I’m having another go at archiving some older analogue recording that I still keep.Being a Cancerian means that i’m one of life’s hoarders but having said that it’s been good to unearth some things and share them with the world whether on old VHS or cassette tape.Today it’s so much easier with PVR’s ,DVD recorders and online radio with listen again and podcasting but back in the day it was a tough job recording radio if you couldn’t listen to it at the time.I remember having to use fragile C120 tapes to catch radio shows and a Heath Robinson kitchen timer arrangement to get my trusty cassette tape to start recording at pre-set time while I was working, only to return home and find little more than mangled or broken tape spewed around the cassette mechanism. When HiFi video recorders came in it was easier as we could use those to record audio only from an external source easily for as much as 8 hours at a time (hurray for LP HiFi).
Indeed I rarely overplayed my old vinyl records, just transferred to HiFi Video to save wear and tear so I’m used to archiving. Many of those HiFi videos still play so I’ve archived them again to my Mac (quick external how-to and here too) and will no doubt be doing the same when the current audio bette noir is replaced.
I’m hopeful of tracking down a working Betamax video player to re-archive a clutch of beta tapes that still lay in draws at my parents. I’ve managed to put the old gems from old VHS tapes up on YouTube but it’ll be a pain if the plug gets pulled on that outlet one day. So it’s back to archiving those treasured old cassette recordings. Amazingly most play like they were recorded yesterday so I say thanks and farewell to my old analogue cassette friends. You’ve lasted longer than most things in a throwaway world.
