About that Hi-Res cassette deck, well...
It's been a busy couple of weeks and here's the next video. It's a review of a new 'Hi-Res tape recorder' from Toshiba that created a bit of a buzz online a few weeks ago.
This one was intended just to be a simple review after the previous marathon effort that was the Mindhunter video. Incidentally in case you missed it - the main youtube version of that video went out yesterday and it has a couple of additions to the earlier Patreon version, a new intro and a (very) short outro as well as a few nip & tuck edits to remove noise/breathing etc.
Anyway, back to this one, it was going to be short and sweet, because I can't imagine it being a massively popular subject, and as a video running time increases, proportionally less people will tend to watch it.
However, it's ended up being close to half and hour long. So if you've got the time, pour yourself a drink, find a comfortable chair and watch this video all about something that you definitely don't want to buy.
If it's still the weekend when you're reading this, I hope you're having a great one.
UPDATE - I've added a brief section to the video showing the up-converted waveforms in Audacity (as suggested in the comments) at around the 11:31 mark. I've also now got sample clips available to download.
Review of the new Toshiba Aurex ‘Hi-Res Cassette deck’ (YouTube)
Comments (56)
Once again, a very entertaining video, hard to understand they expect customers to pay good money for such an unimpressive plastic box, probably on par with some cheap "PlayEverything"-device from the supermarket shelf ;-). Especially liked the puppet-rant this time, very spot-on. Just had a little listening session with a friend on my surround-system, starting with a few Depeche Mode album-remaster-editions from around 2005 which contain very well made 24/96 surround mixes imho. Well, what's next ? A bit of Kraftwerk live on Blu-Ray and then it's indeed back to the 70's with some Pink Floyd remasters and then not much more unfortunately in the domain I like. It's a pity SACD didn't have commercial success, I'm gonna look into purchasing at least some HD-Files online to have a reference for comparison with CDs.
Hi folks... I just stumbled upon this cool demonstration of the Mellotron (essentially a tape-based sampler): <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByD8gH7kYxs" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByD8gH7kYxs</a> Progressive rock and electronic music wouldn't have been the same without it...
Around the time Sgt Peppers and pink Floyd's first album (Piper at the Gates of Dawn) which were recorded at the same time in adjacent rooms, they both used the same mellotron. It was pretty revolutionary at the time, and quite frankly there is no other instrument that sounds like it. It's so haunting and somehow natural yet synthetic at the same time. It's my dream to own one one day, but they're enormously difficult to transport without damaging. Listen to Strawberry Fields Forever by the Beatles to hear what a mellotron sounds like (on the "flute" setting). Pink Floyd and the Beatles learned from each other during that time, jamming and hanging out, and between them created or at least pioneered psychedelic music. Imagine what those conversations must have been like, especially between Paul and Syd (since Paul was the main source of all the psychedelia really, and he made a track which later John copied and it was Revolution 9, and Paul got them into Stockhausen)
What a beautifully crafted annihilation of a piece of over priced junk - I all to often think that ‘hi-fi’ must be the only industry that hates its customers. Otherwise why do they continue to foist such crap on us? Great muppets :-) Ahhhhh Boddingtons - super flash back to Melanie Sykes hmmmm.
What a disappointment the Toshiba was, if only they had spent the time and effort to develop a high end product which delivered on its promises - re-enforcing the old saying of 'They don't make them like they used to!'. Another quality review, it was a treat to see the Nakamichi Dragon and your Sony head to head. I couldn't help but notice your Technic Graphic Equaliser - a recent addition? I always look forward to your Hi-Fi content. The muppets were hilarious, the 'Old Man' part really cracked me up! Great show!
Looks like you put more time on reviewing the product, than the designers designing it ;-) Too bad, I'd love to buy a reasonable quality new cassette deck. Thanks for the great videos.
It appears that when a product is not very good, or you have a lot of opinions about it, the puppets come out. When a products is good, no puppets!
It might be because subconsciously I feel I need to do something to rescue a bad situation.
The 'vocal remove' feature is a bit of a blunt instrument. It presumes that the vocals are panned centre and then uses phase reversal in the centre portion of the stereo image to null it out. This may work ok if the vocals are dry and unprocessed but it cannot cope with reverb. Reverb used multiple delayed and out of phase components panned all over the stereo image. If you remove the raw vocals but leave the vocal reverb you still get the audio ghosts of the original. That's what you could hear. It all depends on how much reverb was applied to the original, a dry vocal will disappear better than a heavily processed one.
