custom portable retro lo-fi player with cassette tape
Iulius Curt creates a custom portable retro player with a cassette tape that records lo-fi songs from streaming apps and smartphones. In a nutshell, the user’s smartphone sends music wirelessly to the machine, which then records it onto a moving loop of tape, the same way a cassette worked in the 1980s. Then, a second read head picks the sound back up a moment later and plays it through a speaker. This machine starts its life as a Privileg TC 183, a mid-weight Japanese cassette deck. The designer kept the recording circuitry, from the bias oscillator and erase head to the tape equalisation, because redesigning those from scratch would have taken months. Then, he replaced it with a tape loop one so that it doesn’t run out like a standard cassette does.
Using a set of orange 3D-printed brackets, the loop erases, records, travels, and plays back continuously, with no rewinding and no end. At the front of the portable retro lo-fi player is a Bluetooth receiver, the one converting the incoming digital stream to analog. The allure of the project is that the magnetic tape doesn’t reproduce audio cleanly because the oxide coating introduces a slight instability in playback speed. But these are the ‘flaws’ that Iulius Curt is after, allowing the resulting sound to have that lo-fi warmth that’s ideal for ambient listening.
all images courtesy of Iulius Curt
Parts made from recycled car stereo components
A challenge that the designer Iulius Curt had to overcome was the original deck’s wiring. The Japanese engineers who designed the original frame he used had connected the electrical circuits by reversing what is normally considered the zero-voltage reference point. It was a cost-saving decision common enough at the time, but the consequence was that the Bluetooth module and the cassette deck couldn’t run off the same power supply without the two circuits effectively arguing with each other at the electrical level. Iulius Curt solved it by placing a small isolating converter between them, giving each side its own electrically separate power feed, and without that fix, the machine produces noise instead of music.
For audio production, designer Iulius Curt also built in a way to plug external equipment directly into the portable retro lo-fi player so that it sends a recorded track in, runs it through the tape, gets it back out sounding warmer and rougher. The electronics he built to handle playback are all his own work, with the key component being a small chip originally made for car stereos, and it conveniently does exactly what a tape machine needs: to boost the signal coming off the playback head and correct the tonal imbalances that tape recording naturally introduces. That feeds into an amplifier, and then the speaker. The outer casing of the portable retro lo-fi player is bent stainless steel on two sides, wrapped around the original metal body of the cassette deck. A clear acrylic panel covers the section where the tape loop runs, and users can see the tape moving around the portable retro lo-fi player.
Iulius Curt creates a custom portable retro player with a cassette tape that records lo-fi songs
this machine starts its life as a Privileg TC 183, a mid-weight Japanese cassette deck
the user’s smartphone sends music wirelessly to the machine, which then records it onto a moving loop of tape
a second read head picks the sound back up a moment later and plays it through a speaker
the designer kept the recording circuitry, from the bias oscillator and erase head to the tape equalisation
project info:
name: Music Streaming From Cassette Tape
design: Iulius Curt
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