Cart Rescue - Mouldy tape to cheesy tunes
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- čas přidán 1. 07. 2024
- A semi-follow-up to this video • BMS2600 : The last Phi...
This time I try to listen to the contents of an unplayable background music cart.
00:00 The problem
04:22 Messing with tape
10:54 Manipulating audio files
15:35 Name that tune
16:59 Wrap up
17:46 Patreon credits
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Regularly asked question
Q) Why are there comments from days ago when this video has just gone live today?
A) Patrons / techmoan usually have early access to videos. I'll show the first version of a video on Patreon and often the feedback I get results in a video going through further revisions to improve it. e.g. Fix audio issues, clarify points, add extra footage or cut extraneous things out. The video that goes live on youtube is the final version. If you want to see the videos early too, you can sign up to Patreon here: / techmoan - Věda a technologie
I named every song. I can’t remember them all, but I named the first one Graham. Seemed fitting.
😂🤣
Appropriate, it's a real cracker.
What about your gram? I hope she's well these days.
Thanks :D
@@themoviedealers 😅🤣😂🤣😅
I had work experience in the sound department of the BBC in the late 1980s (I was still at school and considering it as a career). When I arrived the big story was some new metal reels for the 1/4in tape machines. They had arrived from the factory without being filed down, so the edges of them were razor sharp! A spinning disc of razor-sharp metal! The fault was realised quickly but not before one or two sound engineers had ended-up with bloody fingers. Their response was to put a pile of the blood-covered metal reels on the manager's desk with a note saying that they weren't suitable...
Funny that companies were still trying to make garbage products even back in the 80s! If you have any similar stories I'd love to hear them.
Epic story 🤣
I imagine the reaction from the manager: "Oh great, now i have to do my job...".
I wanted to join the BBC in the late 80's (1986 I think...) as a transmitter technical assistant. I used to work for Tandy's part time while at college and got to talk with a couple of chaps from the Sutton Coldfield transmitter station who came in to buy some bits and pieces. I was studying for my A-levels in electronics, maths and physics and had passed my radio amateur exam, they suggested I did a tour of the facility and had an initial interview which went nicely and then went to London for a formal interview.
It was an absolute nightmare! I got dropped off outside central London, had to get my way in by tube for the first time, the heavens opened and I got drenched - I got lost but found Broadcasting House and got barked at by the receptionist because I couldn't find my tube ticket because everything was sticking together. I wasn't that bothered about the expenses but that really set the mood for the whole experience. Total disaster - I was so damn nervous and I didn't perform at the interview and failed.
But in retrospect I'm pretty glad I didn't go down that route. I've always had an interest in broadcast and have worked with a consultancy in the DTV testing and conformance sector but have spent most of my career in the semiconductor industry as an applications engineer. With the sell-off of the broadcast infrastructure in the 90's and the commercialisation of services I'm glad I chose the path I chose.
Nice to hear from someone else who almost but didn't :)
The note was written with their own blood, I presume?
A very weird moment for me, I suddenly had a memory of buying shirts and trousers in Marks and Spencers about twenty years ago when I heard the Nikita cover. Weirdly clear I could remember a lot of detail.
Those are the best memories. It always weirds me out though. Why did I remember THAT?
@@Mandalore06 anything associated with a certain memory can trigger you to remember it. It might be a song, smell, taste or sound that triggers it and it can be very nice indeed.
Nikita was a mid 80s track so way more than 20 years ago!
@@jonathaneastwood2927 I really hope you're just being a troll and you've not meant that as an insightful response. Unless you are like the person I worked with not long before that point who insisted on not watching or listening to anything more than 5 years old. He took the piss out of the fact I was reading a novel while we worked together so I suspect he wasn't a great reader. He wasn't an unpleasant guy but you'd not want him on your pub quiz team.
@@mallockarcher I for one think their comment is genuine and a bit funny ; it shouldn't be surprising that shops playing background music can't afford the rights to play the very latest hits :-)
"Good luck content matching that one youtube" easily my favourite part of the whole video. Sticking it to youtube 🤣
I laughed out loud!
You are the Bob Ross of electronics . Great content.
Happy little tapes; they live right here.
I love this comment :)
You could call each failed audio format a happy accident. Especially when TM gets his hands on one 😁
"let's play some happy little tapes"
Love it! Totally spot on!
11:23 Congratulations you have just rescued a rare Chipmunks special 😅
I just laughed so hard at myself. I produce music and often use a DAW, when the 'Name that tune' bit came up there was one I wanted to hear again. I was proper spun out when I tried to grab the progress bar in the vid instead of the progress bar for the vid hahahaha
Can relate.
