If you assembled a group of people and asked them to describe a "portable cassette player,"
it's more than likely they'd tell you about a Walkman or a boombox.
However, if you asked the same group to describe a "high end cassette recorder,"
they'd probably tell you about a hi-fi component.
However, there is one type of cassette recorder that's both those things.
It's high end and it's portable, and, no surprise,
I've got one here today to show you,
this is the
Sony TC-D5.
Let's take a look at it.
Now, the Sony TC-D5 isn't just one cassette model,
it's a total of four.
The version I've got here is the Pro II.
This is the last revision.
However, the original one that came out in 1978 was just called the TC-D5.
That was revised in 1980 to the TC-D5M, which meant it could record onto metal tapes.
That one carried on being sold until 2005 approximately,
but it forked in 1982. There was a Pro model issued which had XLR microphone inputs,
and that was revised in 1986 and carried on to some time around about 1999, or maybe a little bit beyond there.
So putting aside the more technical differences for the moment,
things like different record heads and microphone amplification circuitry, things like that,
your average chap industry is more interested in the fact that your
"Pro" and "Pro II" only have XLR mic level inputs,
whereas the "prosumer" versions, the original and the M, have line level RCA inputs.
And, outputs of course.
Let's just take a step back for the moment and talk about field recorders in general
because they are still in use.
Of course, nowadays people tend to use digital ones,
some of these microphones will be for radio stations,
they don't need to record video, so they just record onto a digital recorder.
And the same would have gone for back in the eighties.
People would have been using cassette recorders for that purpose.
It was perfectly acceptable to use them for radio broadcasts. The quality was good enough for that.
Of course, before then, people used reel-to-reel recorders and field recorders have existed
pretty much as long as recording itself has.
Of course, back in the sixties and seventies, when the TV news quite often relied on 16 mm film,
you'd have a separate sound chap recording the audio separate to the camera.
But of course, later on, we started synchronizing the video and the sound onto one device,
so field recorders tended to be used more just for radio.
It wasn't that long ago that I was interviewed in the street like this.
...I mean, not dressed up like a woman, like the comedian Dick Emery,
but no, with a reporter coming up to me with a microphone in one hand,
cassette recorder slung over their shoulder.
That was for something on local radio news.
At the time the D5 came out, many of the rivals were only capable of recording in mono.
The D5 was capable of good quality stereo recording,
and therefore often put to good use in the tapers' section at a Grateful Dead concert.
And another early adopter of the D5 was
Sony co-founder Masaru Ibuka,
who took one along with him on his business trips
with a set of headphones to listen to classical music.
It had a good, long battery life but it was a little bit bulky,
and he mentioned this in early 1979 to 
Akio Morita, who was the chairman,
and that resulted in Sony developing their first Walkman.
So just think, if the D5 hadn't existed,
perhaps the Walkman would never have happened.
Sony called the TC-D5 the
"ultimate portable cassette deck,"
and kept using that tagline throughout its life, and it was a long life as well.
Looking back through the old Sony catalogs, you can see the D5 there in the 1980's and the 1990's.
All the other products in the catalog completely changed during that time,
whereas the D5 remains constant throughout.
If it was a car, it would be like the Land Rover.
It looked very similar to the models that came out decades before,
but there was no need to change it because they got it right first time.
And the same could be said for the D5.
But when it comes to the, normally, fast-moving world of consumer electronics,
the D5 is a bit of an anomaly.
When it was first launched in 1978 when the BBC were using reel-to-reel recorders for their field work,
and then it existed throughout the years of the Walkman and the small dictaphones
and carried on throughout,
all the way through into the 21st century.
I've even found it mentioned in this B&H catalog
where you can find professional MiniDisc recorders,
DAT recorders, CD-Rs, hard drives;
but alongside all those,
it's still there, the D5 Pro II.
Now, the reason I chose the Pro II over the other models in the range is because it was the last revision.
It actually came out in 1986.
The D5M was last revised in 1980.
The Pro II has a couple of improvements, such as the recording circuitry, better quality heads,
a shield over the heads to stop interference from buzzing, things like that.
But the Pro models were only generally available through specialist outlets like B&H.
If you go on the Sony website, they still do "pro" products,
you've got to go past the normal "consumer" stuff, down to the bottom here you can see the pro range,
and the stuff there is really for broadcasters.
