I miss those days

Technology Connections' video on the topic:
- Spoiler, they're incredibly simple and quite clever.

They make these things with bluetooth now believe it or not.
Pair the tape
Stick it in a cassette player
Play music on your phone.
- Pair the tape
  I can't even, why is this so funny?(◕‿◕')
  
  Love me some anachronism stew.
- God damn it. Another thing I have to charge.
  
  I feel like this could work using a tiny generator attached to the drive's motorized wheel, but that's probably too complex to be cost-effective for something like this unfortunately.
  
  I think they might use AAAs
  Down to you if that's worse or better.
- I can see the use if you're for example driving an older car with mostly original kit and don't want an anachronistic stereo in it. So you pair up your fake cassette to your modern phone and can still play Spotify or w/e with the original kit.
  There's even an 8-Track version of it.
  
  Also buying a whole-ass new car stereo (+ installation) is much more expensive than a bluetooth adaptor from China
  So if you're driving an ancient car out of necessity rather than for the aesthetic, this can help you get music into it.
  F'course
  Most cars from the age of tapes nowadays are relics. "Old cars" in the range that poor people drive out of necessity are from the CD age instead.
  
  ...used to be folks also made adapters with FM micro-transmitters for cars without tape decks; might still do...
- How does that work from the fake cassette to the player? Does the fake cassette record what's streaming to it to a loop of tape and let the player pick up the audio?
  
  adjusts 🤓 glasses
  So a cassette tape works by using electromagnetism. Ferric Oxide (AKA, literally rust powder) has a property that if exposed to a magnetic field, it will create a weak version of that magnetic field within itself
  So the record head of a tape machine is an electromagnet that changes its field based on the actual audio signal, translating audio frequencies directly to magnetic directions and strengths, while the read head is a passive electromagnetic coil that picks up that weak magnetic field on the rust-coated plastic tape while a small motor runs the tape past it and emits it as a soundwave.
  The tape adapter skips 90% of these steps —
  — It just has an electromagnetic coil of its own, positioned so it lines up with the play head, and when you feed it an audio signal, that audio signal gets directly translated to a magnetic field just by running it through the coil. The tape deck picks it up and doesn't even realise there is no tape running through

And this meant that car audio systems with a cassette slot were more future proof than car audio systems with only a cd slot.
- Aux cable is the pinnacle of car audio sharing technology.
  
  Bluetooth is nice too since you can use the media controls on the steering wheel. In case your mix contains tracks which aren't fire. Ok I see where I made the mistake. Aux is sufficient.
  
  Until the to the fucking jacks out of the phones
  
  Didn't see those myself until they already had USB
- It took me moving Country to get out of this situation, as my old Toyota was basically indestructible. Now I have Bluetooth, and the only CD is The Blues Brothers OST, which is stuck in the slot.
  
  There are way way worse CDs to get stuck.
  Obligatory Don't worry... It comes around again.
- Just have a cd player that can play mp3 cds, over 100 songs per cd EZ
  
  or push down an Aux Cassette, plug in your iPod/Walkman/Smartphone and listen to everything you could imagine.
  
  I'm kinda/sorta there now. The factory media console in my car "understands" mp3 files on a USB flash drive. Why Nissan decided to go with the most cursed UI/UX imaginable to navigate this is beyond me. It's practically useless. I would love to slap in a 1990's vintage Pioneer head unit - with mp3 capability - and call it a day.

Grandma, what's an iPod?

I used to have one that would broadcast a short-range radio station that you would tune the car radio to. You’d have to make sure its frequency was far from an actual radio station or you’d get crosstalk. On long road trips you’d have to keep adjusting it.
- Lol, we used those little transmitters that you plug into the cigarette lighter plug until several years ago in a mid 2000s car, and they're still sold and used by people. The funniest thing that happened was when we were overtaking a semi who had one of these, but with a stronger transmitter, so for a couple of seconds we were listening to the guy's random turbo folk music.

scuttles out of the sewer
my linux phone had an FM transmitter so I could just override any station with my jams
scuttles back into sewer
- What phone do you have? That's an interesting feature like IR blasters
  
  This little badboy had IR blasters too!
- I had an adapter like that from aliexpress because my car didn't have bluetooth.
  
  Those things were awesome. I had an old vehicle that only had an 8 track. My options were to listen to Don't Look Back for the thousandth time or pick one of those up (in the days before ali express) and plug my CD player into it.
  I did listen to Don't Look Back a lot.

I had one that turned 1/8" into it's own radio frequency. It was really shitty but it worked!
Edit: just looked and they still sell them! https://www.amazon.com/Transmitter-Adapter-Built-iPhone-Players/dp/B076X3GSMH
- I built one myself!
  ~~Probably~~ definitely way more powerful than the legal limit, practically making it a pirate radio station...
  
  I built one, but by that time our local FM radio waves were so saturated that there was no good frequency to use.
  
  Kewl
  U need help? I did one myself with icecast and shit

Psshhht. I used to have a microphone that let me SING ON THE RADIO. It literally put me on the FM airwaves. You may have heard some of my stuff.
- HEY GOOD LOOKING I'LL BE BACK TO PICK YOU UP LATER

Those were great. They did a job for everyone that couldn’t afford the latest tech in the car. Now you’re lucky to get a head unit with an Aux plug, much less a CD player.
- I drive a 2001 which luckily came with a CD player that was wired to use a 6-disc changer mounted in the trunk. For $50 I got an adapter cable that tricks the unit into thinking my aux device is the 6-disc changer. This worked great until I got my latest phone which doesn't have a fucking headphone jack. I bought an adapter but the top volume level is pitifully low, so I'm back to burning CDs to play in my car.
  