I work with train simulators and when watching videos involving them, sometimes try to change the camera angle and wondering why it doesn't work.
“Good luck content-matching that one CZcams” HAHAHAHAHA that was awesome
I restore/digitise tapes for a living. The bunching you're talking about at the beginning isn't related to the mould but tends to be caused by the tension of the tape being uneven during storage. As temperature and humidity change over time it pushes and pulls the tape, expanding and contracting it in an uneven fashion until it buckles
fascinating! thanks!
What's the best way to clean mold off tape? I have a few cassettes that have white mold just like the tape in this video.
@@ShyStudios best way? You need to kill the mould. Baking in a scientific oven (don't use your home oven!!) between 45-52 Celcius works best. Don't use chemicals. Then open cassette, brush off excess mould (don't expect to remove much, most will stay on the tape) with very soft brush. FFW and REW tape, open cassette again and clean out with soft brush again.
so that is why companies store their long term backup tapes for the servers in salt mines. constant temp and humidity. Or more accurately constant temp and humidity that does not require mechanical systems which can fail.
@@owenbutcher Ill give that a try, I actually have a lil low temp oven I use for evaporating stuff
Probably should have cleaned the tape with a microfibre cloth and isoprophyl while spooling. I do that for mouldy VHS tapes. Works a charm. Dont forget to clean your reel players head and rollers to remove any mould that might have rubbed off!
And don't forget to clean behind you ears and under your foreskin at least twice a week. Its also very important to de-ice your freezer once a year and always shave with the grain.
Christ (-:
@@chrisphobia I don’t get your response. I clean VHS tapes all the time with 90% alcohol while I spool them. If you put a mouldy tape through the player the spores if active will contaminate the next tape you play and even if they aren’t active it will gunk everything up and audio quality will suffer. Bassquake is giving very good advice.
Tweaking the head azimuth would help also.
@@chrisphobia Stupid and unnecessary reply. If those mould spores are still active they will contaminate other tapes played on the machine if it hasn't been thoroughly cleaned. Bassquake's advice is good advice to follow.
@@kevinh96 I don't think anything about chris' advice is bad either hahaha
Yep, do it for the fun. It doesn't have to be worth it, nor optimised, just a pleasure. And it's good to see the process, mistakes and all.
Video: uploaded 20min ago
Comment: 6d ago
@@Mitch_Rogoff Techmoan releases his videos on Patreon early as an unlisted video.
It was fun to watch, and looks like more fun to do.
Isn't that what a hobby is?
@@Mitch_Rogoff Read the fucking description.
15:43 Woman In Love's Cover 15:45 Nikita's cover, 15:56 Part Time Lover's Cover, 16:15 Gregory Abbot, 16:36 Happy Together's Cover, 16:45 Liberian Girl's Cover, 16:55 Dolce Vita's Cover
Cheeeeeeesy! Thanks!
6. Everything I Do - Bryan Adams
4 Loco In Acapulco? Sure sounds like it
5 Shake You Down
7 Cher Love and Understanding
For name those tracks, those are:
#01 : Barbra Streisand - Woman In Love
#02 : Elton John - Nikita
#03 : Stevie Wonder - Part time lover
#04 : The Pasadenas - I'm doing fine now
#05 : Gregory Abbott - Shake you down
#06 : Bryan Adams - Every thing I do...
#07 : Cher - Love and understanding
#08 : The Turtles - Happy together
#09 : Michael Jackson - Liberian girl
#10 : Ryan Paris - Dolce Vita
Figuring out how to extract music off old tapes like this seems like a lot of fun. I had fun watching at least. I really liked the synth sound they used for the vocal melody in the Bryan Adams song.
At first I thought that one was "I Want To Know What Love Is," because the synth was so Foreigner-y.
I have wanted to rescue a friend's broken 8-track cartridge copy of her wedding by using a reel to reel machine, but I'd imagine I'd have to mask a section of the r2r machine's head to isolate tracks. I haven't figured out how to do that effectively :-(
i knew it right away lol
@@ericsills6484 With broken you mean that the splicer tape has come off? Because that's easily fixed. There are some 8-track enthusiast groups on FB, they will be happy to help, or point you to someone in your area who can do it for you if you're not confident doing it yourself.
Doing it on your r2r won't work at best, and will ruin your r2r head *and* the tape at worst.
The tape broke somewhere in the middle. I got a splicing kit, but was not successful with it. I just had to scrap it.
Your level of self-deprecation is admirable. You're intelligent and entertaining regardless of if you know how to properly splice tape. Enjoyed the watch, thank you.
I feel like it’s only an attempt to get ahead of know-it-alls in the comments…!
