Dang, that is not bad at all. I recently passed up an ION Audio Tape 2 PC at Goodwill, but now I'm curious how well that one works.

Also, I'm extremely impressed at the quality of the rip.

That's cool, I actually have one of these things. I found it in a trash dumpster one time, brand new, unopened, still in the box! (Ridiculous what some people throw away! Maybe they just thought it was a junk player so they tossed it without even trying it... whatever, their loss, my gain!) I still haven't used it to record from a tape to USB, but maybe I'll try it now!... It's also really cool that it still works as an analog LL to USB audio converter, even without having to use it as a tape recorder in the process! It's also nice that it doesn't require any software or driver installs on any computer, it just acts like a normal USB thumb drive and is automatically recognized by whatever computer that you plug it into. Nice review, thanks for re-igniting my interest in its usefulness!

I'm surprised you haven't been hit with copyright issues due to those songs you played. (or did you?) . This device doesn't sound too bad from what I can tell, but it still looks really cheap. I wish there were something out there like this that cost maybe $150 to $200 that was built really well, you know, made to last so to speak.

Another great video. This channel and Techmoan are life savers at my boring job.

EXCELLENT choice of music for this demo!

i just want to say that i really appreciate the detail you go into and how you give a lot of care to what's on the screen and the audio quality.

That's interesting, I do the opposite. I've got my professional tape deck hooked up to my computer. And I record all of my music from CD's and computer MP3 files unto the compact cassette. People get amazed how good my tapes sound. It's cuz I use studio quality Type II chrome and Type IV metal tapes and studio quality Technics tape deck. I love audio compact cassettes. You can fine tune them, they come in different formats, they last a very long time (I got tapes from 1960's which still sound good today). They come in different styles, brands, colours etc... Tapes are awesome!

Not bad apart from the slight wow and flutter, I could really hear it on the sax in that jazz piece.

Sounds really good! Nice to know there is a machine out there that can do this effectively for folks who aren't into the vintage equipment. For use with vintage analog outputs, one could use an audio out to USB adapter. cable.

I love cassettes still! I'm no hipster either because I actually grew up throughout all of the 90s using tapes and still use them now. Finding decent blank tapes has become a struggle though! Online prices are insane for the quality offered. I've found a dollar store in another town which sell them for a much lower price but I can't imagine their stock lasting! It's a shame as there's a nice, tangible practicality to opening a new tape and loading it up. There's so much nonsense about them sounding terrible about but a well recorded tape loading in an old, properly engineered tape deck is just as enjoyable to my ears as any CD or spotify session. Yes, the quality is slightly lower but not to a degree that most normal music lovers, like myself would notice.

I've seen the 8 bit guy's episode and got disappointed with his cassette recorder, but your solution just blew up my mind! Thanks for your amazing solution for recording cassettes to digital format.

This one doesn't sound too bad at all! I usually detest USB audio hardware, it always causes issues with programs forgetting the settings or mixing up devices.

a lot of "headphone jacks" on modern laptops are actually software definable jacks that can be selected to be used as a mic or line in as well as headphone and line out.

My friend once purchased an expensive USB audio interface for podcast recording. He didn't realize that the Zoom H6 recorder he already owned, works as an audio interface, once you hook it up to the computer with USB. I think that even the cheapest H1 Zooms work as USB interface.

Happy New year Vwestlife.

_Relax,_ _Listen to one cool cut after another,_ *ＣＤ－１０１．９*

Happy New Year VWestlife aka Kevin! Thank you for providing the community with your informative videos since 2006! I enjoyed your videos for 8 years already and your video is not boring but rather entertaining for us general viewers to enjoy.. Sincerely, Fred..

All the songs in your videos are just so good. I've enjoyed watching and seeing all your different types of videos. Very well done and looking forward to more.

