A small, hand-made art & research project. Each cassette is individually recorded and decode-verified by one person. Here's exactly what you're getting.
The Magnetic Vault is a small, hand-made art & research project. Each cassette is individually recorded and decode-verified by one person — not a factory run, but a thing made by hand and checked by hand.
These cassettes store data as sound, not music. To read one back, you play it into a computer and run the free, open-source decoder. The one exception is The Deck Test, which is meant to be decoded to measure your own setup. These are not audiobooks or albums you simply listen to — putting one in a Walkman gets you a purposeful hiss, not a song.
Whether a cassette decodes depends on your hardware. Most releases decode on any decent deck; releases marked Hi-fi setup need a good deck plus a clean line-in. Run The Deck Test first — it tells you what your hardware can carry. There is no guarantee that every deck reads every release.
Byte-exact when it works — and provided as-is, with no warranty. If a tape is defective or simply won't decode, it will be replaced or refunded. Just email.
Content licensing is shown per release. DOOM ships with its GPL source and uses Freedoom assets; it is not affiliated with id Software or ZeniMax. The Modern Shelf contains NonCommercial-licensed works and is therefore free / gift only — never sold. See the licensing page for the full picture.
Made and shipped from Sweden by one person, in their spare time. Batches are small, so orders may take around two weeks — sometimes a release sells out while the next batch is being recorded. Thanks for your patience; you're buying something a real person made by hand.
Questions, defects, or refunds → hello@gille.ai