This should have been part of the national curriculum in th 80s

Best explanation I've ever heard. 50 years later I finally understand. Thank you!

I've been recording on cassettes for a bit but its always good to learn more about recording to get the best out of my recordings

I still remember that day in 1997 where I finally got it and made recordings equal to CD but even better cause of the added warmth

You shouldn't complain that you are not a graphic designer. You are an amazing presenter!!! And design of your presentation is just that - extremely presentable and brilliant in its simplicity. THANKS A LOT!!!!

I bought a old Mercedes with the Original Becker Mexiko Cassette Radio since I didn't want to install some new Radio I got into Recording my own Tapes. I watched quite a few videos to set up everything right. I don't understand why your guide doesn't have more views it is the best Cassette basics video! Thank you very much!

Thanks, as someone just getting into cassettes this was really helpful!

Excellent. I'm 60 years old and you've finally explained to me what no-one has been able to since getting my first cassette recorder in 1973. Thank you.

Much appreciated info even for an old cassette geezer like me. I've just been winging it since the 80s.

As a teen recently getting into cassettes, understanding the factors (like bias, EQ etc) taken into consideration during recording was very difficult and I never fully knew what they were all about. This video really helped clear things up

I’m learning a lot from your video explanations. Thank you for all your time & effort making these awesome videos. I’m learning and absorbing so much information that I wish I knew 40 years ago.

Been recording tapes for the last 3 years but needed a refresher on bias. That said I stayed because the amount of tips in the video is incredible! I have been dubbed for a long while now but didn't know this video was a thing. Fantastic and excellent 😁

Great video. Very helpful and not patronising. Love the tone and delivery pace.

This has got to be the best video explaining cassette recording! Thank you!

Excellent, clear and easy to understand, been a cassette fan for years and i never knew what the level calibration was for until now.

Excellent explanation on the various subjects one usually forgets and/or erroneously takes for granted. Thanks a lot!.

This is such an excellent video. I feel like I can take all of this and really dig into any other details I want to research now. Thank you very much!

Totally wonderful and worthwhile video, Tony. Tape lovers everywhere are going to appreciate this.

Grew up on cassette. Spent the late 80’s through the first half of the 90’s as a radio DJ and no radio engineer every explained all this. Great video! Thanks!

Excellent video, just what I needed to brush up after my cassette hibernation period, thanks Tony!

Hi Tony thank you for your excellent videos. I have loved making recording on cassettes since the 70’s.

I just subscribed to your channel after I bought a Denon DR M33HX to record manually with a 3 Head Deck. Now I have a pretty good understanding what to do and most importantly why. Thanks for this Video. i had a beocord5500 before and it did all the work for me, but that wasnt much fun...

I have used tapes for a few years now & never understod what the db bias mol/sol statistics where on those tapes. This video changed my entire perspective on how to record my future cassettes. Many tnx for this video Its a gamechanger!

Thank you well I am a blue collar guy. Played tape since 60s and you sir both taught me a lot. You reinforced what I learned on the fly. Really excellent info.

Thank you for this video. I have been using cassettes as a kid and teenager, but gave up when I grew up. Now I finally understand the basics and I'm ready to start taping again!

Excellent tutorial on setting up a cassette deck and learning about levels and bias.

Sorry for asking for a tape recording tutorial a week ago in another one of your video's comment sections. This answered all my questions, thank you!!

You have made a very beautiful video. Unfortunately when I was searching on youtube to understand Bias, this video appeared on my feed after several weeks. You are a gem 💎

Thank you! I haven't recorded in years but bought a Denon deck and plan to. Your primer is absolutely brilliant.

I just started recording on cassettes as a hobby to pass the time during the Covid quarantine. I am a little over half way through this video and it is already the most invaluable source I’ve found. I’ll be passing it along to my friends if they decide to get into recording too. Thank you so much.

Very Informative and useful. I've been getting into cassettes and It's been difficult for me to get a full explanation on everything that goes into cassette recording especially when there are so many different brands, types of tapes and decks and it's like "Ok I just want to record quality audio to cassette why all the crazy buttons" lmao

Good video. First time I had to close my eyes to “watch” youtube video to actually hear the subtle bias!

This answered a lot of my questions when I last tried to record onto chrome. Valuable information!

I worked as an electronic technician in consumer repair shop when I was young. I've repaired many a cassette deck. We were an Akai warranty repair provider. They made some excellent cassette decks . Their auto-bias system worked well (only on the more expensive models) and their GX Glass-Ferrite tape heads would last a very long time.