George Benson...Richard Elliot....Spyro Gyra...Anita Baker...

great tutorial, really well made . I digitized a cassete for a out of print Hal Leonard Book, recently from the Chris Amelar Jammin Series, I found when you go R L out RCA jacks , you get R Mono L mono What i did was go 30$ Beringer UCA 222, to USB then using a generic driver into CUBASE 8 Then did 6 Channels and EQd sets of R and L channels one track at a time to get track separation so I had as follows A1 A2= scooped midrange Ballance 50% R and L A3 A4 = high cut low cut all Midrange Ballance 15% R and L A5 A6 stereo split = lower volume R and L Ballance 100% of higher frequence treble Then it was mixed down int 1 wav file and entered a 1 channel Mastering , where it is funneled into 16bit (Which is the most common bits for phones computers CD players etc) i put a little maximizer on there to make it a little bigger. I found if the recording is not rare and out of print , you may be better getting an m4a file of a Digital remaster I seem to remember Jimmy Page of Led Zep, being one of the first guys doing Digital Remastering , he would goto the vault and get the actual master reels and run the board out into a digital board to get real ambiance and ACTUAL Digital Stereo Also when CDs first appeared in the early 90s , after liner tracking turntables(lol) you saw AAD and ADD also DDD . Analog Digital . the 2 inch tape on the master reels were put through a different board . RUSH power windows, may have been the very first , DDD recording released mainstream Now a days you can subscribe to Spotify and stream Digital at 4K for like 10$ a month , and Download as much as you want , of course people in general, are not actually going to Download that much content as a collector or DJ might. I saw the CHICAGO doc on NetFlix, the one member says ," Back in 84 when technology was just getting good...I mean, becoming inventive, or as to say just more stuff available, the drummer got electronic drums" I just have to laugh at the amount of BACK Peddling in that statement . "Getting good " would be like mis speaking for what was available back then! XD

I've been curious just how bad those cassette to USB converters really are, but could never justify paying for something I knew would be a lost cause. The quality of the Tape2USB would be more than adequate for most every cassette tape transfer undertaken. I'd be interested in seeing a review of the "weeny modern" computer that made a brief cameo in this video. :)

After checking your review, I got a hold of one of these cheap on ebay. I'm glad I did! Pretty damn good. Thanks for the review!

I think thats ridiculous that they gonna try get rid of the 3.5 mm jacks. heck I heard the iphone 7 has no headphone jack. bluetooth headphones are what your to use but fact is i have bluetooth headphones. the connection can suck . even the sound can skip. .

Hello. This does look marginally better than the new cassette deck fare currently out there. There are two things of note that I feel everyone who undertakes "digitizing" their tapes should be aware of. The first is proper head alignment. I see a little hole just below the cassette door about where the azimuth screw for the record/play head would be, which tells me the user can make this adjustment, which is critical. Tapes are recorded on different machines, each with the head alignment likely slightly off, so the treble/high end may be rolled off, leaving tapes sounding "flat" or "dull" when you play them back here. Adjusting the head azimuth (with a small Philips screwdriver, like what jewelers use) for each tape until you hit that "sweet spot" is essential. The second thing is wow & flutter. The new machines out there now are atrocious in this regard, and that's partly because they only use one motor to drive the capstan (which pulls the tape across the heads at constant speed) and the reels. A two-motor machine (whether belt or direct-drive) means one motor is used just for the capstan, and the other for the reels, which results in much more stable and accurate tape speed. There are other points to consider, but again, I feel these two top the list when prepping for transferring cassettes to digital. By the way, though admittedly irrelevant to the discussion, I disagree with your assertion that not that many people used Dolby noise reduction. It was VERY widely used and was virtually "standard equipment" on tape decks, less-so with arch-rival dbx, tapes made of which only sounded good if you could play them back with it, but relatively few decks used dbx.

I have thought on and off about starting a cassette collection. There is something more interesting to me about it than vinyl. Nice to know there's a good device to record those with if I ever start my collection.

Who else was diggin' the smooth jazz version of I'm not in Love by 10cc?............Anyone?

I own over 200 cassettes (pre-recorded and the ones I created for my individual listening), and I always used Dolby when recording them. And I always used Chrome or Metal tapes.

They used similar font as Oracle Corporation logo.

The best test of wow and flutter on a tape deck is a pre-recorded piano performance. If the transport isn't steady, it's immediately revealed. I think I'd rather have a vintage tape deck with a better transport. But I enjoyed your video! I subscribed.

"Weenie modern computer." Seems accurate.

I bought one of these. Does what it claims. But still nothing beats a vintage quality recorder.

The music samples you included sound so good! 😍

You can use a small USB sound card

I've had success converting reel-to-reel recordings with a USB sound card and Audacity.

Towards the end, it sounded as if that radio dj actually ENCOURAGED his audience to tape his shows hehe

most laptops, even the cheap ones do have audio input, it's just using the headset jack. Get a 3 ring 3.5mm splitter. I have one so I can use my ipad as a guitar amp.