  I bought an adapter but the top volume level is pitifully low, so I'm back to burning CDs to play in my car.
  This is odd, because the voltage levels should be somewhat normalized across the USB-C adapter and your old headphone jack. It may be an issue with your adapter having a shitty DAC. Basically, the adapter has to take the digital audio signal, and convert it to analog. Cheaper adapters will use cheap digital-analog converters (DACs) which will either output lower levels, or will tend to change the signal as volume increases.
  It’s also possible that it is purely an analog converter, in which case your phone is actually using its internal DAC. There are benefits and drawbacks to this, but it’s possible that your phone is software-limiting its internal DAC’s power output to avoid burning out from a bad connection.

If the car was old enough you could plug a cassette adapter into an 8 track adapter.
- Dear god, I had one of these. I was driving a 74 Ford pickup with an 8-track and it was the only way to play my music through the single speaker in the dash. High fidelity.
- Good god. That's three or more generations of electronics just dragged kicking-and-screaming into the 21st century. I love it.
  All that's left to do is send the receiver output to a PC or RPi, and serve it as a self-hosted streaming service.
- Plug... plug it into a zune
  
  I actually had a Zune. They were pretty nice as far as MP3 players go.
  
  Minidisc of gtfo
- My best friend in high school had a stereo with an 8-track recorder.

I had one of those too. I don't miss it at all, though, because the sound quality was dogshit. Now get off my lawn, damn kids!
- You may have missed the protective film on the magnet head. When I had one, it was a night and day difference once I got the protective film off.
  
  It's a bit late to check that but I'm pretty sure i didn't have any protective film there.
- Strange. The quality should be about the best a cassette or aux cable could deliver. They are basically just two electromagnets controlled by the audiosignal.
  They are so simple there isn't a lot to do badly.
  
  Yeah it's cassette quality. That's what I'm talking about. It wasn't anywhere near the quality of a direct AUX connection.

I had a lil radio emitter that plugged into the iPod so it would replace the local stations !
- I loved setting mine to the frequency of a local station and watching the confusion in other cars at a stop light if they were listening to the same frequency. I didn't do it too often because it is pretty annoying though and not too hard to figure out who's doing it.

I remember excluding cars with CD players from my purchasing decisions for this reason! Should either have a tape or aux in.

When I get my IROC I'm planning to do this.

I have one that is bluetooth to cassette. Unfortunately, it has a lot of artifacts during playback. Opted for a bluetooth transmitter that connects to an empty radio channel? Frequency? Works well.
- The bluetooth to FM transmitter works well for you? I've tried them several times over the decades, even the expensive ones seem to suck. Maybe not as much as your bluetooth to cassette, I've never seen one of those for sale or used one.
  
  What issues have you had? Mine connects fine without issue and the quality is ok at best but my car speakers aren't exactly preem. My antenna is even broken off and has a hard time catching regular stations but no issues with my transmitter nor with the bluetooth part of it.
- Sounds like an issue with your cassette deck. You should definitely be getting better audio quality with a cassette adapter, mine sounds better than a normal cassette tape. Every radio frequency transmitter I have ever tried has had severe artifacting on the high end (treble), especially prevalent on "S" sounds; they come out really static-y. At any rate, your better off doing literally anything else than repairing your cassette deck if it's cooked, but its worth a go to try a standard aux cord cassette since they're under $10.
  I've actually opted to record my playlists onto cassette tapes, and I wound up using these more than the aux adapter.

You can't even pass people the aux anymore
- Spotify Jams now. But passing the aux is a lost bonding experience
- I got one of those USB dongles that can charge and output analog sound to aux.
  There's a whine that matches my RPMs because the thing doesn't isolate the voltage from the charger and the audio signal that well. Luckily it isn't very audible when it's being driven (the sound, not the car). Oh I also need to unlock my phone before it even drives it and it takes a bit for it to switch over.
  The phone needs to convert to analog to drive the speakers anyways, just fucking stick a mux on that to decide whether it drives the speaker amp or an aux wire. If the jack was too thick, imo it would have been better to introduce a new smaller analog jack standard.

Mmmm... did somebody say pudding?

I had a fuckin boombox in my back seat for a while, then I upgraded to one of those portable ipod docks and plugged that shit into the cigarette lighter. Actually was pretty decent lol

The original aux cable! And you never needed to pair shit!

I loved these things. Never understood how they worked (still don’t) but I didn’t care!
- Technology Connections has covered how they work.
  https://youtu.be/dH4n8fUjtLQ
  
  Technology Connections is going to turn into the XKCD of explainer videos.
- Electromagnetism and a touch of devil-math from the STEM layer of hell, as is with most technology.

Discman on a tray with little bouncy shocks, in an attempt to keep the CD from skipping, but it didn’t matter because it would skip anyway.

I remember showing mine to a friend once and she straight up was like "Oh wow! I wonder if they make these for CD players instead of cassette tapes."
🤦‍♂️

I have one of those in my car today.

This somehow makes me feel older than the hip pain does
- I think it'e because of how long ago it was. I feel like society hasn't changed very much since ~2012 (last time this was necessary) so it all feels like one long continuous blur. And then you realize that was 13 years ago.

I still use one whenever I drive my father's car. It's Bluetooth connected now, which does mean I have to charge it, but since phones removed the headphone jacks... /Shrug

Look at that young whippersnapper. I had one for my discman.

Fuck you I'm not THAT old

So the thing about these is they always work unless you physically damage it in a completely obvious way and then you get another $5 adapter. You know unlike figuring out how to make your phone talk to a stupid car.

I used to make mix tapes by recording mp3s onto cassettes so I could listen to them in my car.

Lol my dad had one. I'm Gen Z.
I last saw that in like 2016 (car was like made in like the 2000s). Then the new cars didn't even have the casette thing anymore.