This is actually pretty cool! Nice to see that they went from a mono-only deck with questionable components to something that actually sounds quite good! For a started deck, if it was still like the older model, then someone might just think that they all sound bad. However, now that they can playback in stereo, alongside with the decent wow and flutter, this is nice to see! You can't expect too much out of something like this, but at least it's a step in the right direction.
If only it had a decent amp and speakers. I can't stand tinny speakers with no bass, and I will use a real deck if I want to connect it to other components.
True, but at least the direct output is good. A speaker and amp upgrade would certainly help but at least you can always connect it up to something else.
Really hopeful to see more and more artists release their things on cassette. As it is, I think maaaaaybe 10% of the albums I like from the last 10 years had cassette releases, and most of those were within the last 3-4. I'm younger, I wasn't really around when cassettes were mainstream, and a lot of the music from that time isn't the sort of thing I listen to a lot so there's no real nostalgia reason for me to get into them. I just think they're neat :p
I never thought I'd see the day... Whoever this CSG company is must be breathing a sigh of relief that sticking with these mechs is finally paying off.
I found a Brooklyn branded unit at a company called Supercheap Autos here in Australia. It was essentially the same model as the second Aldi unit critiqued by Techmoan a year or two back. While it is still a mono unit I found it wasn't completely terrible, and had no problems with wow and flutter, in fact I found it was very good. I checked the speed with a frequency counter and it was within what I considered to be acceptable range, although I don't have a calibrated tape. Recording was OK but being mono it was nothing to shout about, but for AUD49.00 I have no complaints with it. Perhaps some of the manufacturers are listening to youtubers like Techmoan and VWestlife and making these improvements.
I quite like the "piano-white" finish 😉 What a shame the speakers are below average. It otherwise seems like a decent modern-day cassette player (for the price)!
This is exciting! I'm really happy to hear that these manufacturers are paying attention to feedback. For $45, it's quite impressive. If only they could increase the recording level a bit....
With this, and a previous video of yours, it's good to know that there are still decent (even if not excellent) cassette mechanisms out there. I have a lot of home-recorded cassettes in storage in my brother's loft since 2008, and my requirement is for a cassette player, I have no desire to record. Just something with a decent line level output or a headphone socket that can be used as such, to play into my computer to digitise these cassettes when I get them back. My stereo system has a front-facing socket that can be used to input from headphone outputs.
Yes, it's nice to see a new product being quite decent. Now in addition to the colors schemes, if they could do a proper cassette deck too, with record level adjustment that would be great.
Great video as always, and thank you for introducing me to Slug Bug. 'Truck Life' and '0xBAADF00D' are both amazing albums that I'm happy to have in my catalog.
I'm not a lawyer, but the specific phrasing "avoid it never eating tapes" could be interpreted that it avoids "never eating" meaning it does eat them. The "Never eat tape" in a large font at 13:02 could also just be a public safety announcement, like "Hey kids never eat tape!"
Howdy! enjoyed this video. I would indeed love to see a review on RS-M50M3 radio. Love watching these reviews. On fishing trips up north I always bring my tapes along as part of tradition for the last 40 years. But finding working units at garage sales are rare these days! Reviews like this help me find a good recently manufactured unit. Cheers from Montreal!
Since it has such low W&F, it's too bad it doesn't have a true line-out and Dolby NR - it would make a good solution for someone wanting to transfer cassettes to digital on the cheap.
If you're handy, it should not be a problem to install a line out yourself. If the volume control is a traditional potentiometer, you can intercept the line signal there.
While it's still not up to the quality of an 80s boombox, it's good to see that the manufacturers are at least trying to make improvements. Maybe there will be a 2024 upgrade with AC bias and a proper erase head?
I notice the red RS-M50M3 features "AC BTILT-IN" in addition to UM-1 Battery ... I wonder what that's all about? Terrific video as always - love your work!
This video was very helpful in deciding which boombox to buy. I grew up in the 80’s and have tons of cassettes and singles from the 90’s but no player to play them on. I really love yellow but after hearing your review on the Riptunes it’s a hard pass for me. However, it seems Audiocrazy has a yellow colorway now with green accents on the buttons so it’s perfect for me. I can’t wait to get it so thanks for the review! ❤❤❤
I very like your honest comments.. I have 500-700 audio cassettes and also use them to convert through teak-1200 which is only cassette player not have radio. I am searching for boom box like teak stereo sound.
