I used to create tapes for this unit and others when I worked at Muzak from 1990 to 2000. And the music wasn't boring; it just depended on what music you ordered for it. If you ordered boring, you got boring, order modern rock, you got that, etc. Thousands of tapes were available. I still have a few hundred.
oh!, I don't suppose you have any tapes with Instrumental versions of the songs "how deep is your love" by the beegees, and "She's always a Woman" by billy joel, do you? (I have been trying to track down these two songs from the MUZAK brand for a few months now)
I have been looking for years for some sample tapes that a representative from the Albany, New York area Muzak division dropped off to an apartment complex that I was contemplating installing a music system in back in 1990, they were a couple of demo tapes that had some phenomenal music on them, and a couple of songs I really loved, one was a British semi rock song something about having tea is all I can remember, but they were definitely vocal songs and I really liked them, I lost the tapes in a house fire back in '97, were these tapes ever titled or was there a way to keep track of them? I would love to try and find them again.
As a former Muzak bench technician I have worked on a bunch of these decks. They have a noise cancelling circuit that virtually kills tape hiss. They produce almost CD quality sound,but yours sounds terrible! (at least one of the decks does). The decks will switch from one to the other when they sense a 20-25 hz. tone at the end of the tape and automatically rewind so as to be ready for playing the next track. While one deck is rewinding the other is playing. So, all 8 tracks will play one at-a-time in sequence (assuming you have the switches set properly). You can probably fix the deck that sounds bad by replacing all of the small electrolytic capacitors on the circuit board that attaches to the back of the mechanics. Occasionally a pinch roller will cause the flutter that you hear, but it takes years of wear to trash one of the rollers. Another problem that occurs with the tape speed is that the adjustment potentiometers of the individual decks sometimes get dirty. I often cleaned them, but avoided actually adjusting them.....just sprayed contact cleaner on them and worked them back and forth VERY carefully. I do have a schematic for these decks if you ever want to attempt repairs. If you use one for nothing else they make great rewinders. They are very very fast at rewinding, and since they automatically slow down when nearing the end of tape they are gentle with your tapes. As far as actually using these decks with standard cassettes you are out of luck. The tape heads are 4-track, but are set up such that a standard cassette will play one channel forward and the other backwards SIMULTANEOUSLY. If the audio paths could be rewired so as to activate the proper tracks for normal stereo operation these would be great decks....beautiful sound, no belts to wear out, great speed control, touch controls and fast rewind (SIGH). The only good thing for me is that I have a bunch of tapes that will work on these machines and they contain music from the 50's, 60's and 70's.
Hey Carl, I doubt this is a question you'll know but I'll give it a shot. I've got an AEI machine but seen a few Muzak "tones" cassettes on Ebay. Would these work? They appear to be Muzak's answer to the AEI Propac, it would just be a question of finding out if the speed was the same.
@@RediffusionMusic the propac tapes may have been at "standard" audio cassette speed. If I remember correctly the Muzak tapes ran a bit faster (probably to increase Fidelity). There are speed adjustment pots on the 1600 decks that will allow you to make them standard speed, but you still have the problem with the head tracking.
@@carlm9745 hey Carl, the AEI tapes appear to run 25% slower than normal speed. Just didn't want to buy the cassettes to find they were incompatible haha.
I used to listen to this type of music during studying and when I was going to sleep. San Francisco had a radio station called KOIT that used to play this format. Really miss it.
Very exciting stuff, I always enjoyed the enticement of coming into different places that played more modern music through the Muzak systems, shopping malls Etc in my area here in Albany New York back in the late 90s early 2000s, as such, I now install background music systems and elevators and Commercial environments using other types of media, but I always found this type of system to be the originator in very interesting, thank you for sharing!
This is very interesting. The proper track verification for stereo cassettes is as follows because I did a recording experiment using a Vestax MR300 4-track cassette recorder. Here is how a stereo cassette vs a mono 4 track cassette works. Track 1 = Left Channel (Side 1) Track 2 = Left Channel (Side 2) Track 3 = Right Channel (Side 2 - Played Backwards on Side 1) Track 4 = Right Channel (Side 1 - Played Backwards on Side 2) Gary
7:07 -- Imagine hearing *that* at whatever establishment that was installed in... The customers would probably be wondering if the world was ending or something... :P
***** Haha. I remember once going shopping at a K-Mart or a similar department store and the music playing through the speakers was playing backwards. It was very creepy.
