Nothing like a box of fresh blanks. These are ten Type I C-60 cassettes in fluorescent green. These cassettes have enough ferric tape to record 30 minutes of audio on each side. My set at Silencio was 30 minutes on the dot. I was wondering whether to get C-30's and split the set into two 15m sides, but I figured being able to listen to the whole thing without interruption will make for a better listening experience. Plus, it gives me a whole B-Side to fuck around with (bonus B side anyone??).

After demagnetizing and cleaning the heads of the Tascam Porta One, I needed to calibrate the levels for these particular cassette tapes. Basically you want the digital audio to hit the tape as loud as possible without distorting the sound. This is done by recording 5 seconds of a 400Hz test tone onto the tape, then playing the tape back and adjusting the audio interface output level accordingly. Rinse and repeat until the UV meters show that the tape is playing the test tone at 0db.

Something to also pay attention to is the pitch control. Most 4-track decks have a pitch control so that you can record at higher speed (higher speed = higher quality recording), although standard cassette players play back at low speed. This means that if you record at high speed on a 4-track and play the cassette back on a Walkman, for example, the recording will sound pitched down. So, you want to make sure the pitch control is all the way down (the opposite that you see in the picture above) in order for the recording to play back at the right pitch on any consumer cassette player. 

To double check the levels I also recorded the loudest 20 seconds of the digital recording as a test and played it back to see if it would produce any noticeable distortion. Seems like these tapes can take recording levels of up to +3db without distorting, which is nice. Now, the boring part: press REC on the deck, press PLAY on the DAW and wait for the track to record in real time. When Side A is done, flip the tape and do the same for Side B (1 hour = 1 cassette tape).  

Now that the tape is recorded, it's time to test listen on a different deck. I scored this 80's Memorex double cassette deck for €10 from an old man who lives near my neighbourhood. The slot on the right doesn't work (the one for dubbing) but the left one plays just fine. I listened to some "commercially produced" cassettes on it, as a reference, before test listening to my tapes.

Maybe it's because each tape is basically a master tape (as they haven't been copied from one cassette to another) so there's no generation loss at all, but these might be some of the best sounding cassette tapes I have ever listened to. The bass sounds great, even the more subby bass lines come through nice and loud. Mids are super warm and the high frequencies are real crispy. Like, I wish these tapes were cake cause I'd fucking eat them. 

Very excited to eventually share them with you guys. Only got a couple more to record before I'll move on to printing the J-Cards. Will share on that bit of the process next week probably. Stay connected 𝌕