Sounds like you don't have enough level out of the tape deck to make
it work. You must come out of the HEADPHONE jack, which you probably
already know. They were designed to work with portable cassette
players so you could take them on the gig and the interface worked
well providing you had enough output level. Sounds like you are very
close to making it work.

> so here's a question i should've asked in the first place: if the
> battery dies and is replaced,
> does that literally mean there should be NO SOUNDS in the OB-8
> that they MUST be
> reloaded from the tape, almost like samples or is the tape just a
> bunch of presets

There should be some sounds. You should be able to grab a few knobs
and dial in a "sound" manually. If it won't do that, I'd suspect
other problems. The oscillators and filters, etc should all work even
without the PROGRAM loaded in. All the cassette data is, is the
settings of the knobs for each patch.

Hope this helps and good luck with the old girl! I sold my Xpander
and miss the sounds of it in my music already.

Charlie

On Mar 13, 2008, at 12:13 PM, chthonic wrote:

> ok, thanks for the help so far. our resident techy band member has
> gotten the cassette
> interface light to come on and all others shut off as they should.
>
> however, it still doesn't seem to be receiving the cassette signal.
> i did as the manual said
> and watched the level on the 1980's cheapo tape deck i bought just
> for this purpose...as
> soon as the tone came in i pressed PLAY on the OB-8 it lit up, but
> no "banks lighting up
> in sequence".
>
> in fact, i don't hear the screeching data sound coming from the
> OB-8's output. i did
> awhile back when i was trying to boose the signal from a regular
> tape deck through a
> mixer headphone jack, but it was way quiet and distorted. in fact,
> the regular sound i hear
> out of the OB-8 is a low-level buzz.
>
> so here's a question i should've asked in the first place: if the
> battery dies and is replaced,
> does that literally mean there should be NO SOUNDS in the OB-8
> that they MUST be
> reloaded from the tape, almost like samples or is the tape just a
> bunch of presets
>
>