No! Any expert in reel-to-reel splicing can tell you he should have been kaboodling the kerfluff diagonally to avoid dynamic polmopally on the zingzang.
Eh he could've done far worse. I started splicing 8 tracks in 2010 at 13 years old and I can make them and Muntz 4's work again to this day. Not trying to say I'm any better or worse, merely an observation
"was that it!?!"
1: Woman in Love
3: Part-Time Lover
5: Shake You Down
7: Love and Understanding
8: Happy Together
The taunt at 11:16 cracked me tf up.
You look pretty damn proficient at using Audacity to me...
That’ll mostly be down to the video editing.
@@Techmoan So you are also proficient in that! :-)
Your splicing has improved since the last time :D
But seriously, even if this tape isn't that valuable, it's practice for when you get asked to conserve something priceless ;)
I think your splicing was pretty good Mat! 👍
glad you were able to restore those chipmunk song covers
If you analyse how the (original) Chipmunks achieved their results pre-digital, it was actually quite impressive. They had to sing at half speed!
Auto generated subtitles "Stevie Wonder cover" = "stevie undercover". That just lifted the video a whole level.
Having a pixel 6pro on your lock screen it lists songs it hears and it nailed all of them frightening new technology.
Splicing tapes takes me back.
Once I had to recover a tape which had been in the wreckage of a boat at sea then washing and spooling it just like you did hear but I then had to produce multiple copies to compact cassette tape for evidence.
For one who is still learning, you have displayed a certain proficiency in preserving these recordings. Nice work.
Absolutely love the back and forth with those reels!
I really enjoyed this, love it when you rescue recordings.
1) Barbra Streisand - Woman in love
2) Elton John - Nikita
3) Its on tip of my tongue, but u can kill me, I cant remember
4) Dont know
5) Never heard of it
6) Bryan Adams - Everything I do (I do it for Robin Hood)
7) Love and understanding, but its not Cher
8) The (teenage mutant ninja) Turtles - Happy together
9) Very familiar
10) Little less familiar
3) Stevie Wonder - Part Time Lover
Well done on the Barbara Streisand one, I didn't get that but you're right. Can't get 4, 9 & 10. I keep thinking that #10 is something like Bucks Fizz or something, it's super poppy. Hope someone can help us.
@@NewFalconerRecords It's a cover from Ryan Paris biggest hit "Dolce Vita".
@@solojinglesradio1 Yes, I've seen a few people say that. I'm not familiar with the song myself. And #4 is 'I'm Doing Fine Now' by New York City (never heard that one) and #9 is 'Liberian Girl' by Michael Jackson (don't know that one either). Cheers!
I would personally just have tried to loosen up the tape. You can use sewing machine oil, or any of the purest and smoothest oils and just soak a few drops into the spool, let it all sit for a while, and then wind the tape fully while using some old cotton strips to take off any excess oil as the tape spools around for a few cycles.
The lubrication will make everything nice and smooth again, and you get to keep everything in the cartridge.
Also the mould is technically "alive". having it run through your TEAC machine deposited spores everywhere on it. Those spores can infect other tapes.
Be sure to disinfect the TEAC machine sooner rather than later.
I suggest just using pure alcohol in a spray bottle and hose it off like a madman.
After the alcohol evaporates and the spores are dead, you'll be good to go.
Oil and tape are not friends.
@@zorktxandnand3774 Those tapes were lubricated with something, maybe a silicone lube.
@@BryanTorok All cartridges like these or 8track or jinglemachine cartridges have a coating of gravite on it. Never oil or silicone. Old knowlidge... 😇
but because if the molt are they not about to die
I do video tape conversions... on mouldy tapes I add a few drops of isopropyl alcohol to loosen the mould.
Thank you for continuing to produce content on a weekly basis. I love waking up on a Saturday morning with my cup of Dunkin coffee and watching the new release from Techmoan!
Ive never messed with audio file so this was all friggin magic to watch. Its nice you save some auditory history, even if its only as a warning from the past.
You could now quite readily put the tape back onto its own reel and have it available to run in its intended machine.
I have to deal with a lot of mouldy tapes. Video8 are particularly time consuming because the mould is stronger than the tape and will cause it to snap. I've built a de-moulding rig for this purpose.
That’s gross but cool 🤣
I enjoyed. Thank you for your continued dedication to producing entertaining and enjoyable and informative (and calming) content!
Your persistence and tenacity is inspiring.
The WD-40 lid is the best bit. I laughed my tits off. Brilliant Matt.
