Maxell to release portable cassette player on May 26th

 

Maxell will release the "MXCP-P100" rechargeable Bluetooth-enabled portable cassette player on May 26th, 2025. It will be available in two colors, white and black. This will be a  portable cassette player for playback only, with a built-in battery that eliminates the need for battery replacement. Compatible with Bluetooth 5.4, you can enjoy cassette tapes with wired earphones/headphones as well as wireless earphones/headphones. The flywheel, which stabilizes the tape's running, is made of brass, it's smooth movement reduces rotational irregularities, resulting in high sound quality. Playback time is approximately 9 hours with a wired connection and approximately 7 hours with a Bluetooth connection. The charging port is USB Type-C, and playback can be performed while charging. Charging time is approximately 2 hours. The external dimensions, including the protrusions, are 122 x 38 x 91 mm (width x depth x height), and the weight is about 210 g. A USB Type-A to Type-C cable (about 75 cm) for charging is included.

Technics RS-M258R (1982) | Fixed 4-Head Design

The RS-M258R was introduced by Technics in 1982. You might wonder what "Fixed 4-Head Design" could mean. This is actually a different and unique approach to build a auto-reverse cassette deck. In order to avoid tape-to-head angle errors that occur in ordinary auto-reverse decks, Technics decided to use two completely separate rec/pb heads. This resulted in two completely independent set of heads (for both direction) in what we usually call a 2-head configuration deck. Also critical for equally good performance in both directions is the decks' transport system. Here you can find a precision DC motor with two flywheels. The FG (frequency generator) with servo control keeps speed from fluctuating. The twin dynamically balanced flywheels assure that the torque from the precision FG servo motor will be evenly transmitted to the tape. As a result wow & flutter is kept very low under both forward and reverse tape transport conditions. Also the change of direction happens in just 0.35 second. This bit of engineering magic is performed with infrared rays and a phototransistor.

Technical Specifications

Track system: 4-track 2-channel auto-reverse stereo recording and playback

Wow & Flutter: 0.07% (WRMS)

Frequency response: 20-18.000Hz Metal

Motor: FG servo DC motor (x1)

Heads: SX (Sendust Extra) head for record/playback (x2),

       Double-gap ferrite head for erasure (x2)

Dimensions (WxHxD): 43x10.9x34cm

Weight: 5.8kg

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One Cassette to Rule Them All

In an era where everything tends to be smaller there are times when actually bigger is better. Let's say you have a large archive of music collection on Compact Cassettes. You know, those things that will work without internet connection, and once you add a cassette with your favorite artist to your collection it is not going to simply disappear when you're least expecting. On the other hand, when this collection grows and grows you are faced with a challenge, where and how to store these cassettes. During the past decades manufacturers have offered various, more or less suitable solutions to this, but what if I tell you, there is another way. I am talking about one cassette to rule them all. This is of course a recent creation (2023) of 1001 Hi-Fi - The Stereo Museum, a giant cassette that can acomodate 135 cassettes with "standard" size box. They are all distributed on 3 shelfs with space above them allowing easy acces and extraction of any cassette at any time. Many of the features cassette user like to have, are incorporated for full comfort. First, we have the "soft eject" function. This means that once you pull the bottom of the door this will swing-up slowly and gracefully without any help. With the help of two powerful "audiophile pistons" the door will stay safely in opened position. Another feature that is highly regarded by cassette users is the illuminated cassette well. This has been achieved by placing two manually operated LED lights inside the door facing the cassettes for improved visibility. No 3D printer has been used for this "cutting edge" product (don't worry, everything is soft and smooth on the edges...) - all this was created by 1001 Hi-Fi in the good old "analog fashion" way - hand made.

TDK - Stevie Wonder (1979)

TDK cassette TV advert featuring Stevie Wonder

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Philips EL3300 - World's First Compact Cassette Recorder

 

The World's First Compact Cassette Recorder was introduced

60 Year Ago, by PHILIPS at the Berlin Radio Show in August 1963.

Discover more here.

TEAC Audio (1986)

TEAC Hi-Fi Audio TV advert, 1986.

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#1001hifi #vintageaudio #teac

The VU meter

The VU meter

A volume unit (VU) meter is a device found in analog recording equipment displaying a representation of the signal level. In more modern equipment there were peak meters usually made up of a series of LED or fluorescent displays to indicate the highest output level at any instant.  They are used during recording to an analog tape or cassette to set the maximum recording level without distorting the signal. 

As a general rule you have to set the recording in such a manner that the loudest part of music does not exceed the 0 VU (100%) marking on the meter. That's when it enters the red area where the music might get distorted. There are a few exceptions however where you can push the level into the red zone when using Type II or Type IV tape in a compact cassette. Here are some examples of various VU meters found on some of the recorders found in our collection:

FISHER CR-4150 (aka SANYO RD-880)

TASCAM 112B - The Classic

SIEMENS RC 555

FG PROFI RECORDER 306

AIWA AD-F660 using a Type II cassette

JVC PC-D5L - basic on a portable unit

WEGA C120 - a SONY in disguise 

YAMAHA K-540

Lenco Italia MC 70

GOLDSTAR GSK-1100

TELEFUNKEN HC 750M

PIONEER CT-F850

PIONEER CT-S88R - a programable cassette deck 

JVC KD-V35 - with added spectrum analyzer

You can see detailed description of each presented unit here.

