Daigo Mixtape User Manual

1 Installation and First Start
2 Using Daigo Mixtape
3 About the Encryption
4 Licensing

Congratulations to the purchase (viz., free download) of your new virtual tapedeck! Daigo Mixtape is a high fidelity stereo audio device that allows you to create and play virtual cassette tapes. This manual describes the functions and recommended ways of using Daigo Mixtape so you get the best out of your listening and mixtape creation experiences.

1 Installation and First Start

The installation of Daigo Mixtape is different on each platform. We use installers on Linux and Windows and the familiar drag & drop installation method on macOS. On mobile platforms, Daigo Mixtape needs to be installed from a certified app store. Consult your local app store dealer to find out whether a version of Daigo Mixtape for your preferred mobile phone operating system is out yet.

1.1 Windows

There are two delivery mechanisms on Windows. If you choose the download via Microsoft Store, the store will install the binary for you. If you choose the manual download from our website, Daigo Mixtape is delivered by an installer. Once you have downloaded the installer, double-click it. You will likely see a blue warning screen that states that the app origin cannot be determined and it might be dangerous. Click Run Anyway and run the installer. The installer will guide you through the installation and install the application for your current user. Installations for all users are not supported.

1.2 macOS

On macOS, Daigo Mixtape comes as a DMG disk image file. Double-click the file after you’ve downloaded it, and a disk is mounted displaying the Daigo Mixtape.app and a link to the Applications folder. Drag & drop the application icon into that folder to install the app.

1.3 Linux

On Linux, the download is a daigo-mixtape-installer.sh shell script. Double-click the .sh installer file and choose “Run in Terminal”. If that doesn’t work, run the installer from terminal as follows:

cd ~/Downloads
chmod +x ./daigo-mixtape-installer.sh
sh ./daigo-mixtape-installer.sh

Do not use sudo to install the application. The application is installed per-user and doesn’t require any special privileges on normally configured Linux distributions. Therefore, the installer will warn you if you run it with elevated privileges.

2 Using Daigo Mixtape

2.1 Main User Interface

The main window should be familiar to you if you’re above a certain age. It depicts the cassette tape that is currently loaded, and below that the cassette player controls. The controls are, in the order from left to right:

Fast Rewind: Rewind the cassette tape.

Fast Forward: Forward the cassette tape.

Stop: Stop the current operation Play, Forward, or Rewind.

Play: Play the cassette tape at its current position. If the tape has ended, pressing play will switch it off again.

Pause: Pause the current operation Play, Forward, or Rewind. Pressing Pause again continues the operation.

Record: Open the mixtape editing and creation window. If the currently loaded tape is locked against editing, pressing Record will stop again and not open the window. If the Record button is already pressed, unpressing it will close the edit window.

Bottom Right Clickable Region: Clicking the lower right corner of the cassette will change the side. Sometimes you have to click more than once because cassette tapes can be quite fiddly.

To close the player application, press the window close button. The player will save the current play position in the cassette tape whether you want it or not.

2.2 Launcher Window

If you start the application not by double-clicking on a mixtape, but by double-clicking the application icon or launching it in another way directly (e.g. from the Linux command line), a launcher window will open. It has the following, fairly self-explanatory buttons:

Create Mixtape: Press this button to create a new mixtape.

Load Mixtape: Pressing this button will open a file dialog to locate and load an existing mixtape. Alternatively, you can double-click a mixtape file to open it. When you load an encrypted mixtape for the first time, you will be prompted to enter the password. Once the correct password has been entered, it is stored in the app’s preferences for that tape.

Quit Application: The player application is quit.

2.3 Creating and Editing Mixtapes

To create a mixtape or edit an existing one, either choose Create Mixtape in the launcher menu, or press the Record button to edit the currently loaded mixtape. If pressing the Record button doesn’t have the desired effect, you cannot edit the cassette. That’s the normal case: Since virtual cassette tapes for Daigo Mixtape are available in nearly unlimited quantity, we encourage creators to lock tapes against editing and discourage users from recording over existing tapes. Please note that recording over existing tapes can decrease their audio quality and increase the noise floor.

The Edit Window has a number of tabs and really has nothing to do with conventional tape recording. It was carelessly designed to be almost equally as cumbersome as recording a tape song by song, though, so you should feel right at home despite the obvious differences.

The buttons at the bottom of the window have the following functions:

Discard: Close the edit window and discards any changes you’ve made in the edit window. Use this button to close the window if you haven’t made any changes or don’t want to save your changes.