And if you have a look at some of the prices on this, you can see why they classed it as pro.
For example, this point-of-view camera is $75,000.
So yeah, you can see this "pro" cassette recorder is designed for that market, and it feels quality as well.
The whole thing is made out of metal. There's a couple of bits of plastic here and there,
but really, the whole body and the structure of the thing is just solid.
It's designed to take a kick and keep on recording.
Along the bottom here, you can see this section is made out of a rubber,
and that's a kind of protective bumper because when you hold it on your side,
if you were to drop it, that's the part it would land on.
Even the battery compartment has a metal cover.
Might not sound like a big deal, but very rare to see that.
The batteries inside here are two standard "D" cells,
which will power it for approximately 4 and 1/2  to 5 hours.
There are, of course, advantages to using off-the-shelf batteries like these
as opposed to having a rechargeable device,
especially if you've got your field recorder in the middle of nowhere,
somewhere where there's no power. 
How would you recharge anything?
You could always carry along a few extra batteries with you, though.
And also I noticed in this article it was about recording audio for the radio.
They mentioned that after the tsunami, the only machine that was still working was the D5
when their more modern MiniDisc and DAT machines had already given up.
I should also mention that both my Pro II model and the D5M can be run off DC power.
However, I don't think the same goes for the original Pro.
Where mine's got a DC power jack, that's got a stereo and mono switch.
Right, so I want to show you something now.
I've taken the Pro II outside, I've got something recorded on this cassette.
I'm going to play it into the camera and, just have a listen to this for a moment.
[Playback]: "If you want to develop a professional field recorder,
you can't just take a typical cassette mechanism
and plonk it into a case along with some batteries.
No, because as soon as you were to move it,
the sound would become wobbly.
This is due to variations in the tape speed.
It's something more commonly referred to as "wow" and "flutter."
Shaking the D5 though has no effect.
The playback speed is unaltered,
and this is thanks to a new type of drive mechanism that Sony developed
just for this machine.
This kind of performance was vital for a device that has to record broadcast-quality audio
whether it's at a press conference sat on a table,
or slung over the shoulder of a reporter running through a war zone.
Now that really was quite impressive!
Of course nowadays though, when people are listening to solid state devices
with no moving parts, it doesn't quite have the same impact.
But when this thing came out, that was a bit of a revelation.
It's all down to this very clever motor mechanism, which I can't even begin to explain to you
because I don't quite understand it myself.
But it's kind of a direct drive kind of thing. You've got a wheel, you've got another thing
that's attached to the wheel, which drives it in a certain way that doesn't get affected by
movement or gravity or things.
All very clever, and later on employed in the Sony D6C Professional Walkman as well,
but I can't really demonstrate it or show you how it works, so let's just put the cover back on here.
But I will show you around the machine itself.
If we start off on the left hand side,
we can see we've got a little part that's sticking out of there,
and that's to attach a strap to so you can put it over a shoulder. There's one on the other side as well.
At the bottom corner we've got a 6.5 mm stereo headphone jack and above that there's a
control to adjust the volume of that,
which also affects the volume of the speaker on the top.
It's just a mono speaker really designed just for listening back to what you've recorded to check there's something there.
It's not a high quality speaker.
The keys on this are the typical piano key design, which was popular in the 70's,
later on replaced by the kind of touch logic controls.
This is basic, but it's basic because it worked and it doesn't go wrong.
Over on the right hand side, we've got the twin VU meters for the left and right stereo
and a couple of other controls I'll show you a little bit later on.
There's no button to open the cassette door. However,
once you've opened it manually, you can see we've got a couple of additional lever switches in here,
one of which turns Dolby B on or off, and the other one selects tape formulations,
between type I and type III.
You might remember type III being the shortly-lived formulation, that wasn't on the market all that long.
However, this also automatically identifies type II, which is chrome tape,
from this little lever at the back.
It can play back metal tapes, but it can't record to them.
If you want to record to metal tapes, then you'll need the TC-D5M, the "M" standing for "metal."
It's a bit unusual that the prosumer model can record to metal,
whereas the professional model can't,
and some people say that's perhaps because you need more power to record to metal,
so the batteries can last a little bit longer,
and it doesn't really matter anymore nowadays because it's very hard to find metal tapes,
and since you can play them back and record to chrome and ferric,
that's pretty much all you need in a deck nowadays.
