're brilliant!! Including this one :)
I can only imagine how annoying it must be to have to include caveats, justifications, and explanations of obvious features to every point you try to make in an effort to stave off the idiotic masses spamming irrelevant questions and corrections, but think about it this way; in two hundred years there will be scholars asking the same stupid questions and quibbling about pedantry to try and better understand our simple, ancient lives. Your channel will someday be looked on as a miraculous trove of knowledge and enlightenment to Earth's future historians. Keep doing what you do, this channel is a boon to humanity.
Whoa, that's deep.
@@youareababoonandiamnot4317 this guy must have been on an acid comedown when he typed that up. haha
He should save his videos on some kind of back up-hardware, since RUclips can always decide to delete them or might not even exist 200 years. Stuff on the internet is so fragile; one day you enjoy your favourite movie and the next day some incident happened or the company decides to just shut it down, without making any back up-plans. And you think to yourself, why you didn't save it and why nobody else seem to care.
Already happened a lot of times. And when those things, that thought to be lost, get found they usually sell for a high price.
Early DLC, for example. The japanese-exclusive Advent-DLC for Sonic Adventure is now said to be lost forever. It's nothing huge or important, but the company SEGA either doesn't care or doesn't have any back ups themselfs and the fans have to suffer. And what about smaller Indie-games that nobody really knows about, but get to be called as "hidden-gems" in the future, while most of the media around them is just gone for good?
Don't get too comfortable with the Internet. It's nothing more than a connection through different servers and thus websites, between/on different parts of the world. So don't forget to back up as much as possible and more than once!
Mike Nagy That's my favourite part of his videos, he just sounds so done with that sort of stuff!
Providing RUclips, or at least it's archive of video's survives that long. My prediction is that in 30 years people will think of youtube as people think of compuserve now. An old service that was ok at it's time. ;)
The CFD-S401 is definitely a better class stereo system compared to the other stereos they sell today. The ability to scan thru the tracks on the compact cassette is very rare today. Even though the head transport don't compare to the older models where you can even program which tracks you want to play, it's still a pretty decent mechanism. I'm definitely looking forward to order this stereo to replace it with the one I use in my kitchen.
I found a 1985 Sony cassette deck for $10 at a thrift store and it has amazing sound quality.
Disney Video Archive What is model number?
@@lucasrem Imagine being such a dumbass, you insult people on their hobbies because they are old. No shit a 2019 speaker with a digital MP3/FLAC sounds better. Christ, you're dumb. "Why play board games when you can play video games". Fuck off
Hardly a surprise there, mate. The real achievement would be to find a working, good quality cassette deck made in 2015, for a tenner. Most decks made by Sony, Aiwa, JVC and the like, were of pretty much solid quality back in the 80's.
Alibaba sellers very often put on the wrong prices in order to win the competition when searching for the cheapest. However, when you actually get a quote, prices are a lot higher.
They usually put bulk price
Indeed, there's no way they'll be selling them for $1 no matter how many anyone buys.
MrMonotone Leave that to people who do buy in bulk... I don't know about the $1 radio...but the few cents 4GB usb flash drives.... yupp thats how much they cost in engross
@@saltysoysauce954 Having bought various things from Alibaba, yes, the low end of the price range is often nonsense. For sellers that play that game, the only way to get the pricing at even the high end of the range is to buy their entire monthly production. So it's reasonable to guess that the wholesale price is $15.
I love the beige one... it just screams Japanese to me. Something really great about Japanese designs when it comes to electronics, I've been thinking about finding an old 90s Japanese PC and using the case to put a computer in just because they have an extremely retro sci-fi fashion about them that looks specifically Japanese and still very stylish.
"if it arrives" Ouch that resonates with me.
It is that exact fact that prevents me from backing things.
Looks like a nice unit. Thanks. On portables, it's a good idea to put on a shelf with a wall 5-6 inches away, and listen standing several feet away. That's how many people (not all) store them and listen to their boomboxes. That sort of environment probably factors into the design parameters, especially like the UK SONY unit you reviewed which has a rear facing bass section. Being on a shelf (shelves above and below) tends to make most thin sounding boomboxes, sound 'boomier' and richer. Give it a try.
Given it plays cassettes and looking at the size of the display and the beige colour option I suspect that is marketed at pensioners in Japan. My 76 year old Japanese mother in law would love it!