Apply: Apply the current changes to the loaded tape in the player. This allows live auditions but can reset the playhead position and cassettte side under certain conditions.

Save & Close: Apply the changes in the current edit window, saves the tape, and returns to the player window.

Pressing the edit window close button acts like Save & Close.

2.3.1 Info

Name: This editable field represents the internal name of the tape. It will be taken over by default into the artwork but is in principle independent of the file name and the actual artwork displayed on the tape.

File: This non-editable field displays the file path of the tape. When a new tape is created, it is given a random file name and saved at a location that depends on the operating system. If you find this unpractical, you can export the tape in unlocked state to another location and then continue editing that copy.

Capacity: Daigo Mixtape currently supports two cassette types, a low quality no name C60 tape (30 minutes on each side), and a high quality C96 tape (48 minutes on each side). We recommend you choose a capacity in this menu once and then stick to it; because the tapes have different looks, your artwork might not transfer well from one cassette type to another.

2.3.2 Songs

This is the primary tab for adding and removing audio material. It depicts Side A and Side B of the cassette (or other names for the sides if you have edited them), and the current total playtime of the side respectively.

Below that, you find an Add Track button to add a new track.

When a track has been added or an existing track is edited, it displays the following elements:

Up and Down Buttons: These buttons re-order the track on that side relative to other tracks. They cannot be used to transfer a track from one side to another.

Name Field: An editable text field with the name of the track. Even though tape decks don’t display names, it is a wise idea to choose a name indicative of the song you’ve added.

Path Field: A non-editable file path field, including the file suffix. This is displayed for your orientation so you do not get overly confused.

Len: The length of the audio track

Pre: Empty seconds on the tape before the track

Post: Empty seconds on the tape after the track

Delete Button: If you press this button, the track is removed. There is no undo.

Load Track Button: Pressing this button will open a file dialog that allows you to choose an audio file. Supported audio file formats are mp3, ogg, and (many but not all types of) wav files.

The usual workflow when adding a track is as follows: You press Add Track, then the Load Track Button and choose an audio file, and then the rest is filled in.

2.3.3 Artwork

In this tab, you can and probably should add your artwork to make the mixtape a unique and fantastic experience. Below a preview of the mixtape, there are two buttons, Add Text and Add Image.

Both text and image elements share the following interface components:

X: the x-coordinate of the element relative to the origin (top)

Y: the y-coordinate of the element relative to the origin (left)

W: the width of the element, must be set large enough to accommodate the text you’re writing for the given font

H: the height of the element, must be set high enough to accommodate the text size of the font you’re using

The Sides Menu: The element can appear either on Both Sides, Side A, or Side B

Up and Down Buttons: These buttons re-order the graphical element relative to other elements. The order determines which elements is drawn over the other.

Delete Button: This button deletes the respective element. There is no undo.

In addition, the two element types have the following fields and interface elements:

Add Text: An editable text field for the text, a non-editable font name field for the font used, the font size in point (e.g. 24), a Font button to either choose an embedded font or a TTF font file from your harddisk, a color button displaying the current text color; clicking the color button opens a color chooser dialog to change the color.

Note: Fonts are embedded into mixtapes. If you choose a font, you need to make sure you have proper rights to embed it, use it, display it, and, if relevant, distribute it in digital works!

Add Image: A non-editable image file name field, a Set button that allows you to choose a PNG or SVG image from disk, and an editable Alpha entry field that allows you to specify the alpha blending value for the image. A value of 0.0 makes the image fully transparent and therefore it should be invisible, whereas a value of 1.0 makes it fully intransparent. Individual image alpha masks of the image (“transparency”) are also supported, but note that SVG image suppport is very rudimentary.

Note: If you have a problem with an SVG image, it might work if you optimize it or flatten/compute away Bezier curves in it.

2.4 Audio

In the audio tab, you may adjust some audio settings for a tape individually.

Tape Hiss: This setting determines the amount of tape noise. A value of 0.5 sounds about right. A value of 1.0 should give you the experience of a very crappy player and cassette tape. A value of 0.0 would eliminate the hiss but that’s unheard of and not recommended for a genuine experience. Our engineers don’t know what happens when you set the value below 0 or above 1 and have no plans of trying it out.

Tape Wow: This value introduces some slight motor variations. A value of 0.001 guarantees pristine sound quality but you may experiment with higher values to provide the feel of crappier tapes or an impending tape salad.