And then when it comes to playing back tapes,
this diminutive little machine puts in an excellent performance whether it's tape type I, II, III, or IV.
As long as the original recording was done to a high standard, this thing will reproduce a sound,
the kind of which you don't even tend to get out of most home hi-fi decks.
And it looks good while it's doing it.
I'm a sucker for these bouncing VU needles.
I'll also point out that the left hand one is a battery indicator.
If you press this button, you can see the needle stays in position to show you
how much battery power you've got left in there.
And it also turns on a little backlight, although it is quite dim, as you can see here, and it's only on momentarily.
Once you've used this machine for a while,
you really start to get an appreciation for some of the finer details.
Little basic things, like this eject button here.
All it is is a simple lever that's designed to pop the cassette out of the machine,
but it's just such a simple little mechanism that works,
why bother doing anything different?
Now, of course, if you're playing back any music through this, you don't want to be doing it
through that built-in speaker, because it's just a tinny little speaker that's designed so that you can tell
that there's something on the tape.
You really want to plug it into some sort of external amplifier
or you could just plug those RCA plugs into external powered speakers like I've got here,
and it makes a heck of a difference.
One reason I used this machine when I was demonstrating the Atari Video Music the other week
is because you can have two live audio outputs at the same time,
so I could plug the RCA outputs into the Atari and the headphone output came out of the front
and into the camera that I was recording everything with.
Talking of recording, you've got a record level dial here,
made out of metal. It's sort of gunmetal, in a way.
The whole thing feels a little bit military at times. It's just so well put together.
But, as you can see, you can adjust the left and right separately,
and of course, during interviews, they might have had one microphone for one person,
one for the other and you could have adjusted the levels;
however, if you want to plug something into this,
you can get a lead which will convert RCA into microphone balanced XLR inputs;
however, once you plug those into an output,
say, from a line out from a CD player, like I'm doing here, and then plug the other end into the D5,
you find that line level outputs are a lot "hotter," a lot louder than microphone level
so that, if I put pause on here and pressed record,
you can see that it's just peaking the whole thing out completely.
We've got the peak light shining at the top there as well, next to the record light.
You can see, if I just turn it up slightly, it's just straight into the peaks.
So, the line level output needs to be brought down to the level of a mic level input.
Fortunately, they've got this switch on the side here which takes 20 decibels off it,
so if we do that, we can bring it down to a level the device is supposed to record at.
Now, I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to be doing it this way, but it does seem to work fine
so I'm just going to carry on. But yeah. You've also got a limiter at the bottom right.
Notice if I turn this all the way up, we have it so it's peaking out,
turn the limiter on, and it will try and keep it back within normal recording level parameters.
That's for if you're at some sort of loud concert,
or somewhere where there's gonna be loud noises every now and then.
You want it just to limit those so doesn't oversaturate the recording.
You might have noticed that my machine is in really good condition.
In fact, the only marks on it are these little two scratches on the top here in the black paint.
But that's it. And the reason that it's in such good condition
is because it was kept in its protective case.
That's one of the great things about field recorders.
They all came with one of these protective cases, so as long as the person who owned it before you
kept it in there, there's a good chance that it won't have got these scratches and marks
that something of this age would usually have by now.
As you can see, once you put it inside the case,
the original strap connectors go through holes in there,
and then your strap is supposed to attach to the connectors on the case itself.
My case has got a few scratches and nicks in it. The leather's started to peel away in places,
but it's done its job. It's protected the machine.
In fact, you can even replace the cassettes inside the deck without taking it out of the case.
The only thing you'll need to take it out for, really, is to replace the batteries.
Now while Sony might have had the D5 on the market longer than any other rival model,
there were quite a few other machines that came and went during its lifetime, from a number of different manufacturers.
One of the more respected of those was Marantz, and this model here
does bear quite a striking resemblance  to the D5 in places.
The model is the CP430, that's the European model number,
in the US it was known as the PMD430.
It does Dolby B, but it also does dbx.
This is the only dbx machine I've got, I only picked this up a couple of weeks ago.
It's quite high end. It does chrome and metal recording as well.
You can see down at the bottom here we've got a pitch and a bias control on there,
and it's also a 3 head machine.
So that means I can listen back to the recordings that it's making as it's making them.