This sound great! I couldn't believe it! All of those great music samples brought me back to the 80's.

I think I'd rather get a USB audio stock. those are really cheap these days and you can use a high quality tape deck

You *can* set Audacity to monitor the audio input - go to Transport -> Software Playthrough. Wait, I spoke too soon.

the fact they even give you a linear wall-wart is a neat thing in itself.

Hey, I know The 8-bit Guy!

I've had one of these for several years now and have had no trouble with it. Even better now that I have a better and faster computer than I used to.

Enjoyed the video. One feature that would have been nice to have on this is pitch control. I know you can adjust pitch in software, but it seems it never sounds as good as an analog pitch adjustment. By the way, I used Shazam to figure out the songs I didn't recognize.

That design very much reminds me of the first generation top-loader decks of the late 60s-early 70s. The pre-Dolby era. Its like cassettes have come full circle.

Actually sounds pretty good considering it's going through USB, then an Audio format on your pc, then encoded onto youtube. Hope you've had a great New Year Vwestlife :)

When I bought the PC I'm using now, I specifically asked the guy at best buy if it had a line input jack. I also told him I'd be using this machine for games. I have a lot of first person shooter games, most are older (Half Life 2, Doom 3) and this machine plays them with no issues. My new laptop does not have a line input which sucks but I don't use the laptop much anyway. I use GoldWave for audio editing because I know it well and used it for many years. I have a few cassette machines to record tapes to the computer but the belts are breaking down on them. My Sony Casette-Corder is still running strong but it's only mono.

Right away I noticed the unusually heavy bass and flutter in portions of the audio. Other than that, and all of that is pretty minor, it really does sound quite good. I'd be curious to know if the lack of Dolby NR decoding in these units has to do with the lack of suitable ICs being available, and no desire on the maker's part to spend the money on a discrete component implementation. Is it possible to play something from the computer over USB to that unit's sound hardware and have it recorded on tape? There are some cheap USB DACs on eBay with line level inputs and a few of them (particularly one that's seen in a blue colored aluminum shell with multi-channel outputs) are really quite good.

You've just got me hooked onto Jazz music. Thanks VWestlife!

Even though I don't use it anymore, that is why I hung on to my Pioneer 3 head deck from the late 80's. I suspect nostalgia may set in 1 day for me to resurrect it back into my system, but I tend to play more vinyl or use minidisc for own recorded stuff.

That sounds like one of my cassettes! Great video!!! 🎶💖

Nice video as always. Luckily I have a focusrite audio interface. I like it because it supports XLR, 1/4 inch, and rca. I can use it to record any audio but it isn't very cheap. It's cool that they made some specifically for tapes though

I guess it’s good to know that decent versions of this do exist. No telling how many tape nostalgists have bought garbage.

5:35 That is a beautiful waveform

i use a cassette player from the 70's as my main one, actually there's a neat story behind it. it's a multi media system that also has a radio, phonograph (record player, i say phonograph because it sounds neat) and 8-track player. i got it as it was being tossed out at my township's fall cleaning thing for free, next year i got a free karaoke machine with microphone, both working.

That actually sounds really good! Something about Analog Audio will always sound so much better in my honest opinion :)

I doesn't need two speakers when they would be that close together. You wouldn't experience the sterio effect. Your still hearing all the sounds you would hear if it had another speaker. It is a cool device. Thanks for sharing.

Good Morning VWestlife, Wishing You & your Family a Happy & Healthy 2017! Thank You for the excellent & very informative videos.

Hey, it's 8 bit guy!

I use a old computer for my desktop and a old laptop we bought in 2005. both have AUX in jacks on them.

Those rips sound fantastic, the quality is unreal.

Thats a great idea and much nicer than most devices that just create super low bitrate mp3s. Another way would be to use an external usb soundcard and a seperate tape deck.

You have all best songs collection by the way

This tape deck has amazing quality

I actually made sure my computer motherboard had a full cluster of AUX jacks on the back, all 6, 4 out 2 in, but I used my driver to allow the 2 in to work as outputs, and same with the 2 front jacks

I guess I should really take care of my old desktop PC that has a line in jack. I have had my Aiwa AD-F810 tape deck plugged into it for years. If the computer ever quits, I'm SOL.

