Preserving the Past, One C90 at a Time

Long Beach, CA (August 1, 2024)—Producer and recording artist Dan Vargas, who came up in the Los Angeles punk scene of the 1970s and ’80s, recently helped preserve some of the music of the period, digitizing cassette tapes of the late East L.A. musician Eddie Ayala.

Ayala passed away in November, 2023, Vargas reports. To help with the transfer process, he employed Tascam’s CD-A580 combination cassette recorder, CD player and USB flash drive player/recorder.

“Eddie, who was a mainstay as a lead vocalist and frontman (Los Illegals, Orbit, Odd Squad, and Cactus Flower) also had a large, unreleased catalog of recordings that he accumulated throughout the years. These recordings existed primarily in cassette format, along with a few CD-Rs. After his death, I was given access to these recordings in the hope that I could digitize them for Eddie’s loved ones,” says Vargas, who has a self-released debut LP, Music on Fire, out now. It was written and engineered by Vargas at Safe at Home Studios in Long Beach, CA.

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He continues, “These cassettes were in all different conditions, coming from three sources and stored in different environments. I tried to use a conventional cassette deck, but some of the tapes were weathered and wouldn’t play. I needed a more robust solution and the CD-A580 is an easy and efficient tool for projects such as this. I transferred multiple cassettes and CD-Rs directly into my workstation and the playback results were great. I used the CD-A580 to transfer 21 cassettes and three CD-Rs in real time. This amounts to roughly 120 songs, including rehearsal and studio takes—all of which remained unheard for decades.”

Vargas suspects that he might not have been able to complete the project without the CD-A580. “The cassette function of the CD-A580 is exceptional because the sound quality delivered a faithful audio reproduction of the music. Even though some of the tapes were not well kept and over 30 years old, the CD-A580 transport system was able to play, fast forward, and rewind the tapes effortlessly. In some ways, I think the CD-A580 rescued the music that couldn’t be played on a regular cassette deck. Eddie’s music is his legacy and the CD-A580 brought back the songs that he sang and now the world can hear.”