And you just press that button down there to listen to either the tape
or the source.
So when it comes to features, it appears that this device has the Sony beaten hands-down.
However, when it comes to build quality, the Sony is clearly the victor.
Where the Sony's got a solid metal construction,
this has a flimsy, creaky plastic one.
The Sony feels like a metal brick,
this feels like an empty plastic box.
And after reading up a little bit online, it seems like the wow and flutter numbers
aren't that impressive for this machine, either.
Something else I'd learned while doing  a bit of research for this video:
You know, earlier on I mentioned the BBC used these Uher 4400 recorders.
I've even seen those for sale on eBay saying "ex-BBC" and they've got all the stamps and things on them.
Well, when they replaced those, they didn't use the D5.
No, instead, they used its smaller newer brother the Sony D6C.
Which is classed as a professional Walkman,
but really it's a very sophisticated little portable recorder,
able to record using Dolby C and record onto metal--
both things that I can't do with my D5.
But I will talk more about the D6C in a future video.
I plan on doing a video where I talk about the Walkman,
and I'll feature it in that one, but getting back to the D5.
I think it's time to do the wrap-up.
There are still plenty of people out there that, for one reason or another, need a decent quality cassette deck.
But if you go looking to buy a new one, nowadays, there's very little choice.
You've got your cheap, plasticky novelties, the things that convert tapes to MP3s,
and one of the things that people have asked me to review a lot is the elbow cassette player,
but that's just a design concept at the moment.
Pretend it's like a concept car at a motor show.
You can't buy it,
and whether or not anything like that will ever come to the market in the future?
We'll just have to wait and see on that one.
As far as things you can go in a real shop somewhere in the world and buy?
Well, in the US, you can go get the Tascam CD-A580.
That costs $400 over there,
and it doesn't have any kind of Dolby noise reduction circuitry and I'd imagine that's perhaps down to some sort of licensing issues.
My preference, though, would be to go for something older.
But even if you go back to 1990, you're still talking 27 years old,
so you got to buy something that was top-quality back in the day if it's going to be working perfectly nowadays,
and you won't get much better quality than one of these things.
Now they quite often get overlooked when it comes to second-hand tape players because they don't look particularly impressive.
Once they're in the case it could be some sort of dictation machine or something.
And if you just search for "portable cassette recorder,"
you'll get a big list of rubbishy things popping up.
You need to know the model numbers.
So what I've done,
I put some model numbers in the video description of ones that you could search for which might point you in the right direction.
But hopefully you've enjoyed this video, and as always,
thanks for watching.
Ugh, tapes.
I was glad when those things died off!
Good riddance.
Why do you keep watching videos about things that you don't like...and then complain about them?
Because I need to let these idiots know that they're listening to music the wrong way!
I don't understand why you feel threatened every time something does something different to you.
I don't. I'm helping them out by informing them that there are better options.
Just like yesterday? When you saw that person riding a horse and you shouted, "get a car!"
Exactly! A car is better than a horse,
and streaming music is better than listening to a tape!
Well, rather than complaining, instead why don't you make your own video
explaining how great streaming music is?
That's not a bad idea!
Okay, let's pretend this is the video now.
So, three, two, one, action!
Oh, um.
Hey, what's up there Youtube?
Listen guys! In this video, I'm going to be telling all you cassette users
about a new thing called streaming music!
Good, keep going.
Oh, um
Well, with streaming music, you can pick any record you like,
listen back to the music,
anytime you want...
Um, it's...
It's music...
It's... real-really good!
You suck!
What?
I'm just playing the part of you! Carry on.
Alright, um.
Streaming music is really cheap, and it doesn't get stuck in your machine,
just like every tape does, every time you play it.
Boo! This is rubbish!
Everyone knows about streaming,
and your nose sounds blocked!
You're a moron! And this video stinks!
Um, and if you stream,
you'll be doing what everyone else does, so you'll be normal.
And you won't have to store all those records and tapes and things.
So what if I already use streaming music, but I also collect records and tapes?
Uh...you need to stop doing what you enjoy, and do what I want you to do.
And then I'll feel happier about the choices that I've made!
Okay, wrap it up now!
Right, um. That's it you guys out there in Youtube land for this week!
Don't forget to like and subscribe!
Thumbs down, unsubscribed, and... scene!
I thought that went really well!