Tape Flutter: This is another type of motor variations that boild down to pitch shifts. A value of 0.0003 guarantees some crystal clear audio playback but feel free to adjust it to your listeners’ expectations.

(Checkbox) Emulate empty tape (no auto stop): If this is checked, each tape side has half the audio duration as the tape’s capacity. This means that you have to fast forward or fast rewind the tape if there is silence at the end and you turn the sides. If this option is not checked, the tape stops running once the last track has ended on that side.

(Checkbox) Sync sides (no auto-rewind): If this option is checked, turning the sides is realistic, especially if paired with the previous option. For example, if you’re at 25 minutes on Side A on a C60 tape and turn to Side B, you’ll be at 5 minutes on Side B. If you leave this option unchecked, turning around the cassette will start the side at position 0 (so it is like automatic rewind).

For the enthusiasts, checking both of the checkboxes provides the most authentic emulation of cassette tapes. However, you’re probably wondering right now what happens if the first option is not checked but the second option is checked. Among the myriads of possible ways of dealing with this unrealistic combination, our engineers have chosen a percentage approach. For example, if Side A has used 70% of its total playtime and you turn around the tape, Side B will be at 30% of its playtime. As nonsensical as this might be for anyone who knows how cassettes work, this option can provide a somewhat authentic approximation for people who are not willing to check the first option.

2.5 Export

Our engineers have devised ways to wildly scramble the bits and bytes of a digital virtual tape using modern encryption technology. In case you wonder how this works, it’s a bit like making scrambled eggs: You can consume scrambled eggs just like normal eggs, but once they’ve been scrambled it becomes dreadfully difficult to get them back into their original shape. To cut a long story short, whoever wants to access a tape needs to enter the right password.

To ensure you can remember the password and haven’t just entered some random string, you need to enter it twice. Once the passwords match, the Export Mixtape button is enabled. Pressing it allows you to export the mixtape with the current password under a file name of your choosing.

(Checkbox) lock exported mixtape against editing: If this option is checked, then the exported mixtape cannot be edited. This is the default and it should only be unchecked by people who know what they’re doing.

3 About the Encryption

There are certain points about encryption to keep in mind:

We recommend to note down the passwords of your mixtapes and protect them against loss. If the preferences ever get corrupted or you change the machine, you will have to enter the passwords again.
The encryption only protects a mixtape during transport, so no bits and bytes fall out of the cassette hull and no evil hackers can insert 80s synth drum solos into your music while you’re fetching a coffee. The password you enter when you first open a new mixtape is stored in the preferences in cleartext. This is intended behavior. If you need encryption at rest, use an encrypted home file system.
Both track names and track contents are encrypted. The encryption algorithm is XChaCha20 with Argon2 for key derivation.
When you create a mixtape, it is unencrypted and stored on disk. This mixtape remains on your machine after exporting a mixtape. It is the “master copy”, if you will. The storage locations are as follows:

Windows: C:\Users\<YourUsername>\AppData\Roaming\DaigoMixtape or %APPDATA%\DaigoMixtape
Linux: /home/<username>/.config/DaigoMixtape or ~/.config/DaigoMixtape
macOS: /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/DaigoMixtape or ~/Library/Application Support/DaigoMixtape

You may clean up the copies in these folders if you no longer need them.

4 Licensing

4.1 Development

Lead Developer: Erich H. Rast
Graphic Design: Hussain Ul Hameed

4.2 Credits

The C96 cassette GIF is derived from the Revox Tape Deck Video by Matthias Wunderlich licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license; we heavily modified this image and changed most of the the text and artwork on it.
The C60 cassette GIF was also created by Matthias Wunderlich, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license, and available under the Wikimedia Commons; the GIF was modified to remove the side markings, cleaned up, and heavily optimized.

Many thanks to Mr. Wunderlich! Please note that he is not affiliated with us and in no way endorses our products or their use.

4.3 3rd Party Library License Information

BSD License

MIT License

ISC License

4.4 Software Terms of Use

There are no particular restrictions on the use of Daigo Mixtape. Of course, the user of our software is responsible for upholding the laws of their country and not distributing artwork, fonts, or music without a proper distribution license. Redistribution of the Daigo Mixtape app or its installer files without written permission from Daigosoft is only allowed if (a) the version is marked clearly and visible for a user before downloading the file, (b) the file has not been modified, recompiled, or in any other way changed or wrapped with an executable wrapper or download manager executable, and (c) the file is made available for download without making the user provide any personal information, without requiring users to log in, and without bundling the file with any other software that needs to be installed or is run automatically.