Great video - especially love the stuff you do about cassette, vinyl and other HiFi. Best on YouTube and the reason I sub!
Thanks old chap. Always nice to get a positive comment in the inbox.
So, a device that appears to have been made from all the old cassette bits they had on a shelf somewhere, some rubbish speakers and a gold sticker, with sound improvements that only a dog can hear. It's like something you'd buy off a market stall in the 1970'
That pretty much sums it up, but at least back then Panasomytronic wouldn’t have had the cheek to hold a press conference to launch it.
Really interesting review Mat, and I genuinely laughed at you Muppet's summing up. Brilliant. :-)
Great video AND the Muppets! This really made my day. I've missed "Sonny" and "Our Dad." Sorry, don't remember their real names, just made these up.
They still don't have names, so you haven't forgotten anything. As an bit of a joke, the only character with a name is Alan...who you never see.
Excellent as always! Disappointing that it doesn’t do what it says on the label, or at least, if it does, it has no obvious benefit. Maybe if you input some lower quality source material, any effect it has might become more obvious? Great puppet sketch - so true, and speaking as an older person with a newly rekindled interest in vinyl records, I’m the first to say that to my hearing, they don’t sound better than CDs, I just enjoy the rigmarole of playing them. Keep up the good work, please, Mat!
Thank you. Interesting as always and I do learn a lot from your videos. And I sometimes learn what not to buy. I would like the Nakamichi tho.
Wow... only 1:30 into the video and the only thing I can think is... "man, that thing looks like a cheap toy". That crappy plastic casework! I've seen $5 ebay specials with better tooling/materials than that thing.
Hilarious!! I particularly liked the bit about the diamond encrusted cables kissed by the pope - I have a friend who spend £400 on a 12' length of pure copper, oxygen-free Monster cable (with the molecules aligned to combat quantising noise) - this to connect his bass speaker to his amp. I asked him if he actually could hear the difference - obviously he could.. I think the TecMo Muppets need their own channel ;-)
"I think it got replaced by Minecraft" - I laughed so hard I had to pause the video. Top joke.
This was very enjoyable. I really liked the puppets in this one too. You do a great job with them, and I don't understand why there would be nay-sayers. Too bad I will never have a Nakamichi Dragon... One can dream.
Toshiba has taken a boombox and "upconverted" the price. [Sigh]
Official standard here: <a href="http://www.jas-audio.or.jp/english/hi-res-logo-en" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.jas-audio.or.jp/english/hi-res-logo-en</a>
I don't know if it complies - however I'd say that if it does, it shows that the standard isn't worth the gold stickers it's printed on.
The question us, would you say the deck conforms to all the requirements needed to get the 'hi-res audio' mark? Or are they using it unofficially?
the muppets were absolutely bang on ( again ) , the only thing missing for me was the sarcastic look to camera at the very end after "...like hotcakes " ha ha very enjoyable video, as always. Keep 'em coming :D
Very funny and very true that Muppet sketch! As always I am happy to see them at the end of the video. Too bad that this player turned out to be as bad as it is. I heard about it and already guessed it wouldn't be that good, but did not think it was this plastic and well.... rubbish :-) Thanks again for the review.
When you demonstrate the radio, you say ”It is using the whole frequency range” and then it sounds like there is a mistake in the editing, because all of a sudden you talk about the CD player. Or did I misunderstand something? Around 03:40 in the video
Even when you cut to the Nakamichi tap deck at 08:00 it sounds like your voice over is just cut off and I wonder what is happening until you start talking again much later. Is that as intended?
It certainly could be worse, and I obviously didn’t expect it to match the tweaked Dragon, but still a bit predictable of a result. How was it regards to wow/flutter, aside from the slight speed difference?
Also, I thought the bias setting only made a difference on recording, but the player only records type 1 tapes?
Hahaha... I just love your muppets this time Mat! Spot on with the old people being the "only ones" able to afford all the "hi-rez", but can't hear it because of natural, human degradation! *snickers* :D
I'm confused. A Japanese device not intended for export, the manual is in Japanese, but the labels on the remote and the machine itself and some of the display messages are in English? Admittedly, my time in Japan was more concentrated on booze, women and making it back to the ship on time, but is this common for Japanese consumer electronics intended for their own market?
