Having finally got onto writing Soundwave, so I'm dealing with the usual problem of glossing over technology anachronisms... trying to find the right balance between consistency with the cartoon and modern technology (let alone that of a supposedly advanced alien species).

Anyway, it's left me vaguely curious as to what everybody's preferences on this are and/or how modern G1 continuations (i.e. the comics, though I suppose any continuity where actual cassettes have existed) deal with it. What is the extent of Soundwave's abilities? Does using modern technological jargon feel wrong? E.g. downloading and uploading data, as opposed to recording video / sound, which was what I think the cassettes mostly did in the cartoon... I don't recall them ever acting as data storage.

I'm not particularly strong on communications technology in the first place, so scientific accuracy is already a lost cause, but I do try and think about this stuff!

Velvet Glove (There are probably multiple guides for writing this aspect of science fiction... I really should google that.)

On Monday, October 2, 2023 at 3:05:10 AM UTC-6, Velvet Glove wrote:

> Anyway, it's left me vaguely curious as to what everybody's preferences on this are and/or how modern G1 continuations (i.e. the comics, though I suppose any continuity where actual cassettes have existed) deal with it. What is the extent of Soundwave's abilities? Does using modern technological jargon feel wrong? E.g. downloading and uploading data, as opposed to recording video / sound, which was what I think the cassettes mostly did in the cartoon... I don't recall them ever acting as data storage.

Laserbeak wasn't just an audio tape. He could film video and was capable of creating holographic scans of objects to recreate facsimiles in 3D, so already he's doing way more than a standard cassette tape. (And if you want to get cheeky, sometimes he plays back things that are not what was actually said, so he's obviously got some sound editing software that he uses.)

Soundwave was capable of reading the Dinobots' brains just by being in close proximity to them. Maybe the Dinobots were vulnerable because they didn't have proper cerebral shielding or something, but that still represents a form of data transference. He could also extract data from human brains just by touching their heads. So, again, a wetware-to-hardware direct data transfer that didn't even require any kind of special set-up. He only looks like a tape player—in truth, he seems to be some sort of proximity data collection device.

I think it stands to reason that Soundwave's tapes *could* function as standard reel-to-reel recording devices if they wanted to, as part of their disguise (we see the little hubs moving in circles sometimes when he plays back recordings), but it's obvious they can also do a lot more. The Hasbro toy tech specs for Rewind describes him as using some kind of near-infinite light crystal matrix for data storage, and while he might have a significantly higher data storage capability than your average Transformer, we can infer that all the other tapes might have something similar, on a smaller scale. And the tech specs for Grand Slam and Raindance say they can record 20 years of sound and audio between the two of them, so that's like 175,200 hours. Beast Box can record 6,000 hours. There is no way that they are storing all that on a standard magnetic cassette tape, so clearly some form of digital data storage is happening.

Overkill's tech specs explicity state he can record data as a cassette, but it doesn't specify what kind of data. But the fact that they used the word "data" and not "audio/video" suggests he also uses digital storage of some kind.

Zob (I hope I don't run out of tape before I finish writing this po—)

On Tuesday, October 3, 2023 at 12:08:52 AM UTC+1, Zobovor wrote:

> Soundwave was capable of reading the Dinobots' brains just by being in close proximity to them. Maybe the Dinobots were vulnerable because they didn't have proper cerebral shielding or something, but that still represents a form of data transference. He could also extract data from human brains just by touching their heads. So, again, a wetware-to-hardware direct data transfer that didn't even require any kind of special set-up. He only looks like a tape player—in truth, he seems to be some sort of proximity data collection device.
>

Yeah, the cartoon is a bit iffy on how the mind-reading works. I like your interpretation of "proximity data collection"!

> I think it stands to reason that Soundwave's tapes *could* function as standard reel-to-reel recording devices if they wanted to, as part of their disguise (we see the little hubs moving in circles sometimes when he plays back recordings), but it's obvious they can also do a lot more. The Hasbro toy tech specs for Rewind describes him as using some kind of near-infinite light crystal matrix for data storage, and while he might have a significantly higher data storage capability than your average Transformer, we can infer that all the other tapes might have something similar, on a smaller scale. And the tech specs for Grand Slam and Raindance say they can record 20 years of sound and audio between the two of them, so that's like 175,200 hours. Beast Box can record 6,000 hours. There is no way that they are storing all that on a standard magnetic cassette tape, so clearly some form of digital data storage is happening.
>
> Overkill's tech specs explicity state he can record data as a cassette, but it doesn't specify what kind of data. But the fact that they used the word "data" and not "audio/video" suggests he also uses digital storage of some kind.

Thank you! That's reassuring... From a TV show point of view, a direct video/audio recording is the easiest thing to show, but I'm glad that general data storage and transference is entirely canon.

Velvet Glove (who tried googling recommended sci-fi approaches to the topic and instead found herself going down a rabbit hole of how to explain away FTL communication across the galaxy--which I hadn't even *thought* about!)