PCM digital audio Compact Cassette

At the Tokyo Audio Fair in 1981 there were no more than 16 companies showing CD players before the official launch in 1982. On the other hand, the same companies - JVC, PIONEER, SANYO, SHARP, SONY - demonstrated PCM tape decks that were using normal Compact Cassette. The only problem was that there was no standardization of the recording format. The cassette was not interchangeable, each company using a different recording format, track layout and tape speeds. The result is as we all know that only the CD was succesfull and the Compact Casssette remained as an analog audio recording format....or the storage device of the world first Digital Photo Camera.

SANYO PCA-D8 1982

JVC PCM Compact Cassette Prototype 1982

SONY PCM S-DAT Prototype 1981

PIONEER PCM Compact Cassette Prototype 1981

In 1985 SHARP presented the: "PCM digital audio compact cassette deck RT-X5 OPTONICA" This was made by SHARP as an early PCM system using a "16-track integrated head system" using a regular "Compact Cassette". Here are some technical data for the OPTONICA by SHARP RT-X5 :

14 bit / 44.1 khz sampling frequency

Frequency response 2 - 20.000 Hz +/- 0.5dB

Tape speed 9.5cm/s

...and 10kg

OPTONICA RT-X5 PCM Compact Cassette 1985

It was only in the late 1992 that PHILIPS presented the DCC (Digital Compact Cassette) a backwards compatible format that allowed to record in digital format to the new DCC cassette but also to play back your old Compact Cassette. But it arrived too late to the market and it is remembered as one of the biggest failures in audio history.

PHILIPS DCC 1992

Cassette winding device (and it's not a pencil)

You probably have seen many times  a picture of a compact casssette and a pencil followed by the question: What's the link between a cassette and a pencil? Many people think that is about writing the artist name on the label and nothing else. That's partially true but those who post this kind of picture usually see the pencil as a tool used to forward the tape without inserting the cassette in your player.

There was however a better method to fast forward your cassette without using your player. It was a hand winder made by japanese company JEWLTONE, model CT-406J. This device could be usefull if you are using a battery powered player (to save battery) or you simply need to quickly wind a cassette while another one is playing. 

That's pretty cool, isnt't it ? Some think that cassette can still Rock You.

Compact Cassette and the Digital age

The history of the Compact Cassette begin in 1963 when PHILIPS presented the first compact cassette recorder, the EL 3300 as a dictation machine. This format quickly became very popular and soon the Compact Cassette became a competitive Hi-Fi stereo audio format. Being so popular and widely available there were other technological fields that choose the Compact Cassette for various purposes. Here are some examples.

In 1975 a KODAK engineer, Steve J. Sasson builds the World first still image Digital camera. It had a resolution of 0.01 megapixel captured by a CCD image sensor and stored on a Compact Cassette. It took 23 seconds to record a black and white photo. Images were played back from the Compact Cassette into a computer and displyed on a television set.

In 1985 the same Compact Cassette was used, this time by TOSHIBA under it's Japanese brand name Aurex to store digitized images captured by a video camera. The picture below shows the two components of the digitizing-storing equipment. At the bottom is the digitizing unit and on the top is a regular cassette deck from the Aurex/TOSHIBA range (Aurex PC-X66AD) using a Compact Cassette as storage. 

The last model we see here is an audio equipment, but this time it's a digital audio recorder that is using a Compact Cassette. This OPTONICA by SHARP unit was made by SHARP in 1985. The OPTONICA RT-X5 model was using a 9.5 cm/s speed to record digital audio in 14 bit / 44.1 kHz sampling frequency format. Aparently it was only a prototype.

                             

The shown equipments only made it as prototype units but, the Compact Cassette was fairly popular in computer data storage systems, such as military aircrafts.....and that's classified information. 

(Hush hush, you haven't heard it from me)

Discover more about the Compact cassette reading the history of the first 

50 years of compact cassette (1963-2013)

Compact Cassette Changers

Before playlist existed there were compact cassette changers. Juke box heroes. They didn't seem to catch on like record changers or CD changers however from time to time a manufacturer made such a unit. Here are some of them and the various concepts they used to implement the ideea.

PHILIPS N2502 (1969)

DENON CASSEMATIC 12 (TRC-798ED)

This cassette changer is from 1970 and is one of the first models. 

It used a slide mechanism for 12 cassettes.

Panasonic RS-296US

This Panasonic is a 20 cassette carousel changer from 1972. 

Advertised as the cassette player that can play up to two and a half days of music.

PHILIPS N 2408

This PHILIPS is 6 cassette changer from 1976. The first version of this model dates back to 1969. It uses a funny accesory to flip the casssettes to play both sides of the loaded tapes.

This also makes it one of the first autoreverse cassette decks as well.

SONY MTL-10

The SONY MTL-10 is a 10 cassette cartridge format cassette changer from 1982. They were available in several colours - for supermarkets as advertised in the brochure. It has Laser-Amorphous head and on the slide out cassette compartiment there are preset switches for each cassette for tape type and dolby on/off preselect.

AIWA AD-WX99

A 5 cassette changer from 1985 in a dual well construction where cassette compartiment 1 is the cassette changer for playback only.

PIONEER CT-M601R

The PIONEER CT-M601R is a 6 cassette changer from 1992. It is one of the last models that was also available as a dual well construction just like the previous AIWA.

You can read more about the (PHILIPS) Compact Cassette format here.