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2-4x Microcassette burner

 Make microcassettes with your regular tape deck and PC much faster.
 
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The tape inside a dictation microcassette is the same width as the tape inside a standard compact cassette. The speed of a standard cassette is two times 2.4 cm/s and four times 1.2 cm/s. The tape goes the other way for a microcassette. Therefore by using your computer to speed up MP3s to four or two times normal speed while playing them in reverse while recording a length of tape on a standard tape deck (4.8 cm/s) it becomes possible to dub music to microcassette at a higher speed.

All you have to do is record this altered sound (2 or 4 times normal speed in reverse) on any old standard cassette and then wind that length of tape into a microcassette cartridge. You probably waste most of the time getting the tape from the standard cassette into the micro.

Add to the fact that most home standard cassette decks are of higher sound quality than a microcassette run at 4.8 cm/s (lower wow and flutter, better azimuth) and your mixes will sound great.

—Amishman35, Jun 30 2004

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       wow old school technology, i seem to remember a lot of twin tape players had high speed tape to tape recording, everything sounded like the chipmunks while it was copying as it didn't mute the speaker.+
—engineer1, Jun 30 2004
   

       //and your mixes will sound great// Um, I highly doubt it.
—Freefall, Jun 30 2004
   

       Maybe you could construct some kind of cassette-shaped caddy into which you could place your micro-cassette. That would save all the splicing of tape.
—st3f, Jul 01 2004
   

       Why not? It worked for VHS-C.
—angel, Jul 01 2004
   

       I guess I'm a little confused; what advantage does a microcasette player have over a solid-state MP3 player? Even a crummy little 16MB unit could probably hold as much music as a microcassette, at comparable quality.
—supercat, Jul 01 2004
   

       I think it comes down to how much you've got invested (both financially and emotionally) in the old technology.
—st3f, Jul 01 2004
   

       The cost of gear required to do this all effectively probably exceeds the cost of a 'toy-level' MP3 player, especially since the audio is going to sound pretty crummy. Music encoded at at 15/16"/sec or 15/32"/sec is not going to sound very good, especially since the bias and Eq of a full-sized tape deck aren't calibrated to match a microcasette deck.   

       Just as an experiment, try taking an audio file, doubling the pitch, and recording it to the microcassette deck at "high" speed. Then play it back at "low" speed. Tell me if it sounds any better than one simply recorded at low speed.
—supercat, Jul 01 2004
   

       The 2.4 cm/s dub from PC to microcassette deck sounds pretty good, but has more wow and flutter.   

       [supercat] Try getting a 180 or so MB MP3 player with a built-in speaker for under $100, and memory chips that cost less than $2 each chip.   

       The closest thing I can find is NetMD, and there are no pocket sized models with a built in speaker. You have to pay more than $100 just so you can get a line-in, and over $200 for one with a microphone input.
—Amishman35, Jul 04 2004
   

       I have an MP3 player I bought for $20 with 16MB built in (it can use MMC cards for expansion, but I've never bought any). I consider it more of a toy than anything else, but a 32kbps monophonic MP3 should give sound quality as agood as a microcassette, and 16MB would be enough for over an hour of recording.
—supercat, Jul 04 2004
   

       // possible to dub music to microcassette //   

       I cannot think of a single reason why someone would want to do this.
—waugsqueke, Jul 04 2004
   

       If you want high fidelity, you could take the tape out of 90 minute microcassettes, splice them together and wind it into a standard cassette. You would end up with a 180 minute standard cassette at 1-7/8 inches per second. Good luck playing it in the car, though. The tape is so thin you can see through it.
—Amishman35, Jul 15 2004
   


 

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