I just watched your UD2 video and thought, man, i really hope he did a vid on all this lingo and procedure he's using. Go back to my subscription feed, BAM, there's a spanking new crash course from you. You said you felt like you needed to up production quality, but omniscience? you are an absolute unit of a man

Fantastic video Tony, it deserves a round of applause. I suspect you and I are a similar age, and I didn't know most of this stuff back then either. I've only recently got my hands on a 3 head deck for the first time, which makes this stuff so much easier!

I have the same deck plus one JVC DD-9 long hunted ever since my college back in the 80s. Good job.

I love these videos! I learnt so much!! Before I didn’t even know there was a type 0 cassette and finally figured out what BIAS is. I did enjoy recording the weekend dance shows from Radio 1 on my Sony deck in the late 1990s and early 2000s with it’s basic TDK, BASF, Maxell and BBC tapes 😀 and played them on a cheap Walkman.

Many thank's for this real great video👍 That's why I'm use my Tascam 122MKIII since the last 5 years. I wish you a verry happy new year🍾🎹🍻

Great video Just bought a Sony 3 head deck with bias adjustment as I have never had a 3head deck before because of the price to be honest it sounds good but I never understood how to set the bias properly. Now I have watch the video I have a better understanding of what i'm doing. Thanks for sharing the knowledge great channel by the way.

A terrific video, Tony. You explained everything extremely well. Many thanks. I really wish cassettes would make a real comeback. I wonder if that will ever happen?

Thank you so much for this video. After 50 years of recording and playing my cassette deck, this is the first time I learned how to adjust my bias control and my master fader control and the recording level input control. When I changed form tape to source, I always wander why the recording level is different and did not know that it supposed to be the same by adjusting the recording level input control and the master fader control. Thanks again!

Super video, i had been wondering what exactly bias did. Thanks 👍

Thank you, it is one of the Best if it is not the best mini-lecture I have ever had regarding this subject, awesome, fantastic, with my Warm Regards to you. I wish you had a similar lecture for Reel to Reel, tape Please.

Cheers fir doing this. Dig up my old Tascam 424 recently, and a few days ago a friend gave me a really solid Marantz pmd201 field recorder that I hope to somehow use/incorporate into music production, so I needed this.

Excellent video. I need to find out how to set the bias on my two head deck - Kenwood KX-550HX.

Brilliant I'd learned alot about cassette tapes in one of yours video than any others, most informative.

Thank you! Valuable info! Looking forward to putting it into practice.

Yet another great video this was educational and informational and learned even more about cassette recording than I knew before awesome video and please keep up the excellent work!!!

The AC erase head generally pops out with the mechanism, it only erases if energised - the modern system being AC bias, AC erase. The permanent magnet erase, of course, had to be kept retracted. The magnetization curve of the tape tends to have a flatter (hysteresis) region at the zero crossing, a relatively linear region above and below, flattening again as it hits overload. The oldest bias method was DC bias, but that only used one half of the curve. AC bias pushes the signal across the flatter region, but excessive bias partially erases the higher frequencies

A perfectly informative tutorial, which is easy 2 understand.

HI very well done! i have owned cassette decks for years but this was very informative.it has also made me curious about 3 head decks though!

Good explanation & demo on the Bias topic, It's one topic I have no experience with as I only played around with boomboxes in my youth days. Recently got an mid 80's tape deck & started to play my old tapes.

Phenomenal video for someone JUST (a few years too late lol) into recording on tape decks. Thanks!

Epic summary! Thanks a lot for going through this trouble of explaining it all.

I recorded cassettes for years in the 80s and 90s, and I learned something new here! I need to buy a deck!

I've recorded hundreds of cassettes between 1982 and 2002 and now I finally find someone who can explain clearly what bias is. Thank you very much and I will proceed to buy a 3 head tape deck!

Great video! I'm many years into audio grown up with cassettes and now I finally know WHY some tapes are sounding great on my decks and which did not! I Had a Dual tape deck back in the days, great machine. But it wasn't TDK what was sounding the best on it. It was the Maxell XL2. You made a recording that sound great (in another video) on a tape that I called trash. But now I know why... I Never had a deck with an adjustable bias!

i still record on cassetes and reel to reel, did not notice when cassettes fade out i just move my hi fi to the garage ....thx for the exellent video ,

Prior to getting a 3-head deck, I didn't even know about the bias and recording sensitivity controls. Real time recording monitoring? Wow what a surprise that was. My old 2-head Technics RS-M14 only had a tape type selection dial (with Type III!) and recording level control. Even without the fine bias tuning it did a decent job. Just having VU meters and recording level control is light years ahead of what I previously recorded with. Also, EDM seems particularly well suited to testing cassette tape recording. Its very challenging having both booming bass and tons of bright highs in one track. Throw in some quiet breakdowns commonly found in trance and you get a good test of tape hiss and noise reduction systems.