Another disappointment... The "upconvert" reminds me of the slew of cheap digital cameras that came out in the 2000s where they would always advertise an "interpolated" resolution. So you could buy an expensive digital camera like a Sony that had 3.1 Megapixels or something with a nice, clean picture. Or for half the price you could be a Chinese no-name digital camera with a 1 megapixel sensor, but an "interpolated" resolution of 6 megapixels. Unfortunately, the average Joe Public didn't understand that it was the same thing as taking the 1 megapixel image into a paint program and scaling it up to 6 megapixels. But the marketting seemed to work!
That interpolated nonsense is very much alive with the cheap '4k' action cameras. Anytime someone says they've found a 4K camera for £25/$30 my heart sinks - the sensors are just HD (if you're lucky) upscaled.
I love the long format, but I fully understand if you need to keep them shorter to increase your audience. I always find it curious that even the Japense domestic market products are labelled in English, even the remote control. Weird.
In Japan there is a high focus on efficiency and elegance. I suspect it is cleaner, and more efficient to use short english words than try to cram japanese (especially since japanese reads right to left, top to bottom) between the buttons. But I am totally guessing. hehe
They're selling 'AKAI' (not the real Akai) shoebox tape recorders in Asda for £18 just now. They even run off 4 C batteries, for maximum compatibility with the 1980s.
PUPPETS!!!!!!!!! YOU DO LOVE US PATREONS!!!!!!
heh you know, I will speculate that when they were designing this they wanted to merge modern features with an old school device. So you have the ability to play high res digital files due to the internals. Adding a cassette player to get that unique "retro" vibe and bring back tape tapes was part of the equation. Then they had the eureka moment. All cassettes are going through an analogue to digital conversion anyway, so why not add a toggle to switch between the standard bitrate (128 is my guess) and a higher one (192) and add that as a feature. The shift in sampling will smooth out some harsh edges produced by the lower rate, but the overall quality will be about the same. Then they can toss it on the market for a higher pricepoint than say, the last one you reviewed way back that had cassette and mp3 capability. BOOM. product launched. it does do everything it says it does, technically speaking (so no need to get litigated to oblivion) but not to the degree folk expect.
Also had to laugh at myself after the puppet bit. I never actually read the 2 as being 2 different ages. LOL but now that it's made clear, it makes sense. I may need to go back to all previous ones and rewatch em. Did you ever make a list of all episodes with the puppets? or a smashcut of those bits back to back? :)
Really good video, I liked it a lot. I couldn't tell the difference at all with the Up Convert, but I can tell you that even after YT processes the audio I can hear how much the Toshiba machine just trashes the high end compared to the Nakamichi even on headphones that are biased towards a bass frequency response, so I think your point is made. Also loved the puppet segment, clearly I need to get myself some diamond-tipped holy cables so the bits flowing through the copper are blessed to sound better...
This just sounds like an attempt to cash in on the "retro" phase many are in now with regards to audio. It's unfortunate that many of the younger set are easily fooled by a gold sticker and a new button to press. Few will even realize they've been tricked by pure marketing.
Great video and a really funny puppet outro! I was born in 78 so I missed most of the original LP era but I did have a ton of tapes and I miss the visual and tactile nature of listening to cassettes. Then again my equipment consisted of cheap Knockoff Walkmen and budget boomboxes so they all sounded like rubbish.
The more Techmoan the merrier! Love the longer videos.
Great video. I really enjoyed the outro
Nice video. Love The outro. Greetings from Italy.
I always wonder about products like this. If you have designed something that makes everything really sound dramatically better, why would you need an “off” button?
That’s a very good point.
Another great video. The comparison between decks was a happy bonus. When you put Anders’ tape in my thought was “Oh no, remember that 10 inch!” And I always enjoy pedantry ;) If you could see me I would be making the good-value-for-money face. Thanks for so much in this video.
Just a thought, but you could record the output from the headphone jack with and without the up convert feature on and compare the waveforms in audacity? Might be an interesting experiment to see exactly what is changing.
That’s a good idea.
This product must be as snakeoil as snakeoil can get. Great video as always!
It’s a bank holiday here, so it’s a long weekend (Monday off) - although when you work for yourself from home, it’s pretty much business as usual.
Not a weekend here anymore (Israel, Sunday is a workday) but I enjoyed it immensely. Great outro, too!