Using your Boss Katana as a DAW was genius.

Tbh this was somewhat underwhelming… I expected using a microcontroller+motor to replace the mechanisms of a regular cassette mechanism, or some other uses of modern tech for the cassette.

Instead, it’s just… a tape recorder connected, in a somewhat convoluted way, to spotify.

This takes me back to the frustrations of trying to record band rehearsals in small spaces using the built-in-mic (a very long time ago).

Poor fidelity of cassette tape medium was the least of the issues. The biggest problem was the built in mic's inability to handle the overall volume.

Lots of experimentation with placement of the recorder (and thus mic) within the rehearsal space would eventually yield results that were no longer useless -- but still pretty, pretty bad. I do not miss cassette.

To be honest I don't really even miss analog -- but this comes to down convenience and flexibility rather than fidelity comparisons.

Said another way: there are no analog DAWs (a redundant and captain-obvious statement, I do realize).

I wonder how many of these small tape recorders still exist in the world today. They used to be ubiquitous back in the day. But surely a big % must have been dumped in the trash or a recycling bin @ some point.

Wouldn't surprise me if there'd be a viable market for such devices brandnew. Not just for nostalgic greybeards, also younger folks unfamiliar with yesteryear's tech & curious about it.

you could have just... pressed record on the casette player.

I don't understand the article. It tries to shroud a plain tape recorder in mystery, but the whole thing is just eye-rollingly underwhelming because tape recorders/decks are still easy to find, and so many of them have common line level inputs that are ready to go without any fiddling; just connect your analog output and press record.

> Despite not being the best medium for music, I find cassettes to be a really impressive piece of technology particularly due to how easy it is to write content to them.

I like old tech too and in the 1990s I recorded a lot of audio stuff straight from the radio, but nowadays with USB everywhere I just would not use tapes anymore. I just find USB sticks so much more convenient. I kind of transitioned into the digital world only and while no transition is perfect, I feel that the trade-offs are in favour of digital only rather than audio.

Even listening to the radio is different, I'd just use mpv and record the stream into a local file, as-is. It is strange how new technology obsoletes old tech but I also don't want to go back anymore. Though old hardware is cool, I love old computers from the 1970s and 1980s. They are so much cooler than the modern computers, even though the modern computers beat them performance-wise with their eyes closed.