A few months ago I was looking at reviews of the UK unit. Over half of them were along the lines of "I bought this for my 93 year old Mother who loves the fact that she can play her Vera Lynn tapes again"
Do people really hate the puppets? I think they should get their own spinoff series.
There's a few puppet videos on his website!
The puppets are rad 🤟🏼🕶
I love the puppets. Dad jokes are my specialty too, though.
There should be a video on whether the muppets like marmite...
Awesome! You ordered a The64 and a SpectrumNext just like me!!! I can't wait for you to do a review of those when they show up... or if they show up!
M D You two samies should get married.
I actually like the Japanese cassette player mostly because of servo controller mechanism which resembles the good old decks. Didn't expect that in a boombox! Very well done review, thanks!
I loved the old Hitachi 3D Superwoofer ones that came in various models, had a few over the years including the newer CD models. Also big old Sharp ones like the GF-777. Classics.
nexgenhippy cherished my sharp twin deck portable stereo. Wanted the hitachi one but it was too expensive.
Surprisingly respectable output from the CFD-S70 via the headphone output - I wasn't expecting that.
most are, my cheap 12 quid argos fm/cassette is pretty good with the headphone output, even into a nad&mission amp and speakers
haha the cocaine joke was unexpected
how can you be sure it was a joke?
Ha ha, maybe the cocaine was imported inside the tape machine? The loose bit of plastic broke off in his eagerness to open the cassette tray and get at the stash! :D In all seriousness though, Techmoan does not strike me as a cocaine kind of chap. Doughnuts, yes.
@@tjfSIM so, powdered sugar 😂
I've got the CFD-S70 in my garage workshop and really like it. It's not easy to find a reasonably priced boombox that plays tapes, CDs and AM/FM radio. And honestly, in that setting, both the sound quality and volume are fine. The Japanese model seems better but if you are looking for a versatile sound source for your shop or a similar location I'd recommend the CFD-S70. By the way, I didn't realize until watching the review that these would play MP3s. So I burned a lengthy classical music MP3 disc and it works fine. First time I've burned a CD in years. Thanks for reviewing this item!
does it still work?
More like MeagreBass
I actually would love to know the history of MegaBass. When did it came? How does it work? Why?...
It's nothing but a tone control.
@@mikeangelo6667 No. True Mega Bass was a low pass filter/amp that boosted a narrow range of bass frequencies. Tone is merely a high frequency attenuator, rolls of the treble. Class dismissed.
@@RWL2012 bass heavy music or often any music sounds too flat without bass boost on. Although you're correct in a way that especially at louder volumes bass boost can sound too boomy even to the point of distortion possibly even leading to speaker damage if they're not designed to handle a lot of bass at high volume.
@@dodecahedron1 bass boost is called loudness on mostly older or higher end equipment. Designed to give more depth to sound at lower volumes as depth in bass isn't really heard at lower volumes without a boost to the bass or what sometimes is called loudness which can also include a boost or thickening to other frequencies as well.
The cassette sound is quite good, even on the cheap UK model. I detected a bit of 50Hz hum (hints at a half wave rectifier setup vs full wave) during the track fade out on both of the Sony portables and the Aldi portable, and not on the hi-fi deck.
When I was a youngster I always kept a blank tape in the deck to record songs from the radio.
Me too and still got a lot of those tapes .
We all did! But while TiVo type devices came along to replace VHS for recording off the television there is no real modern equivalent for recording off the radio...
ah yes, the dj would bloody well talk over half of it. :D
@@barryholt9564 My little KAOS PDR1 DAB radio will record to Micro SD card, but it isn't the same as old tape.
Same.
I got the "UK" model as a gift last Christmas, It was around $100 then, from a big box store. I use it in my food truck to jam while cooking/prepping. Bass Boost is a must and it plays CDs pretty well and gets ok AM/FM reception despite being inside a large aluminum box. Tape controls reversed from every other deck I've ever owned and still has to be looked at to get right. Annoying that the thing doesn't remember last station tuned, tired of having to take the time passing a bunch of other stations to get to the one I like every time I power it on. Have not tried the headphones with it. It plays loud enough I have to turn it down once I start getting customers or they won't be heard. It plays over the noise of my commercial vent hood so not as bad as the slagging you gave it I think. In that environment it gives me something to tap my toes to while working, fidelity would be wasted there anyway.