7:00 I recognize that song :) Spyro Gyra - Morning Dance Great one hit wonder band

great review! and informative audacity tips! thank you

Yeah, I had one of those "cheap-Walkman" USB players (got it for Xmas 2 years ago). But there was always this awful motor noise through the audio. It would even register on Audacity's VU meters if I played the unit w/ no tape.

I have one works very well, surpricingly good sound quality

I've got a bid in on this unit on eBay. Mine was the first placed on a 5-day auction. Who knows if I'll win the auction. But I hope I'll be happy with it if I get it. I'm not interested in digitizing the few commercially produced music tapes I own. But I've got hundreds, maybe close to a thousand, unique tapes I recorded from the late 1960s through to the late 1980s that I hope to capture. It's getting difficult to find a decent playback deck nowadays, and it probably won't be getting any easier.

I recently found one of those cheep walkman style player converters on amazon. Unusually it has stereo playback and 4 track auto reverce, and despite wow and flutter issues, it's ok at keeping speed. If I did use it for tape converting, I would just record the tape on one of my devices including the computer, with the headphone port on the player because the usb out only sends audio in mono.

I have some experience with a mic in (and possibly line in) to USB adapter (effectively a tiny sound card embedded into a device no larger than a small USB thumb drive) from a few years ago. I had been looking to get line in audio into GarageBand on my iPad, if I remember correctly. And to use it with a line level input, you’d want to have a line level to mic level attenuator. (Incidentally, for input onto an iPhone or non-USB C iPad these days, the Lightning to 3.5mm adapter Apple sells supports TRRS jacks, and there’s at least one firm currently online selling line level attenuators using the same TRRS standard Apple uses/used.) So the lack of line in on modern computers isn’t an insurmountable issue, which does free you up to use a better, retro tape drive and hook it up to a computer running Audacity. Though yes, it is a more complicated setup than most people who just want to digitize one or two tapes would want to do. Another option would be to hook up a tape deck to a modern PCM recorder with a 3.5mm jack, but the same caveats about line in to mic in attenuation probably still apply. For spoken word tapes, though, you could probably get away with a much cheaper voice recorder (like one of Olympus’s models with a mic or line in), it’s just that the PCM will capture in PCM, of course.

Well, I had another solution : I bought a used micro hi-fi system with a tape deck...And I have a jack to RCA cable and an external soundcard. (Well, I had the soundcard and cables before, so I just had to buy the actual hi-fi system...)

Dont know if I'm on my own but I go the other way and record digital on to cassette tape. I think it sounds more pleasing. Love your vids.

I'm actually considering picking up one of these for my Apple //e Platinum project, since if I remember most games came on cassette or 5 1/4" floppy disk. or well now adays 3 1/2" Floppy disk.

Uh, no Dolby -thats a problem. I recorded everything in Dolby C. How about a nice $8-10 USB audio input adapter with my good old analog cassette deck instead?

In case you have cassettes recorded with Dolby-B or C, but can only transfer them them to digital from a player that does not offer Dolby-playback, then have a look on a pretty software Dolby-decoder I found on the Mac app store, named DDi Codec. It can restore old cassette audio in amazing quality (including a Play Trim simulation), even if recorded into the computer from a rather poor tape playback device.

Here it is, August of 2018 and I can't find this deck anywhere. Only the older model and that's over two-hundred dollars.

What a great device. Thanks for sharing. It sounds like it has good signal to noise ratio.

1:19 you just predicted the future

I came up on one at the Goodwill in Los Alamos,ca in good condition for 9.90 can't wait to try it out

Some good music in this video! "I'm Not In Love" Minute By Minute." I suspect that the USB audio interface in that unit is the the same or similar to what is in the Behringer UCA202 as both come up as "USB AUDIO CODEC"

The device name is "USB Audio CODEC", which is the same device name given by the ION TAPE2PC which does the same thing but it is a dual cassette deck. I wonder if they use the same USB encoder components.

I recently went to a habitat re-store. I know that is a hit-or-miss. God was with me because I scored a JVC td-w309, for $80. Look it up; it's a duel tape deck with Dolby B and C, and automatically detects high bias and metal cassettes, using the tabs on top of the cassette housing. My old school band recordings (1980's and 90"s) were often recorded in Dolby, and on CrO2 tapes.