I recently paid my tape deck a visit in my parents' attic, but did not have the time to connect it. It's been there for 10+ years, but I want it to work again, so I just bought the official repair manual off Ebay and hope it can be freshened up with a new belt or whatever, in case it should need one.

And that is the video I was looking for. Thanks!

I remember my AIWA AD-F800 does have a sticker labeled to show the recommended bias pot settings of commercially available tape formulations. But I recall certain tape formulations, no matter what bias adjustments you do can never match the source signal. Also, I guess a better way would be to play a 0dB pure sine tone as a source at low and high frequencies so that the bias and sensitivity can be optimized to squeeze the last drop of quality out of any tape. Cheers

I worked on A/V and video equipment years ago. Cleaning the tape path will help with preventing the deck from "eating" the tape, but also if the take up spindle has weak torque, or if it's not moving at all that will cause the tape to be "eaten" as well. I saw more machines with weak take-up problems than anything else as far as damaging tapes.

I love this video, thank you for teaching me something.

Nice explanation! It never made much sense to me before. Thanks for breaking it down in laymen's terms.

Thanks again Tony. I've been enjoying these things all my life without knowing a damn thing about them. Perhaps I've been lucky because most of the cassettes and decks used were enjoyable. Now that I know though, I'm going to get a three head for sure.

back when I was a kid, I didn't really know any of this. So I just cranked everything up to the max. LOL! I got a little better at it toward the end of the 90's. I remember having fond memories making dubs and best of's from either a record or a CD.

Thank you for such an EXCELLENT presentation!

This is over the top. Well done sir.

Great tutorial, very well done!

This was very educational, thank you for taking the time!

Man, a huge thanks to you !! Very pedagogic; ultra useful and very complete video !! Cheers from France

Thanks, a nice informative video.

I had an Akai GX-7 several years ago, and I paid $385.99 for it. Its estimated value now is $1,225.00. It still works, and I've had to replace its rubber belts a few times, but things like this aren't available any more. I'd like to find an expert business who could properly service it. I agree with the other commenters. This was a well-done video. I consider this a reference piece.

Great video mate, I've been doing recording on tapes since the early 90's back in the school days. I used to record tapes and sell them to my school mates to earn a buck. I've always loved the physical media, its 2020 now and I still record TV programs in VHS Hi-Fi VCRs. About an year ago I was lucky enough to get my hands on a Sony TC-WR770 double cassette deck in pristine condition for a really good price. For the first time in my life I saw something labeled BIAS (Deck B). I had no idea what that was. I played around with it (since that's what I do mostly when I come across a new toy) and I've got an idea this is to do with the bass and treble ratio. But your video really helped me to understand the amazing technology used in physical media and when I do the recording on this deck, it sounded better than CD for my ears. Thank you so much for this video and you've explained it so good. Keep up the good work and thank you for sharing.

I was half way through watching Eastenders when this one popped up, this is much more worthwhile watching!

Thanks very much. That was very useful and the timing was perfect as I am planning to do some recordings on my newly purchased tape decks.

Back in the 80's I didn't have the money to buy a good 3-head deck. Now I have two of them and I love using cassettes. Again. Also I bought a fully serviced very good record player with a good cart and excellent stylus. Lovely stuff, enjoying music like never before,

Very good Video! Even something new to me old Tapehead.

Interesting. I have a cassette deck which is my Technics RS-B11W dual cassette deck and it works great and it has an ABS (Automatic Bias System) feature where you can record Type 1 (Normal/Ferric), Type 2 (High/Chrome) and Type 4 (Metal) cassettes. This deck was from 1985. I also have my Audiotronics Classette cassette recorder 148B from about 1983 and it still works and it has an Automatic Level Control and a Manual Level Control and it can record Type 1 cassettes only, and it will not record Type 2 and Type 4 cassettes, and it does not have any recording sensitivity and bias levels, but it does have a built-in Dolby noise reduction which was a decoder can decode the source. But they don’t do that anymore, because Dolby stopped making noise reduction on cassette decks. The Audiotronics Classette was a cassette recorder which was used in schools and in libraries where children can listen to these read-along book and cassettes with an Audiotronics 148B.

Never underestimate the pull of explanatory videos! As much as we may already know, the addition of someone else's travels just adds to it. The only ones who do not benefit are the sods who think they know it all, and that we are "teh n00bs".

Thanks for this. I was a child of the cassette-transitioning-to-CD era, and used cassettes all the time for everyman recordings, with absolutely ZERO knowledge on cheap equipment. As an adult, I'm keen to pursue the analogue hobby again, and armed with this knowledge I wanna make my own mixtapes for fun. Really appreciate your content - I just thought BIAS was volume: and now it all makes sense, and once you KNOW, you're able to make cleaner recordings.

