I used to have one that would broadcast a short-range radio station that you would tune the car radio to. You’d have to make sure its frequency was far from an actual radio station or you’d get crosstalk. On long road trips you’d have to keep adjusting it.
Lol, we used those little transmitters that you plug into the cigarette lighter plug until several years ago in a mid 2000s car, and they’re still sold and used by people. The funniest thing that happened was when we were overtaking a semi who had one of these, but with a stronger transmitter, so for a couple of seconds we were listening to the guy’s random turbo folk music.
Psshhht. I used to have a microphone that let me SING ON THE RADIO. It literally put me on the FM airwaves. You may have heard some of my stuff.
HEY GOOD LOOKING I’LL BE BACK TO PICK YOU UP LATER
I remember showing mine to a friend once and she straight up was like “Oh wow! I wonder if they make these for CD players instead of cassette tapes.”
🤦♂️
They make these things with bluetooth now believe it or not.
Pair the tape
Stick it in a cassette player
Play music on your phone.
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How does that work from the fake cassette to the player? Does the fake cassette record what’s streaming to it to a loop of tape and let the player pick up the audio?
adjusts 🤓 glasses
So a cassette tape works by using electromagnetism. Ferric Oxide (AKA, literally rust powder) has a property that if exposed to a magnetic field, it will create a weak version of that magnetic field within itself
So the record head of a tape machine is an electromagnet that changes its field based on the actual audio signal, translating audio frequencies directly to magnetic directions and strengths, while the read head is a passive electromagnetic coil that picks up that weak magnetic field on the rust-coated plastic tape while a small motor runs the tape past it and emits it as a soundwave.
The tape adapter skips 90% of these steps —
— It just has an electromagnetic coil of its own, positioned so it lines up with the play head, and when you feed it an audio signal, that audio signal gets directly translated to a magnetic field just by running it through the coil. The tape deck picks it up and doesn’t even realise there is no tape running through
God damn it. Another thing I have to charge.
I think they might use AAAs
Down to you if that’s worse or better.
I feel like this could work using a tiny generator attached to the drive’s motorized wheel, but that’s probably too complex to be cost-effective for something like this unfortunately.
That is a great idea.
I can see the use if you’re for example driving an older car with mostly original kit and don’t want an anachronistic stereo in it. So you pair up your fake cassette to your modern phone and can still play Spotify or w/e with the original kit.
There’s even an 8-Track version of it.
Also buying a whole-ass new car stereo (+ installation) is much more expensive than a bluetooth adaptor from China
So if you’re driving an ancient car out of necessity rather than for the aesthetic, this can help you get music into it.
F’course
Most cars from the age of tapes nowadays are relics. “Old cars” in the range that poor people drive out of necessity are from the CD age instead.
Am poor still driving my 1997 truck, it has an aux tho
You’d be surprised, I’ve seen cars from as late as 08 that still had cassette. Though that’s probably heavily dependent on manufacturer, model, region, and sub model type. But my point still stands, hell id wouldn’t be surprised if there was a car or two manufactured in 2012 that still came stock with a cassette deck.
…used to be folks also made adapters with FM micro-transmitters for cars without tape decks; might still do…
They still do. This is how I play stuff in my '03 Jeep.
Pair the tape
I can’t even, why is this so funny?(◕‿◕’)
Love me some anachronism stew.
I remember excluding cars with CD players from my purchasing decisions for this reason! Should either have a tape or aux in.
I have one that is bluetooth to cassette. Unfortunately, it has a lot of artifacts during playback. Opted for a bluetooth transmitter that connects to an empty radio channel? Frequency? Works well.
Sounds like an issue with your cassette deck. You should definitely be getting better audio quality with a cassette adapter, mine sounds better than a normal cassette tape. Every radio frequency transmitter I have ever tried has had severe artifacting on the high end (treble), especially prevalent on “S” sounds; they come out really static-y. At any rate, your better off doing literally anything else than repairing your cassette deck if it’s cooked, but its worth a go to try a standard aux cord cassette since they’re under $10.
I’ve actually opted to record my playlists onto cassette tapes, and I wound up using these more than the aux adapter.
The bluetooth to FM transmitter works well for you? I’ve tried them several times over the decades, even the expensive ones seem to suck. Maybe not as much as your bluetooth to cassette, I’ve never seen one of those for sale or used one.