This was very helpful you just gave my old dell an extra life now i just need to get a deck. Thks

Thats some good ,,modern casette recorder that doesnt suck" type machine.I like the design and the sound of it is amazing.

Yes...It's a nice sounding unit, but since it has no Dolby NR, even "B", the playback of a Dolby encoded tape will be artificially bright giving that wow that sounds good audio. Another thing, since this machine is designed to be an archival machine, it should have an azimuth correction control knob so the user can tweak the head to line up to the magnetic media for the best high end. Years ago, I had a nice Sansui deck with a little hole by the transport. I always had my little jewelers screwdriver handy to adjust the tape head to match the tape I was playing. Believe me, many factory pre-recorded tapes needed an azimuth adjustment!

I miss CD 101.9 brought back memories

That larry carlton made me giggle at 7:49 didnt know casset made the band sound wider

I have a 'plus deck' 5 1/4 bay cassette deck I cant live without. Uses serial for software control. Auto reverse etc. A lot like an old VW/Blaupunkt car deck!

I just got something called E-Z capture, which can be plugged into the headphone socket, but also has two RCAs and a USB at the other end. I can then play my Sony Cassette Player or Sony Minidisc Player through my amp (also a Sony, I'm afraid), and then use Audacity to digitise them. I can't remember where I got it from, but it didn't cost much.

yes better do it later in software. there you are able to adjust it at best sound 20 years ago I started copy my tapes to PC, save it to hi-mp3 and also brun it to CDs. I lowered the high bands and in next step, when all the tape sound was away, I increased them again and they really sound great

My Dad was able to do it with an old Technics dual tape deck for 20$ at Goodwill, an RCA to Headphone jack adapter and a Diamond audio XS71U sound card for $30 at Fry's.

Not all older-modern laptops have line input, they have microphone inputs, but not necessarily line-in. Mine has two audio outputs, a mic in, but none is convertible to line-in... This is why I use tower PC. Major drawback, this Grace doesn't have switch for Metal tapes, as if they couldn't have installed automatic detection by notches in shells and the manual doesn't bother to provide any specifications such as SNR, frewuency response, etc...

Most people did not use Dolby on their tape recordings? Oh yeah we did, I'm 43 and I used it and all my friends did as well. Those who didn't know much about cassettes may have not used it but we knew how to properly setup our decks and we didn't have cheap ones either. We frequently made mixes from our LP's or CD's and then traded mix tapes, it was important to list the type of Dolby on the tape label although most of us used "B" because "C" never tracked right in our opinion. When "S" came along we all got new decks and switched to that.

I use a saffire pro 40 as my output and put it into the aux/ line in of a high quality tape deck. If you're using a deck with phono in make sure the master track of your DAW has an RIAA EQ curve adjustment.

I've got my fully functioning JVC TD-X202 from 1987 for $5. :P Nevertheless, I've got a bad news for Windows 10 users. It's generic USB audio drivers are pretty screwed up - they are incredibly silent. So if you connect something like and Audio-Technika LP-60USB or this well sounding deck, you won't hear too much. When amplified, it's a bit hissy. No fixes available, other than downgrading to Windows 7/8.1.

The problem with these USB solutions is that even thou you need to capture the incoming data with audacity, it the USB deck has already converted the analog signal into an MP3 stream that is being sent via USB. So you don't get a lossless converted digital signal. That's why I rather use my Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS PCMCIA card for this kind of things and plug in a real Tapedeck with tapehead correctly adjusted.

The only thing you didn't address is tape-head alignment. There is a hole on the door that allows you to use a small (unmagnetized, or even plastic) Philips to adjust tape 'azimuth', (or alignment of the head to the tape), and it's likely this is not aligned with many of the older cassettes. "Factory" alignment is not always correct. I've found deviation in alignment an issue on even the best audiophile recordings (i.e. MFSL, "Mo'Fi"), and doing archival backups, found it necessary to drill holes in my Kenwood deck to do adjustments on the fly. This is especially useful for the older tapes recorded on a mono portable, where proper alignment will mean better high-frequency production, alignment affects more than just stereo balance and separation. This is very easy to hear, or see on a scope, as you turn the adjustment screw, clock-wise and counter-clockwise, otherwise many tapes that had different head alignment will often sound muffled. Also the mix tapes playing back 'FM' radio content may have cut off well below 12 kHz , when even a cheap Walkman will achieve 14-18Khz playback on the high end, with a good Chrome tape.