Ha, I have both those Prince: The Hits cassettes, they sounded great :)
Another fantastic video, keep doing what you do! xox
Thanks for another thoroughly entertaining and informative video as always. The only problem I have with it (and many of your other videos) is that I come away with a burning desire to buy whatever it is you're reviewing! Keep up the great work anyway!
yeah, that guy meade me buy a nixie tube clock, no regrets
Already bought a Walkman WM-D6C after watching that video. Nixie clock is now on the top of my wishlist along with a FlipClock and that little build your own calculator project he did. No regrets here either! :-)
The current cassette market is so crappy because it's mainly for hipsters who weren't alive during the actual cassette era, and have no idea that chrome tape and dolby noise reduction even exist. They're just like "It's a cassette tape. It's supposed to sound bad"
mazda9624 so true 😂
I was around and still have some of my old tapes. I have had no impulse to get them out and play them whatsoever.
I think I've still got the first cassette I bought in a cupboard somewhere. Either Madness or Huey Lois & The News.
To be fair, the average cassette deck during the format's prime wasn't much better than what these boomboxes come with. That and the vast majority of blank tapes sold were Type I anyway. Growing up with the format, I don't think I ever heard a Type II tape, let alone owned any. Type IV metal tapes were non-existent then and now!
i grew up with type 2 mixtapes compiled from my father's LPs... but then he had a very extensive, very high end (i think, it was all matching brand) hifi system - records, tape, CD, radio, and an amp that was bigger than any of the other units, all in a big rack - and flanked by speakers as tall as the whole assembly.
i don't think he knew much about the specs himself, but he had a pal who would hook him up and know what's what. i think the pal fixed things when they went wrong too? like when i was 4 and turned the volume dial way too far and messed up the variable pot. whoops!
later on, he ignored my advice when he asked me about making a home cinema system in a later house (i was 15, and had come to know what's what myself). he was out of touch with that friend, otherwise i presume he would've asked him. he ended up just going for what hi-fi magazine's number 1 products that month, not really grasping that they try to have circulation of new things each month, and have no consideration for how each part works together. oh well.
i never really knew how well off my family were until i moved out. i had a very basic walkman when i was about 7 but it was still a sony, y'know? so i'm guessing there's probably a class divide on what types of tape were common in the household. my father worked in finance. i had no idea that was a particularly fancy job when i was 6.
Here in the czech republic we still make metal and chromdioxide tapes.
Are you 100% sure? I'm sure the tape enthusiasts will be thrilled to hear this news. A link to the manufacturer/retailer would be great.
And they still make Nixie tubes in the Czech Republic too :) www.daliborfarny.com/ Good ones at that!
store.headlessduplicatedtapes.cz
vojtasTS29
Ok, well that link goes nowhere.
Attila theHun yeah. Their shop seems to be down today. I just checked. But i've been buying some tapes from them this spring, and i don't think they went down. Try just headlessduplicatedtapes.cz
Oh boy we got our selves a HALF HOUR... I WOULD BE EXPLICIT WITH MY EXCITEMENT, BUT I WANT TO KEEP THE COMMENTS CLEAN BC PEOPLE HAVE BEEN GETTING DEMONITIZED FOR COMMENT SECTIONS BEING FOUL. Thanks for your hard work, research and time dude!!
Great show! Thank you, really love your videos, much better than most shows on TV, to say nothing of the fact that there are no such type of shows on TV. 30 minutes passed like 3)))
I agree with you, and in addition, I enjoy watching the puppets at the end. They are entertaining and often funny.
i like sony boomboxes, they have excellent quality and good looking. i have cfs1040s, 27 years old and still working.
It's sad. After all these years Sony still decided to do the "sell the best staff only in Japan and much less one to the rest of the world" thing.
I guess Japanese consumers are generally more saavy?
The muppet banter at the end was better than usual.
The mechanism is inverted because this is the RHD version
Lol
I keep seeing new LP record players in stores by Sony and other companies. Would be cool to see a test of those.
