Gathering tunes for a compilation

[pancake101]

Many years ago I had a freebee cassette that was constantly played until it died.

My daughter has a big birthday coming up and she has mentioned this tape on numerous occasions over the years. So I thought I would do a modern version of it - but is it possible.

Her car does not even have a CD player - other ways to play music these days. The cassettes come up on ebay infrequently but then would I be able to transfer to a medium that she uses?

If I bought the tracks singularly on itunes can I gift these ??

Ideas please and thanks

[redsturgeon]

If her car stereo has a USB socket then you can just download the tracks to a USB flash drive and she can plug it in and play...probably.

John

[bungeejumper]

Can you say why the tape has failed? Has it broken, or is it too twisted to play cleanly, or is it just that the spindles on the cassette have seized?

Obviously you'll get better copies if you download crisp new versions now, but there are places that will repair a busted cassette, probably by reeling out the tape and fitting it into a new cassette. You can do it yourself if you don't mind learning how to splice a tape. (Really not hard. You can buy a kit.) You could then transfer them to a USB stick, or whatever.

Personally, I find that the hisses and the crackles are part of the charm of an old recording. Maybe that's just me?

BJ

[pancake101]

Bungeejumper - it was released in the early 80's once it was no longer playable it 'went' probably over 15 years ago. After the time that cassettes seen as old fashioned and we had all transferred to cd and all cassette players gone as!

I will look out for an original copy (for daughter) and try to find the play list of the tracks and gather them on a stick. Seems the best way that she will actually hear them. Yes she uses USB etc.

Thank you

[Itsallaguess]

Her car does not even have a CD player - other ways to play music these days. The cassettes come up on ebay infrequently but then would I be able to transfer to a medium that she uses?

Does her car have an FM radio and a cigarette lighter socket?

If so, and if she's also got either an mp3 player or a blue-tooth enabled mobile phone, then you can use one of these to transmit the audio to the car radio using it's in-built FM transmitter -

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Bluetooth-Ca ... 3453428045

They are brilliant. You can plug in an mp3 player using the aux-socket, or you can insert a USB memory stick with songs on, or even put them onto a memory-card and put that in, or you can connect your mobile via blue-tooth and transmit the songs that way, playing anything that the phone will play at all.

The unit will convert the audio to a local FM signal, and then you simply tune the car radio to that FM station - which is displayed on the unit itself so you know where to tune it to.

For a fiver these things are incredibly versatile. You can even use them for hands-off voice calls, although this isn't something I currently use mine for, but I do play my music via one of these, using my mobile and it's blue-tooth as described above, and they are brilliant.

The audio quality isn't quite as good as plugging an mp3 player directly into a car radio's aux-in socket, so if your daughter's radio has one of those (it's likely to be a 2.5mm headphone socket on the radio unit somewhere), then that may be a better option for pure audio-quality, but then you can't use blue-tooth then to transmit the audio, and have to have something plugged in, so you win in some ways and lose some flexibility in others.

In terms of gaining access to the various songs you want, there are ways to download Youtube songs and save them as MP3 files, so that's perhaps a good option just to see if you can get something going. There are millions of songs available via Youtube, and I think it's likely that if you get a playlist for the cassette that you fondly remember, I think it's likely that you can compile your own MP3 version of the tape using this technique...

A couple of these Youtube-to-MP3 conversion websites are linked to below, and I've tested them both to check that they work OK -

https://vubey.yt/

https://listenvid.com/

Note that you can vary the quality of the mp3 download, so if file-size isn't too important then I'd recommend going with the highest 320kbps option if possible, although the 256kbps is likely to be fine too, and it will obviously depend on the quality of the original Youtube audio anyway...

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[gryffron]

Her car does not even have a CD player - other ways to play music these days.

I think you need to be a bit clearer what you mean by this. What does she have? More modern (mp3/bluetooth/spotify) or more primitive (tape/radio)? CD is the middle ground technology so you could mean either way.

Yes you can buy all the old tunes on amazon MP3 or iTunes, and she could then transfer them to any modern device. iTunes is wonderful if it's what she regularly uses, but a pain if she has to load it just to access your gifts. If she's on modern tech, all you have to do is find the tunes from MP3/iTunes/CD and put them on a memory stick (in a cassette box ). Once you do that I'm sure she'll be able to transfer them to anything modern.

Gryff

[pancake101]

There is a USB, radio and not sure what else.

I am still trying to locate the cassette or the list of tracks!

Thanks for the input.

[swill453]

There is a USB, radio and not sure what else.

Many "modern" car radios have radio (obvs), aux input (for connecting to a device's headphone socket), USB (which can usually handle a USB stick with tunes on it, or a phone or ipod in "storage" mode) and Bluetooth (to connect to a phone or ipod/pad which can then play stuff wirelessly through it).

Scott.

[ouzo]

You might find that, if you played the tape enough, listening to one of the tracks will remind you of the following track, etc etc - it worked for me anyway!

Ann

[redsturgeon]

You might find that, if you played the tape enough, listening to one of the tracks will remind you of the following track, etc etc - it worked for me anyway!

Ann

Perhaps you could tell him what the tracks are then

John

[GoSeigen]

Many years ago I had a freebee cassette that was constantly played until it died.

My daughter has a big birthday coming up and she has mentioned this tape on numerous occasions over the years. So I thought I would do a modern version of it - but is it possible.

Her car does not even have a CD player - other ways to play music these days. The cassettes come up on ebay infrequently but then would I be able to transfer to a medium that she uses?

If I bought the tracks singularly on itunes can I gift these ??

Ideas please and thanks

You can buy the tracks individually on iTunes and/or other services like Amazon. I doubt there would be a problem with gifting them, since you have been honest enough to pay for them in the first place. Once downloaded (usually in mp3 format or similar), the whole playlist can be transferred to your daughter on a USB stick or any other method, including email.

When she has them she can copy them to her own phone, mp3 player, CD, USB stick or any other device as she wishes. No doubt she knows herself or can find out how to play them through her car stereo.

GS

[AllYourBase]

Spotify Playlist?