Wow, totally sexy voice, perhaps you are in voice talent? I dig MUZAK® too, I remember finding a stash of LPs in a thrift store years ago, the Stimulus Progression™ series. It was NOT meant to be seen by civilian eyes, they were sample LPs made for business executives ONLY. They could sample these, before actually purchasing the MUZAK system. The records exhibited various selections, "designed" for the work place to increase productivity via "up" instrumentals, slowing gradually to more relaxing ones, then UP again, with all sorts of instructions as to how to time the music with the start of a workday to the first coffee break, when to start it up afterwords and play until lunch, and so on. This was all based on science and research of the human cog in the wheel, the liner text more or less stated. So very sinister how this was designed, with a great 1970's "Big Brother is Watching" vibe to it. Luckily someone uploaded several of these dark, not-meant-to-be-released albums here on RU-vid, and I actually DO find it quite great for housework....(scary).
CrashingCrockery Some of those albums are now available on iTunes, Spotify, and a few more from what I have seen. Apparently they were digitally re-released last year.
+tgivy I think its actually 480 mins, since you have 60 mins per each track, and you have 4 tracks (Left and Right from both sides), that yelds 60 mins * 4 = 240 mins... Since its running half speed, that is 240 mins * 2 = 480 mins, 8 Hours of music per tape
Nope, it's mono. You can select 4 different tracks from each tape. C120 = 60 minutes per side in stereo (2 hours total), run it at half speed = 2 hours per side (4 total), then play each "stereo" track as a separate one = 8 hours total... x2 tapes = 16 hours.
15/16 IPS was the same speed that the National Library Services for the Blind here in the US used for their cassettes. The cassettes were also 4-track. You could get like 6 hours of book on one cassettes. You'd play side 1 and 2 by flipping the tape over just like a regular tape, flip the track selection switch, and then flip the cassette over and listen to tracks 3 and 4. Ouch!! I think your right deck needs a new belt, motor, or complete replacement. We have singing on modern in-store music, so do they still use something similar system in modern times.
Also, as someone in the Telephony industry, 5:23 sounds very familiar..I recall many a Nortel Meridian owner playing that tune on hold (The other popular one was Pat Metheny's "Long Train Home" (I think that's what it's called))
Hi, Databyts! I got a nostalgic itch a few months back and purchased a 1992 tiger electronics 2XL robot. I loved mine as a kid and he was with me everywhere even in the recovery room in 1995 after my heart surgery. Anyway, all mush aside, I have started to rebuild my old tape collection which I ended up giving away when I struck on hard times. I have 16 tapes already and I am looking for a good but inexpensive method of storing them. Would it be better to buy one of those standard tape cases that allow them to stand upright so that the ribbons face the ceiling or would it be better to get a giant lot of individual cassette cases with the spindles included that hold the reels in place? Please reply!
Amrit Panesar I know this is two years later, but Techmoan has several videos showing various background music systems and he provides rips of all of the music
Is there a way to adjust the motor speed on those decks? If so,try playing a Teddy Ruxpin cassette or one of those 4 track Tiger 2XL cassettes (not the older 2XL 8 track tapes) on it. Do a Google or Bing search for Tiger 2XL toy or Teddy Ruxpin cassette.
From the 2nd deck, I first thought it was a damaged (sticky) tape. However, that would be strange as they are from the same series. Did you try to exchange the tapes between the decks?
hello i have one of these and i can t find any info on them and know very little about it everything seems to work excerpt the tapes never will play they que up perfectly and then light up standby and never play no mater what does anyone have any ideas for me please thanks
The massive amounts of flutter on the second deck turns the crappy elevator music into creepy elevator music. I actually wouldn't mind having some of that in a digital format for experimentation... wonder if there's any way to easily simulate tape flutter.
Cool Edit (now Audition) just had a "phaser/flanger" filter built in - I believe Audacity almost certainly has something similar. Which basically does just low-frequency-modulate the input waveform according to the settings you choose...
Honestly, does not sound a bad as I though it would, the left deck that is. How does it switch back and forth between the 4 tracks on each tape. Really interesting device.
I have e a Lonestar Singalodeon, with twin cassette decks, I can play one tape in the right side and record it on the left side. Tape decks play slow, anybody have any answers as to how tp fix it? Oh! It is about 40 years old.
Do you know the name of the song you played on track 1 of deck B? Track 5 in other words. Wow, that wow and flutter was bad, very bad indeed. I think using this deck to play 2XL tapes would be interesting to say the least, I remember 2XL, my best mate had one and I had so much fun playing with it when I used to visit my friend back in the mid 90s.
