Soundwave never thought of cassettes as objects for recording information. To him, his cassettebots are his children. So for some time he completely forgot that, for example, humans use cassettes for recording something.

Well, the new Decepticon, so to speak, made him remember it again. The day Soundwave met Dima, he knew he was lost. Completely and irrevocably. Dima, for a Decepticon, was very... sunny. And chatty. Dima chatted for hours. He could chat about everything; from Energon mining to how grumpy Megatron was today. And Soundwave found his voice... calming.

One day, Dima, laughing, gave him a cassette tape filled with his chatter.

"Here. What if you forget my wonderful voice? I couldn't allow that."

That night, Soundwave fell asleep to the sound of Dima's voice softly filling his processor as he played the cassette in his chestplate. And then he asked for more. And more. Soundwave asked Dima to re-record this cassette tape many times, filling it with various chatter. Soundwave listened to everything, absorbing every drop of precious information about such a stealthy bot. Dima softly, slowly and unobtrusively shared his online with him through these cassettes.