Cassettes must comeback

Bravo! I must confess I was schooled. I do still have a couple hurdles left. JVC and other branded deck have additional settings and my TDK Type 2 90s need to be lubed. 1st mission I plan to undertake is to hit the limit of the SOL on a fresh TDK MA 110. Cheers

Best video I have seen about this topic

I sure could have used this back in the day. I was so naive and you couldn’t tell me jack. Live and learn! For those who don’t know, this is a must for this hobby. If you are going to involve yourself into this, at least you need to care enough to learn how to make a great tape and be satisfied in your own mind that you’ve done all you can to make it well. Good oh, Tony. A refresher doesn’t hurt anyone who really cares about this and I do! Have you got a diskwasher demag? This is a cassette shell with a magnet in it that you place it in and run it fast forward till it stops then run it in rewind till it stops and your tape path is demagnetized. Let me know. The other way with the wand is a real pain!

wow great explanation learned alot from this video cheers !

Top notch explanation! 👍 So this is 100% unnecessary, but I'd like to throw in my favorite analogy for understanding bias (from a Steve Albini recording workshop): He suggested imagining magnetic tape as a bucket of sand. Recording a music signal onto tape is like pushing your handprint into the sand. Pressing down will leave a faint, shallow handprint. But adding a high frequency bias signal energizes the tape's magnetic particles, which is like shaking and vibrating the bucket of sand, allowing you easily sink your hand deep enough to create a vivid impression. Then once the vibration stops and you lift your hand, the handprint (music) is what remains. That always helped me, at least ;)

I'm not sure what's weirder, the fact there's a channel all about cassette tapes, or the fact that I watch it. Fantastic..........

Thanks for this video. Learned a lot today.

Brilliant - wish I known this back in the 80's!

I’ve been searching for an explanation like this forever it seems! It was explained to me by a guy who sold me my Nakamichi deck a couple years back, but this explanation definitely made it clearer for me! For that I am appreciative! Subscribed! Love your videos. Thanks for your contribution to keeping cassettes alive! Any opinions on some deck’s built in “Auto-bias” features? Are they generally accurate? My Kenwood deck (2-head) has that feature. Also it can be adjusted manually. Just curious. Edit- I see you answered my question at the end of the video and I jumped the gun!

Very informative video 😍😍👍🏻!! Nicely explained 🙏👍🏻👍🏻 I think this will help so many people how to do a good recording on any cassette deck you got. 😃😃👍🏻 Keep up the good work ya 🙏🙏👍🏻!! Also beginner tip: If you are using type 01 cassettes for your tape recordings then pls use 90’s TDK D, Sony HF or Maxwell UR ones. Do not use rubbish type 0s they won’t sound good in any deck😜😜

I never knew all this. Good video, not sure how I am going to put this into practice! Latest deck I bought a few months ago does have auto-calibration so I'll give that a go. My rule of thumb was ferric = keep peak at 0 and chrome, I would always record at maybe +2

I'm learning so much and I'm glad. thanks dude :))

Great video! Useful for beginners to cassettes as well as a refresher to more experienced users. One thing about the recording levels that you mentioned which maybe could be stressed a bit more (for beginners) is that every tape has hiss (some more, some less). So if your recording levels are low, you have to turn up the amp a lot to hear it at soundlevel x and meanwhile are also amplifying the hiss a lot. If your recording levels are high, you don't have to turn up the amp as much to hear it at level x , thereby also not amplifying the hiss so much. So the 'music to hiss soundlevel distance' (S/N ratio) should be as high as possible , just before distortion occurs, to eliminate as much hiss as possible. BTW: I also grew up in the 80s with bad recordings of hissy FM radio stations, trying to capture my favorite songs without the DJ's talking over the intros ;-) It sounded pretty bad and left me with a bad impression until I got back to cassettes (and tape) a couple of years ago with 2 proper decks (and 2 Revox reel-to-reel decks).

I thought you did a nice job of explaining some of the basic concepts here. I learned most of this stuff the hard way through trial and error, back in the day. It was frustrating when I learned that my deck, which I thought was decent, was not capable of properly recording to some of the tapes I had. It's funny to think back on how we worked so hard to get rid of hiss and to get flat tape response while now we are nostalgic for all of those things.

This is one of the best bloody easy to understand explanations of this ever!!!! One thing. If you do use dolby should you adjust BIAS/Level then switch your dolby on? or switch your dolby on and then adjust your BIAS/Level?

I have just returned to cassette tapes and found the video very informative. I have the Aiwa AD-F 850 which is a very similar machine so it's as good as a manual (which I don't have) for me. It cost me £20 plus £11 for new belts and sounds great