This was mesmerizing. Your step by step process was really enjoyable to watch and seriously the work you did in audacity would have been impossible at the time these were recorded :) particularly how quickly it was done. Amazing how audacity works. Thank you Mat!
Another fantastic video I didn’t know I wanted to see! You actually save me a small fortune in playing with stuff I wish I had. Watching it is enough these days!
Very evocative....of trudging around behind my parents in now long gone department stores, usually in the department with net curtains, plastic woven floor mats etc! Wedge shaped double sided speakers hanging off the ceiling on chains wafting the music overhead at an appropriate volume.
This is a really great primer on how to rescue audio from a tape. Not even the specific techniques you use, but all the detail of things to watch out for and work around. Like the tape loop not being at the end and it being flipped and some of the tracks being reversed.
Always entertaining and informative and often instructional! 👍👍
Interesting video (as usual). Now you've saved the audio, I'd be tempted to give the reel a wash and transfer it back into the cartridge. See if you can get it playing again in its original form. If you knacker it up, no big shakes as you've already done the salvaging.
Fantastic result! Must have made it all worth it. Those tracks are gold my friend.
Another great video!
As I was born in 1988, I've never really got to use tape recordings other than some Disney's VHS lol.
But I have to say that watching you playing around with all those amazing cassette and reel-to-reel players kinda hooked me up to audio tape recordings.
Thanks for what you do and for putting that much into it!
Cheers, Yoann
Its crazy people like us that enjoy watching what you are doing... Love it!
One of your best titles for a while. Nice.
Seems to me your pretty good at this. It's always a pleasure to see what your doing. Thanks from Georgia, USA.
Presto is Italian for "quick tempo", it's used a lot in classical music to describe faster movements.
Facts Hercule, facts..
Audacity is absolutely fine. I've used it professionally for years. The spyware thing was a complete overreaction. Keep doing you, buddy!
Audacity was absolutely fine, but the spyware thing is down to whether you think that the telemetry data they're collecting now constitutes spyware. Personally, the way audacity is being handled leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but it's far from the worst bit of spyware on most users' systems (Windows itself is much worse for example).
for sure there is so much of those types of stories on the net .
@@richardbrobeck2384 I loved that movie!
@@FaultyStreams
What, there's a movie about Audacity?
@@unduloid From what I can tell, the last two words of his comment were "The Net".
Great video interesting to see how the process went per how your equipped to do it, I throughly enjoy watching your videos have for a few years now! Keep up the great work, as a MD fan those are some of my favorites.
Absolutely brilliant, always a pleasure to accompany you on these journeys. Also, I looked up what you said about Audacity, what a shame!
Went to press "like" just now and saw that I had done it already. Can't even remember when. Love your videos!
First sample is "Woman In Love" by Barbara Streisand. #6 is "Everything I Do" by Bryan Adams. 8 is "Happy Together" by The Turtles. #9 is "Liberian Girl" by Michael Jackson.
I loved this video, really great watching the process and then a trip down memory lane with some of the track clips. Thank you
Thank you!
Quite apart from the always excellent content on a personal, um, note I appreciate your preserving this kind of thing - every one of those tracks will have been the result of a group of musicians hard work and creativity, along with that of studio engineers.
It would be a shame to discard the fruits of their labour that may exist nowhere else, especially as recordings take up no actual space these days.
For me, any recovery or repair video is a draw. Thanks Mat, really enjoyed that.
Great fun!! I love seeing the things you find, and hearing the results!!
I love this repair videos. It is all about the journey ^^
Absolutely great video today techmoan. I didn’t recognise the songs, but they were indeed cheesy!
Relaxing and fun to watch. Thanks 👍
No excuses necessary, your films are fantastic and informative .
The tape might have been moldy and jammed up in the cartridge, but given its age, I'm impressed that it hadn't gone all sticky.
I suspect the carbon backing helped out.
i dont know if you have any grandchildren but man as a kid, you're the grandfather i would have loved to visit! always been fascinated in gadgets since young. love your channel and how real and down to earth you are.
Christchurch NZ
🙂
love watching him aswell. Auckland, NZ
For years, I used the cart machine at a radio station to play my show disclaimer every episode. When the station finally went digital, they mothballed the machine--but I kept my old disclaimer cart as a souvenir. I share your fancy for damnable old technologies, and the cart machine certainly fits that theme.
Great video , loved this one . Recognised 6 tracks 👌👌
Matt's videos are so well produced, he really is top tier youtube, absolute legend.
Agreed! Love watching them. He is fascinating and so precise. I can only dream of being like that :)
“Good luck content matching that one Yourube” - made me chuckle.
Your a genius with figuring out difficult audio puzzles!
