The subject of audio came up in this single-parent household with my teenage 
daughter... "If you didn't have Internet, how did you put together playlists 
of music you liked?"

Okay... Grab a Maxell, TDK or Denon chrome-dioxide cassette. The quality of 
cassette makes a huge difference. Avoid Basf and some other brands. In this 
household, Maxell XL-II is king. Metal tapes are good but expensive.

The tape deck must first be calibrated for proper Bias and EQ, luckily I 
already did this and my deck has the ability to set this for future use. The 
azimuth of the heads is also critical but in most cases this is set right.

Grab your music from vinyl or CD or perhaps you have a slave-deck and you 
want to use music from other tapes. Begin by cueing up whatever the song is 
on the turntable or CD player, while the tape deck is set on Record/Pause.

Fast-forward the tape a bit so a test snippet can be recorded which will 
be recorded over afterward. Allow the song to play while you hit Record. It 
is important to use a 3-head tape deck to allow monitoring of the recording,
so you literally scan through the song or set the needle on what you know is
the loudest part of the track. The recording level is then set to that
maximum.

Rewind the tape a few turns if necessary to play back that loudest part 
because its important when using Dolby HX or B reduction that there is no 
distortion. When that peak level is met (paying attention to the VU meters), 
rewind the tape back to where the recording must start and record the song.

This to me is a fine art because it requires careful listening and knowledge 
of that song's loudest part while carefully adjusting the recording level. 
Distortion in the recording is a no-no.

I do not believe in wasted space on mixtapes, so its important to let the song
play all the way through to where there is silence, then repeat the process by
rewinding the tape to that exact moment where silence begins and the new 
recording starts.

Also it is necessary to make sure the time of the songs does not "cut off" 
towards the end of the tape. Vinyl records must be cleaned and CD's inspected 
for fingerprints or scratches because nothing worse than a skip during a 
recording; when working with tapes where you do not want silence, this becomes
a challenge to "correct" unless you have a very good 3-head deck with a solid 
stop-mechanism. As in, when you rewind and hit stop, the tape stops dead-on.

The flow of songs is important - This is the heart of a mixtape of music is 
songs that contexually flow from one to the next. Never make a tape of 
sad-bastard ballads (unless you love depression), there should be a good mix 
where the entire side of that tape has sortof a musical theme or direction.

"Dad... you're insane... I just go on Spotify".

Nick

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
 * Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (618:500/24)