Old School Cassette Player is Hip
11th in a series about PA gear and how to use them.
Do you ever feel some sort of relief that “older” technology such as VCRs or cassette players is still available in today’s revolutionary world? Though it may not be used as often, knowing it still exists means you can continue to use materials you’ve collected and still use. Sure, digital media may be the wave of the future but dust off those old cassettes because you can indeed still play them anytime.
We understand that not every aspect of your classroom needs to ‘get with the times’, after all the purpose of the hardware is to support learning, no matter its newsness. Truth be told, there’s still lots of material found only on cassette that hasn’t migrated over to CDs and digital audio. That’s why the PA919 PowerPro™ speaker includes a cassette player – so you can continue to enjoy and share music that’s available only on cassette. For the most part, people are comfortable with the familiar and over the years, many people have grown so accustomed to recording onto a cassette that it’s become a very simple task for them. Perhaps you have recorded a speech or announcement onto a cassette tape that you wish to project to a different audience multiple times in a day. All this is possible when using the PowerPro speaker. Its cassette player also has a recording function so you can record directly from the on-board CD player, a microphone or an MP3 player plugged in through the speaker’s RCA line input.
Variable Speed Playback is invaluable for learning dance.
But wait there’s more – this is not just your typical cassette player/recorder with the basic functions. It has a variety of useful features that can help you save time and energy. The ‘rewind’ and ‘fast-forward’ buttons for instance serve another purpose with the Automatic Cassette Program Search System (APSS). This system, similar to one personal CD players and boomboxes use with CD tracks, allows you to use the ‘rew’ and ‘f.fwd’ buttons to skip the song that is currently playing and either move back to the previous song or forward to the next one. If pressed and released within 0.5 seconds, this feature eliminates the need to hold down the rewind and fast-forward buttons, especially if you’re in the middle of a song and need to quickly move back and forth between songs so as to not hold up your lesson plan.
There are also three different mode functions where you can select between letting a tape play through until it’s finished on one side; letting it play through on one side until it finishes and then switching to its opposite side and letting that side play through until the end; or letting it play continuously from one side to the other until you press ‘stop’.
You will also notice that there are two different ‘play’ buttons: r.play and f.play. Upon first inserting a cassette into the player, you press f.play to commence listening to the audio however, instead of ejecting the cassette, turning it around and putting it back in to hear the other side, simply press r.play and it will automatically switch to the opposite side, and vice versa. If you happened to put the wrong side in first or want to find a song on the opposite side, switching back and forth is as easy as the push of a button.
Now there’s another surprise! Just like the Performer Plus™ media player, this cassette player also has a variable speed function that uses the ‘speed adjustment’ knob to either decrease or increase the speed playback in 3% increments up to 15% with normal speed at the center position. This nifty tool comes in handy when practicing or teaching dance routines, whether in a large auditorium or on a football field, which require a higher amplification of sound so everyone can clearly hear the audio being emitted.
Click to read the next article, the previous article or return to the beginning of the series.
