Original subtitles

I think you could characterize our operating model as stubbornness and

stupidity.

We were too stubborn to quit.

Now, we're making more audio cassettes than we've ever made. And that's

something to say in 2015.

National Audio Company began strictly as a blank medium supplier.

It wasn't until late in the 1990s and the early 2000s when many of the other

large duplicators decided to go into CD replication that we realized the audio

cassette wasn't done. We're not in the music market when that happened. We were

not hurt by it. Our spoken word customers, our blank tape customers went

on. That was the floor under us.

That's the beginning of our buying out our competitors, collecting all of their

equipment, restoring it to new condition.

and preparing ourselves to pick the music market up when it came back.

exactly what's happened.

The best part of working with Steve is he is the king of analog.

That man knows audio cassettes.

We intend to be the last cassette company operating, and right now we are

last cassette company operating.

This is audio cassette duplication. These are Electrosound slaves built in

1970s. Duplication is putting the sound on the tape. While the tape is being

duplicated, the shells set up and they're imprinted. And the shells and

duplicated tape meet at the loading machines.

This is our cassette loading department.

These machines take the hubs of tape and load them into the audio cassette.

And each machine may make 2 ,000 or more cassettes in a day.

The part of the machine you see here was built as a cigarette wrapper in 1938.

It marries a 1938 mechanical machine with a microprocessor.

Another secret to success at National Audio.

My job is to keep these running to the best of my ability, which is always a

challenge when you're dealing with orphans. The companies are long gone.

We have 40 or 50 more of the duplicator slaves from which we use parts when we

need them. I'm working to train someone else how to do this stuff. But to try

and find someone that actually understands tuning up with a magnetic

recorder is getting really difficult.

Probably the thing that has really enlarged our business at a faster pace

anything. is the return of music to audio cassette, the retro movement.

the nostalgia of holding the audio cassette in your hand.

We have an amazing clientele.

We have a lot of small bands. We did the Guardians of the Galaxy cassette from

the movie soundtrack.

Here is the Metallica tape that we did.

There is the under -35 age group who have learned now life is not comprised

MP3s and earbuds.

They like the sound of analog, and that has really helped us a lot.

There was a drive from the independent bands to get that warm analog sound

again, and it just continued to grow and grow.

I do not own an iPod or an MP3 player, and I have a flip -cover cell phone. My

wife calls me a Neanderthal.