Transport is a tank. What really you expect for continuous service machine. Sound better than I though for a PA system. The right deck, looks like capstan motor is doing almost nothing, all the effort is make by the take up reel. since take up runs faster to deal with the change in diameter of the reels, is sounds a bit fast. But sound like any other deck were you push the pinch out, sorta of chipmonks with tons of flutter. Sometimes on thos DDs the capstan/drum) bushing wears out a bit, drum get close and close to the coils and eventually damage them. If that is what happened, you can still put a drive belt around and try to fit an standard motor. I did it on my Sansuy D350 and worked fine, but there was much more space.
If you say this player plays tapes at 15/16 IPS and has four track playback, you could, in theory, use this machine to play 4 track talking book tapes for the blind, however one problem is that with talking book tapes you'd play tracks 1 and 3 on side A of the cassette, then you'd play tracks 2 and 4 on side B of the cassette, does that make sense? So if you say this machine doesn't actually have auto reverse and it plays all 4 tracks in one direction, you'd have some problems playing 4 track talking book tapes, tracks 2 and 4 would play backwards I think.
Wow, 15/16 IPS AND 4 tracks per tape. Sounds like a recipe for low fidelity. Hopefully it was recorded in mono or we'd be talking a VERY thin slice of tape for each track . . .
Sounds like the Weather Channel. I'm bewildered why Muzak used C-120 tape. It's the worst tape for reliability and I bet those tapes got played hundreds of times. BTW what would it sound like if you put the cassettes in backwards? :)
Because that way they could get 8 hours of play time per tape? That's easily an entire retail business day across two tapes. I've personally never really had any of the supposedly infamous problems with C120s. Seeing as C150s and C180s also apparently exist, I can only assume that the problems came with low quality and/or the early versions of that length. I would expect too that, other than the magnetic material eventually wearing away, a thinner, more prone to sticking tape would actually last longer and be more reliable if it was regularly wound end to end 4 times a day, rather than left for ages to fester and attract moisture and generally rot and become sticky in its box before being unceremoniously shoved into a hot car headunit. Plus as it's running that slowly there's less force being placed on the tape (not as likely to snap) and there's plenty of time for any stuck parts to gently unpeel from each other as they work through the system rather than just tangling like they might at a higher speed. In any case, these were never meant to be archival items. They were deliberately positioned as consumable pieces, to be sent back to Muzak and exchanged for something else once they broke, wore out, or the music selection just got too stale. It didn't matter if they gave up the ghost after a few hundred plays. (for similar reasons the low speed and its resultant poor frequency response, and the thinness of the tape and its resulting high noise and low durability weren't seen as problems either - you don't need great sound quality for elevator music, and it can still sound perfectly acceptable even when worn beyond the point where you'd ever consider continuing to play a commercially released tape or one you've copied using your home stereo)
@@mspenrice Thats whats weird, i have a couple of old backgound music systems that used tape, both of them used C90 and in the manuals and even written on the tin of one of them they would tell you rather angrily to not use 120 because it was thin and much more likely to break during playback, granted one of them is absolutely horrible on tapes, its so rough essentially during rewind, just goes at a heck of a speed then clunk
It wouldn't be a particularly difficult thing to make new cassettes for it. Just make up individual programmes of two hours' length (or ~94 minutes if you're using C90s), join them into stereo projects in something like Audacity by placing one on the left, one on the right channel of a new file... increase the speed to 2x normal... record one of those combined programmes onto "Side A" of a tape. Then apply a "reverse" filter on the second one, and record _that_ onto "Side B". Et voila, four separate mono programmes that only sound correct when played at half speed, all in the same direction on the one tape. (You could also use a 4-track recorder and 4-channel output from a suitably equipped PC without having to reverse half of the material... though as those often run at double speed you'd need to increase the files to 4x speed, and use a 96khz capable soundcard to prevent the treble from getting TOO bad...)
Liviu Squinky It's not literally installed inside an elevator. It was probably in a telephone closet or guard's booth with wires running the same music to all areas.
It would have been in the elevators control panel, when i used to work for schindler elevator company i would do inspections on some older units that would have backround music systems and usually the setup was the player was in the control cabinet and the line level outputs would be piped to the car through normal cables and then the amp and speakers were in the car itself
That's just a trick of the video audio, probably whatever's coming out of the amp speakers is echoing around the room and being picked up by the camera mics. It's enough of a challenge to get 4 tracks onto a 1/4" piece of tape, never mind 8... and basically every public address or other muzaky type system ever is mono... I mean, where would you put the "left" and "right" speakers? Never mind that you'd hear more or less of each channel as you walked around...