The new speakers look to be using neodynium magnets which are much stronger. Likely achieving the exact same specs as the old version. That said it's unlikely the speakers have all that much to do with the lack of bass response, as it seems there just isn't any kind of speaker cabinet to actually allow for bass response in the first place. it really seems like the BT/USB/SD module is the standard "cheap bluetooth speaker" module slapped onto this radio. The exact behaviour observed when it's switched into BT/USB/SD mode is also seen in MANY cheap BT speakers. I find "Avoid it never eating your tapes" to make perfect sense, as they clearly made the effort to avoid that sitatuion being impossible! ;)
Mine, that I've had for several years, is branded Reka, and is all black. It has FM, 2 x SW and MW bands and the socket on the end is labelled Phone. I've only ever used it with a USB stick, as that's all I bought it for, so have no idea if the rest of it is stereo or mono. I only use it when I'm doing DIY work in the house, so haven't bothered too much about the sound quality, but it doesn't seem to bad. I think it was only UKP15 on eBay, so at that price, I'm not too fussy!
For an inexpensive portable device, I would consider the sound quality through its built-in speakers adequate. But if you were so inclined, it should be easy to find better speakers of similar size and fit them to this device.
Man, that flywheel looks wobbly at 13:42. Kind of crazy that you get essentially the same mechanism in those 850 CAD Tascam 202mkvii decks but those have a proper erase head and digital controls. Just goes to show it's all in the electronics now I guess. Me? I prefer a well built used deck with not too many hours on it at a fraction of the cost but for a new mini radio, that one is pretty nice. Would be interesting to see if putting in a NOS Mabuchi would have any impact.
Probably doesn't make too much sense looking at the magnets on the back of the speaker. The bulkier version might be magnetically compensated - so you can put it near a CRT without distorting the picture. Honestly it doesn't look like it in this case though. A compensated speaker is basically two identical magnets, one of them being the working magnet which is over the coil, and the other being a compensation magnet epoxied to its back in reverse and with a steel boot covering them both to help short circuit the field. The other difference can be in the choice of magnetic material - alnico or neodymium. Most alnico designs can be converted to neodymium without harm. Perhaps material availability and such shifting. Normally alnico is cheaper, but with the added weight, who knows how it really works out. Neodymium magnets are also often arranged differently, the magnet body is within the lateral envelope of the coil and jots out the back somewhat more, that's the internal arrangement, while typical alnico sits completely outside the coil but flat, that's external. Perhaps an internal arrangement of alnico is possible, it's not like the magnet in these was particularly feisty to begin with.
Given that you can get a really good sounding bluetooth speaker for so cheap, they're almost there. I wonder if the 'decent' sound of most of those cheap BT speakers comes from them being mostly copies of a couple good acoustic designs, usually with a passive radiator to make up for the tiny speaker, whereas this one ends up being somewhat limited by its retro styling despite a speaker upgrade.
and other brands, i have a what would be a very nice one, by jvc, good bass, 4 band tuner, unfortunately cassette part unusable as the flywheel metal has 'cracked up' and distorted😢
It's easy to throw in because the chip tuner supports the frequencies, but it is just about useless. Just a marketing gimmick to people who remember it. You might hear some beacon chirping near you and that's about it. It is not sensitive enough to pick up any meaningful SW transmission, which there are very very few, even with a proper SW reciever and roof antenna.
The only way was up from their previous models. They barely managed it. At least this is stereo, which should be absolute standard for music playback in 2023. The tape player, which to be perfectly honest is the only draw to one of these things as you can get everything else in much higher quality without one, is a complete letdown. At least they fixed the wow and flutter issues.
Thanks for your review As always very informative Could you please share what unit do you use to measure speed, wow, and flutter ? Is it a stand alone unit or is it a software application on computer ? Also reference to the TEAC test tape please . Much appreciated
I would love to see a video where you take this boombox and hook it up to a computer that's as small and portable as possible but capable of running the DDi Codec program. That way people could listen to Dolby B and C cassette tapes they way they were meant to be heard.
