A Non-Musical Use Case For 8-Track

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when magnetic tape was the primary way of listening to and recording audio. Most of us are familiar with the cassette tape, a four-track system that pla…

Making Magnetic Tape From Scratch

The use of magnetic tape and other removable magnetic media is now on the wane, leading to scarcity in some cases where manufacture has ceased. Is it possible to produce new magnetic tape if you do…

Finding Lo-fi In All The Strange Places

If you haven’t heard any lo-fi music yet, it stands for low-fidelity music. Lofi music today is characterized by audio imperfections such as cable noise or tape hiss. To get a pleasantly warm…

Bake It To ReMake It: Cooking Old Magnetic Tape To Recover Data

Those of us old enough may remember the heyday of the text adventure game genre from the first time around. London-based Magnetic Scrolls was an early pioneering company producing titles for the fi…

The Hidden Sounds Of The Past

If you stop to think, the number of pre-recorded voices and sounds you might hear on an average day might number in the hundreds. Everything from subway announcements, alerts on your phone, to soun…