I recovered several VHS camcorder recordings from the mould using demake-up cotton discs embedded with isoprophyl alchool, slicing then by the widht of the tape, placing them at the two sides of the tape, closing carefully the VHS tape protection on top of it and putting the cassete inside a VHS rewinder.
That was a LOT of work, I'm impressed by your tenacity. I was also surprised by the quality of the audio that was played in those tiny clips, considering all that had happened to the tape and who knows how many times it was played when it was a current item.
i would have never thought of putting it on a reel to reel, genius
Audio preservation 👍🏼. Well worth it as a hobby it looked like a bit of fun and was fun to watch. Thanks
Always love these videos. Just to get a glimpse into these things that are now obsolete. You could of course go the extra mile, clean or exchange the tape and reassemble the cartridge but a full blow restoration on something like this would be pretty insane.
I think you used the audio software absolutely fantastic you could teach me a lot in fact you do teach me a lot and I appreciate you and watch your content every time it comes out you're awesome dude
Also all the deal about Audacity being crap now is mostly limited to _now_ specifically, using an older version solves all problems and I don't even know if there's any advantage between versions a few years old.
@@Kalvinjj honestly, it didn’t look much different from the versions I used heavily circa 2009-2012! I’d certainly not be inclined to install every single update Just Cos.
Great job, Mat! Best of luck with the rest of the lot. I hope most of them can still be played in the device as intended.
I collect VHS, and tape mold is the bane of my collecting existence. Getting a tape clean is so satisfying, though.
Awesome job saving this audio!
In a very real (reel?) way you're an archivist so that alone makes what you do worthwhile. Thanks for another great video.
Only tangentially related to this video... Thank-you so much for resolving a 30-odd year mystery for me: It's "Ryan Paris - Dolce Vita". Amazing! Also, your outro is one of the best in the business IMO
Thanks Mat. Thanks for preserving history. I enjoyed the quiz.
Nice video! Love it when you're fiddling on stuff like this.
pure uncut awesomeness ... of course you need massive amount of equipment but since you have it you might as well THANX
Great job and also fun to watch ... and listen to. ✌
I look forward to a new techmaon video every Saturday morning the same way I looked forward to saturday morning cartoons when I was a kid
Definitely worth doing! A, you find out what's on the tape and B, it's fun and entertaining:) thank you as always
Really enjoyed that, thanks!
i wish we could get this recording, cheesy 80’s covers are great especially in that quality
Excellent, thanks for another entertaing video
I have one vinyl record of background music and its my favorite one! I agree with you totally.
Very interesting video. I like almost anything to do with reel-to-reel. Thank you.
That Nikita track - on every music on hold I ever had to endure when ringing some kind of call centre
That clip of Mint Condition's "Pretty Brown Eyes" indicates 90s. Wow. Wouldn't have thought this would have been in existence that late.
"why are you doing it?" "because i can" :D
Another brilliant video.
I thoroughly enjoyed this video and your resurrection attempts. I've had to perform the same type of audio recoveries on one-off cassette tapes which involved removing of cassette tape from the cartridges, replacing the tape into a re-usable cartridge, fast forwarding or rewinding the tape (carefully), removing the tape from the re-usable cartridge, baking the tape (where sticky tape syndrome is the issue) and then again replacing the tape in the re-usable cartridge for playback and transfer to digital format. At the end the tape and original cartridge were disposed of unless there were special logo's or printing on the cartridge that the client wanted for sentimental reasons. In one case they actually wanted new tape inserted into the original cartridge and the digital music transferred back to cassette for sentimental reasons. I use either ProTools or WaveLab for most of my digital recording and editing although I also use Capture (PreSonus) for remote recording work and then transfer the audio into either of my two main systems for the actual editing and processing operations.
Great vid, and I recognised all ten songs 👌
I enjoyed watching it
Thank you techmoan for making jet another guess the song game - and I think it is worth recording these covers ...
That was a “reely” interesting and entertaining program. Well in the “mold” of the rest of your work.
Holy smokes does that bring back memories of wandering through the mall to get to the arcade, hahaha. That's fantastic.
100% worth it. Thanks for sharing!
I picked up unspooled 8 track tape from the side of the road years ago. I was curious what was on it. So took a junk cartridge with bad music on it, unspooled it, carefully wound the tape back on the spool using a record player turntable. Spliced it together. No secret messages. Just some music from a band I can't remember who it was. I used to repair 8 track tapes and cassettes.
as a fellow technological necromancer I quite enjoy these one's where you rescue stuff. Inspired me to do more :)
Another informative and entertaining look into redundant formats by Technoman!
"Good luck content matching that one youtube" I almost spilled my coffee out (literally)