They're all engineered and manufactured by one Taiwanese company, Hanpin Electron Co Ltd. All Denon, Audio-Technica, Stanton and Pioneer are built by them too or come from their parts bin. Now i don't mean to say that they're the same, the company has at least 3 motor types, 4 or so types of tonearm mechanisms, etc, but have fun with their catalogue and spotting which is which, and after a handful, you'll have seen them all. They're not terrible, but just about anything from the 80ies, Japanese, German or even Soviet made ones, is going to be better.
You're not wrong, but I'm pretty happy with my Audio Technica LP60. It was only £100, sounds decent and USB out means that I can faff around with digitisation. Am planning a Raspberry Pi project to pipe audio from it to all my Chromecast Audios in the house, which is fun.
Cool testing and review. This makes me want to play my cassettes! I still have many of my cassettes I bought in the 80s and use a very high end cassette deck from the 80s connected to a 90s surround sound analog stereo.
The problem with using cheap cassette decks or cheap portable players is they don't slow the tape down at the end when you fast forward or rewind so they end up stretching or snapping the tape. Also their rollers and mechanisms are cheaply made and tend to missthread tapes and mangle them a lot more than a high end tape deck or high end portable player.
Anyway great review and cheers! 😎
You often forget just how good cassettes can sound! But the cassette mechanism needs to be of reasonably good quality, and properly aligned to get the best out of them.
15:46 definitely Plena was the last genre of music I'd expect to hear on this channel but you've always got a surprise in store for us!
The Japanese always keeps the best stuff for themselves
Narrator in deadpan: "It's cocaine"
Me: "Subscribed"
Why do these muppet videos always have that guy at the start droning on about boring electrical things
Lol, nice one XD
You can always skip to get to the important bits.
I think it's a glitch in RUclips
Unfortunately for people such as yourself, these videos, especially at the start, are made for intelligent people. But don't worry too much googleboughtmee, there are cartoons you can watch elsewhere. Now stick your thumb back in your mouth and SUCK.
propfella That''s the most impressive example of 'not getting it' I've seen for a while, congratulations!
Thank you for this very well made explaination video as always!
But I would add that the Japanese manual is saying that the CFD-S401 is complatible "only" with Type I (Normal) cassettes in recording and playback. Type II (CrO2) cassettes are not compatible (Note : Playing a Type II cassette on this device gives more hiss and slightly distords the sound).
That's it. Moving to Japan.
So now you've done a video on cheapo old boomboxes and very recent releases. Maybe it's time for a video on older, supposed "higher end" boomboxes, like the AIWA Strasser CSD-SR8 or the Panasonic RX line?
In Japan, there's like, otaku radio shows sometimes... so those people would probably use that radio recording feature.
From what I've heard, even a chrome tape without Dolby B is quite good.
It's a shame that Dolby doesn't licence it anymore, and no one has made an open source alternative that can be used on any new tape decks.
Teac and Tascam has it's own noise reduction system. Bit different to the Dolby but still pretty good.
Chrome tape recorded on a decent deck sounds very good even without NR.
14:10 _"Volume at 11?"_ I laughed before you even mentioned "spinal tap".
To quote Joey Wheeler, "Damn it! The Japanese always get the good stuff!"
The japanese sony one,looks good too..
Golden era of boomboxes: 1979-1983
No, I am 59y and I lived that time.
1978-1992 was the Golden Age of Boomboxes.
@@rick3747 rick rick rick rick rick rick rick and morty walked in the club just me and my shorty 😩😩😩🤤
Soft touch tape controls on a modern cassette player? Take my money! I really want one of these things but it's impossible to get one. Will be great if Sony would be selling these all over the world. Thanks for sharing :)
Love this channel, keep up this great work!
That Gunship cassette makes me so jealous every time!
I was taught (many years ago) NOT to use the track skip function on tape decks (where it looks for a quiet patch to indicate the next song position when fast forwarding or rewinding).
Reason was that the read/write head stays in contact with the tape as it moves the tape quickly - placing extra wear on the head and the tape itself, instead of retracting and allowing the tape to pass without contacting the head.
Thoughts?
Skip functions also put kinks in the tape.
Really??? Which tunes? Lola maybe???