What issues have you had? Mine connects fine without issue and the quality is ok at best but my car speakers aren’t exactly preem. My antenna is even broken off and has a hard time catching regular stations but no issues with my transmitter nor with the bluetooth part of it.
There’s always some degree of background static, hissing, humming, etc, no matter what channels I tried tuning them to. I don’t expect perfectly clear audio while using an adapter, but those tuner types were always unacceptably bad for that any time I’ve tried them.
*scuttles out of the sewer*
my linux phone had an FM transmitter so I could just override any station with my jams
*scuttles back into sewer*What phone do you have? That’s an interesting feature like IR blasters
I remember reading about that phone and wanting it badly. I ended up getting a Nexus One instead. The Nexus One was its own marvel.
I remember weighing up either getting the iPhone at the time, the Nexus One, and the Nokia N900. It was a close call between the Nexus and the Nokia, mostly because I wanted those sweet sweet Android apps that everyone had, but ultimately I went with the N900 and it changed my life.
I could write my own Python on the train, I learned C and C++ over the course of a long car trip, and even started writing my own Apps on the device itself. Can you imagine that? On-device app development? In any language you want? It was unheard of at the time, and is relatively unheard of even now.
Maemo and then meego were so, so good. N9 was probably my favorite phone ever honestly.
I had an adapter like that from aliexpress because my car didn’t have bluetooth.
Those things were awesome. I had an old vehicle that only had an 8 track. My options were to listen to Don’t Look Back for the thousandth time or pick one of those up (in the days before ali express) and plug my CD player into it.
I did listen to Don’t Look Back a lot.
Lol my dad had one. I’m Gen Z.
I last saw that in like 2016 (car was like made in like the 2000s). Then the new cars didn’t even have the casette thing anymore.
Look at that young whippersnapper. I had one for my discman.
I used to make mix tapes by recording mp3s onto cassettes so I could listen to them in my car.
Fuck you I’m not THAT old
Those were great. They did a job for everyone that couldn’t afford the latest tech in the car. Now you’re lucky to get a head unit with an Aux plug, much less a CD player.
I drive a 2001 which luckily came with a CD player that was wired to use a 6-disc changer mounted in the trunk. For $50 I got an adapter cable that tricks the unit into thinking my aux device is the 6-disc changer. This worked great until I got my latest phone which doesn’t have a fucking headphone jack. I bought an adapter but the top volume level is pitifully low, so I’m back to burning CDs to play in my car.
I bought an adapter but the top volume level is pitifully low, so I’m back to burning CDs to play in my car.
This is odd, because the voltage levels should be somewhat normalized across the USB-C adapter and your old headphone jack. It may be an issue with your adapter having a shitty DAC. Basically, the adapter has to take the digital audio signal, and convert it to analog. Cheaper adapters will use cheap digital-analog converters (DACs) which will either output lower levels, or will tend to change the signal as volume increases.
It’s also possible that it is purely an analog converter, in which case your phone is actually using its internal DAC. There are benefits and drawbacks to this, but it’s possible that your phone is software-limiting its internal DAC’s power output to avoid burning out from a bad connection.
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If the car was old enough you could plug a cassette adapter into an 8 track adapter.
Dear god, I had one of these. I was driving a 74 Ford pickup with an 8-track and it was the only way to play my music through the single speaker in the dash. High fidelity.
Plug… plug it into a zune
Minidisc of gtfo
I actually had a Zune. They were pretty nice as far as MP3 players go.
Yeah, they were actually pretty ahead of their time. It was before people had become accustomed to music subscriptions, so that scared a lot of people away. But the fact that it would just automatically sync with your library, and you could download whatever songs you wanted for offline play in the car… It was groundbreaking at the time. Plus it had a built-in FM receiver, so you could listen to the radio while on the go too.
…my father-in-law still squirts, but mostly from neuropathy-associated incontinence…
Heck, I still use my old Zune. Replaced the battery, hard drive, and screen a couple of years ago and the thing is a beast.
Good god. That’s three or more generations of electronics just dragged kicking-and-screaming into the 21st century. I love it.
All that’s left to do is send the receiver output to a PC or RPi, and serve it as a self-hosted streaming service.
My best friend in high school had a stereo with an 8-track recorder.
I had a lil radio emitter that plugged into the iPod so it would replace the local stations !
I loved setting mine to the frequency of a local station and watching the confusion in other cars at a stop light if they were listening to the same frequency. I didn’t do it too often because it is pretty annoying though and not too hard to figure out who’s doing it.