I wonder if the tinny sound is indeed the speakers or if it's a crappy amplifier. Like, if you replace the speakers with good ones that will fit, will the sound actually improve?
almost certainly speakers, 'i've had many cheapo 'midi' 'hifi' systems in the 80s with 5 or even 4 inch speakers, with little bass, and when trying with bigger better ones, huge improvement, but still poor max power output, 2w or so per channel, some 'vintage' small speakers can sound better than modern ones of same size, i find modern ones have much 'stiffer' cone movement than the old ones
@@andygozzo72 The heavy stiff cone presumably takes more power to work because moving more mass requires more energy. But still, I would think you could buy better 3" or whatever size they are speakers which would sound better. With 4 D cells, I doubt even 2 watts per channel.
@@christo930 yes, i've come across pretty good small ones in the past... 4 d cells certainly could push out 2w if the amplifier output stage used 'bridge' output and suitable impedance, a 1w into 8 ohm 6v powered chip certainly was available, TDA7052, and now maybe higher powered ones? stiff cones seem to affect bass first more than the higher frequencies, probably 'cause of the small cone size,
@@andygozzo72 That's a mono chip from the datasheet I found. I was talking 2 watts per channel, so a total of 4 watts plus running the radio or the tape deck. So that would be 4.5 watts for the radio and probably 6 watts when the tape deck is the source. A 1 amp draw is certainly possible with D cells, but it would drain the battery pretty quickly. I was thinking the heavy cones would need more energy to move them. That if you sent 1 watt (for example) into one of these thick coned speakers and the same 1 watt into a more efficient speaker made of thinner lighter material, the thinner material one would be perceived as being louder. But I don't know that for sure, it's just a guess.
Don’t take 😅it literally that this will not eat tapes. The sound is VERY GOOD 😊, especially listening 👂 to classical music 🎼. I know that Billy Joel song 🎧 from 1984-1985. Never 👎 heard 👂 of the name Audiocrazy before, but this does not sound like 👍 a bad product. I now wonder 💭 where I can buy one ☝️. At least, it’s Japanese, better than a Chinese unit. Your friend, Jeff.
Well its a improvement though a year or so back there was only one firm left in the world that made tape mechanisms in China. Maybe the Japanese rebuilt a line or maybe one of their designs was copied. Mind you the place in china builds to the spec they get asked for so they could have just had a order for a better mechanism. Still seems a big improvement over the aldi one :)
It has a DC servo motor which means that it has internal speed regulation to compensate for a wide range of voltages. They simply adjusted it to be too fast at the factory.
15:30 The Audiocrazy mono tape radio has a rather cryptic label "AC BTILT-IN/UM-1 BATTERY" . So does it include rechargeable batteries (UM1 is Japanese designation for "D" cell), or does it mean the AC power transformer is "built-in" but also takes standardised D's?
@@vwestlife oh ok, I really just wanted your opinion on the cassette player on it😄 I’m not sure if it was a decent mechanism or if was the same one they use today.
I'm going to summarize it for you. Big plasticky construction, mega boom boom bass, mega sound, audio playback no different from a conventional boombox)
I tried to put my usb in, which has MP3 files in it. It is a 32gb usb, which is required. But it won't work for some reason, is there something I'm doing wrong??
I quite like the design of it - combines retro styling with a modern colour scheme. If they did it in black with either teal or red accents that would be cool. Nice that it plays tapes in stereo. In Aldi, they started selling the 'Techmoan' version for Father's Day. This model looks like it would be kinder to your dad's cassettes! I wonder whether you can upgrade the speakers (even at only 3W there's some pretty good options). Perhaps the circuit board restricts how deep the speakers can be.
Audio signals are quite easy. You can probe with headphones like a doctor and hear it all (instead of a multimeter). Maybe have some resistors around if you check the amp parts.
Actually - a minimum of three speakers (three channel stereo) would suffice as then these would be genuine 3phase electrical circuits, and transmit all the sounds of the recording, using the least amount of battery power. Balance power usage it's called, not unbalanced two phasing that normal two speaker stereo units like these are only capable of. Two phasing a three phase supply will NEVER turn a three phase motor, yet two phasing the audio devices called boom boxes, was supposed to give good (booming) bass? Yeah right - NOT.
@@QUIX4U The AC inlet is only single-phase though. No 3-phase power for you. Though I'm sure if you put 440VAC 3p into this, it would definitely go boom.
Such a gem! And that battery part of the video. Good to see better units showing up - that single speaker unit you shown made me think of an old National-Panasonic or Sanyo radio for some reason, question is, is it close or as good as the originals?