In cue/review/track skip, the head does indeed remain in contact with the tape , but it is retracted so that it is just close enough to pick up the magnetic signal. The amount of extra wear is thus minimal. People tend to worry far too much about this. I have been working on language learning machines for years which always have these modes, and they do not suffer unduly. In fact it is surprising how robust the tapes and machines can be. In one installation, the c60 tapes only began to show audible wear after 4 years of weekly use. More importantly the heads of the decks were like new -after all that cueing!
Just a quick question did anyone ever wear out a tape head on a quality unit. I have never seen one but that's just me
OK seen one on google search
"oyasumi timer" is my favorite term
don't let the haters get you down. I really like your videos, especially the hifi/audio related ones!!
"No, no its not cocaine"
Tell it to the judge Techmoan.
"tell it to the judge sunshine"
LordwolfFurry legalize it
*hands Techmoan a test cup* prove it!
Techmoan with my morning coffee? Oh yes!
That got me out of nowhere. "Oh, it's cocaine-- NO, it isn't."
That alarm setting; Missed opportunity to slap in System of a Down - Chop Suey ;)
WAKE UP. TIMETOPUTONALITTLEMAKEUP
edit:typo's
great way to get a copyright strike even when its within the allowed 5s
The sound quality is not bad but I think recent devices look flimsy, ancient boomboxes are more solid.
These modern products are inexpensive devices to be fair. For three or four times the retail price, I am sure Sony could produce a very nice unit in a metal case --- but would there be any interest? Sony produce plenty of higher-end speakers, I am sure they could slot in some nice coaxial drivers with silk dome tweeters, instead of these full range 3.5-4" jobbies that seem to be in these.
Have people really complained about the puppets? *sigh*
Surely Dolby's patent has expired by now?
But rights for logo and name...
@@PeKlim call it Yblod instead
I think they would have no problem letting people use the tech.
Gideon Kloosterman it's not worth the trouble I think
I've gotta say, I really Love your videos... Do you happen to have a review of the Nakamichi Dragon Cassette Tape Player?
Do you seriously have 2 vectrexes sitting on the shelf behind you!? Are they both working?
I'd recommend a quick flick through the previous videos on a channel before asking a question like that, you'll probably find the answer already :-)
Ugh.. I've become "that guy" in a techmoan video haven't I?
Yes I've got two, and they both work...or at least they did last time I used them.
Talking about the background, that's a cool clock. Do you remember the make/model?
If I search rolling digital clock I can't seem to find it.
I'm dumb, didn't just look in the description - sorry.
was it only me hypnotized by the clock there ?
Did you happen to check out the MW reception on the first unit? Sony usually made very good AM receivers.
Next time you're on coccaine, remake the office space bit, with the aldi boom box in the backyard. Please.
actually, there is one company in Malaysia still making chrome tape, and one in China, so I've been told, but they are the last ones as far as I'm aware, hopefully the re-take-up of the cassette format will lead to more demand for chrome tape, thus maybe lead to another company picking up the production of chrome tape. Also in a previous video you linked to tapeline.info for metal tape, but they've since run out of them, do you have any new sources, or tips for metal tape? As I've recent;y won an ebay auction for a sony, 90's era double cassette deck that has all the bells and whistles including support for Dolby NR B, C, S HX pro and all types of tape, ferro, chrome and metal. so I'd really like to record on the best format of the day...
Metal tape is slightly better than CrO2 tape
I laughed out loud on train when you said cocaine
"It goes beyond ele..."
"SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!"
a good way to spot a genuine sony product is by the arrows they put on every quality (and crappy) product they make. you can tell its rebadged or a knockoff because the molds dont contain them.
arrows are present in the cd tray of the japanese one.
I noticed the first Sony one also had the arrows so I reckon Sony actually made this one also
Am I the only one who wants to know more about the devices the puppets are using?
troll deflection techniques are strong with this one! great vid! :D
For those interested ¥10,190 is $92.24 or £69.79
"This war is won, you just don't know it yet"
AAATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATA
The japan version is the best in quality in sound.
That Hi-Fi is otherworldly though
I don't know if someone else has mentioned this, but there IS a company here in the USA that still makes Chrome cassettes: nationalaudiocompany.com/
In fact, they make three grades of them - 751 Chrome (minimum quantity of 100), 771 Chrome Plus (minimum 10, C-60 only), and 799 Studio Master (minimum 10, C-60 and C-90). I haven't used them myself, just thought this might be useful info for cassette fans. They also do duplication, etc.
I've been told (and I hope this is wrong) that there is no factory producing audio cassette tape in any other formulation other than ferric. NAC and others spool the tapes made by these factories into their cassette shells. As far as I know they are running on finite stocks of chrome & metal tapes. Ferric is still being made by factories. NAC have started to produce their own super ferric formulation tapes from scratch with the help of retired tape engineers..but if you want chrome...I suggest you stock up now as just like metal before it...it appears it will run out.
The old pancakes they are using came from Don Morris who is the RTM rep here. They load tapes but do not as of yet produce them. They are suppose to release a new Ferric tape soon but only time will tell if it is any good. I have used a tape called 799 studio tape and it was low grade garbage while the 771 is like Maxell XL II. I repair and calibrate decks so I have more knowledge about performance than most.
NAC, Tapecity, Tapeline etc. they all sell old stock of chrome tapes bought from Basf, Maxell or even Saehan. There is no and there will be no producer of chrome/metal tape in the future..
Furr Bear ok
well, this is infortunate :/
I am new to your channel and I enjoyed it. I am not at all surprised that the Japanese model is far superior to the United States model. And that is very sad, but it is the way things are now. Enjoyed the video very much!!!
It's more of a comparison between two models in the same line, and the English one is from the UK.
What was the other puppet using that wasn't the Alacatel Minitel?
I'm keeping that one a mystery. It's a pretty odd piece of old tech.
Techmoan Tease! I assume we're going to see if featured sometime. Look forward to it.
Jason T I was wondering about that one too! Great review as always.
I think we used to have one at work - it's electronic but no 'display' and it could be hand written. :)
"The song that never starts." - LOL!!!!
why is your clock set to American date month day year ? instead of euro date day month year ????
That's what it defaults to when I turn the wifi off.
The wifi was turned off to prevent interference during the sound demonstrations.
interesting ,Thanks
Japanese unit is a much better device
Why cassettes just refuse to die? I mean there were several younger formats that were created and discontinued in the meantime.
@@maryantish2160 Vinyl is better ;-)
This thread esculated REALLY quickly
I think it grew so big because you could record them yourself. And once its big its convenient to just buy more cassette stuff!
Great video as ever and a fantastic Muppets video :) Of course, I had an Atari 8Bit which was much better than both the Speccy or Commy :)
BBC micro here. Wanna fight ;-)
To be fair prior to the Atari I my dad had bought a Dragon 32. I loved it because it was our first computer but I knew it was rubbish and couldn't hold a candle to much back then.
This item does not ship to Russia. As always! Nevertheless...
Victor Mushkarin but in Soviet Russia, this item ships you 😮
I predict as cassettes become as retro and trendy as vinyl then old, quality, cassette decks in good order will go up in value.
Maxx, in this context to clarify, "quality" refers to the cassette decks as having decent sound and operation. I suggest you look up the definition and usage of the word "quality" in order to properly understand my comment.
Maxx Fordham, I'm not talking about manners and intelligence. I'm talking about quality cassette decks, which will soon go up in value. I'll ask you again to look up the definition of the word "quality".
I wouldn't be so sure. Vinyl is now popular and has one advantage recording studios might like - it has good protection against physical copies. There are no Vinyl-R or Vinyl-RWs :-) around. But with cassette, anyone with a tape deck can make physical copy. Try buying a machine that creates vinyl records.
Maxx Fordham, you came on here to make a nit-picking, pedantic criticism of my perfectly valid and reasonable, and grammatically correct comment about my view that "QUALITY cassette decks" will go up in value in the future. Not only that, but you can't even be bothered to properly look up the definition of the word you seem to have so much objection to. Then you reveal your absolute ignorance and, quite frankly bad manners by resorting to petty and groundless insults.
You do realise that resorting to insults in a discussion is an admission that you are the one in the wrong??
cblusb, good point about the inherent copy protection of vinyl. In the 70's and 80's the recording industry was panicking about home taping :- "Home taping is killing music" adverts with a skull and crossbones cassette. This was unfounded as vinyl and commercial cassette sales increased as did CD's in the 80's and 90's. The difference is, however that a cassette copy of vinyl audio is not a perfect copy and you do not have the instant access to all the tracks as you do with a record. Not so for the internet and downloading which has all but killed the music industry.