Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsIf you learn how to use it, this baby is awesome
Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2011
I needed to convert my tape collection, and we tired of using headphone jacks. This thing is fantastic.
In response to other reviews:
1) The unit is plenty loud enough even with the cheapo included headphones
2) it's not meant to be used as a walkman. Don't try and you won't be disappointed.
3) The included software has good intentions. Poor execution. Use Audacity, not iTunes.
Pros:
1) It's the right price
2) Easy operation
3) True plug and play on Vista. Just plug it into a USB port and it worked instantly with Audacity. Did you hear that? No driver problems! Very unexpected, very welcome. This gets ignored when it works well, but people complain about it when it doesn't work.
4) Loop feature. Turn on the tape, walk away, come back when it has done both sides.
5) Auto volume for recording. Don't have to mess with it.
6) No batteries, no power cords
Cons:
1) Plastic body. It'll hold up for my tape collection, but I would never take it outside.
2) Hum during recording. Don't know if it's the tape or the player, but it happened on both cassettes so far.
3) No auto-stop. When it has played both sides of the tape, it should know that it is done, right? It doesn't.
How to use it (or how it works for me):
Plugged in the USB cable (no battery needed, none used). Put in a tape. Pressed play.
I have used the included software option and the Audacity option. Audacity is better. Here's why: the included software has a feature. It auto-detects when a song ends and another song begins. But it is not 100% (it missed 3 breaks in the tape I just did, and it was a commercial music tape). And it does not have a noise reduction function, which it desperately needs.
Using Audacity, download it for free. Then follow the links on the Audacity site and download the lame MP3 encoder. That's the name, not a description. It works great. Using this setup is simple:
1) start Audacity
2) click record
3) press the play button on the unit
4) when you are done recording, click stop in Audacity
5) stop the player
6) select a small section of "silence" in the recording.
7) in the Effect drop-down menu, select Noise Removal
8) Click Get Noise Profile
9) Select the entire recording (all 90 minutes at once if you have a recording that long)
10) in the Effect drop-down menu, select Noise Removal
11) Click Remove Noise. Wait for it to finish.
12) You can easily see where songs start and finish, so highlight 1 song, go to file-->Export selection as MP3, and save it. Do this for each song. You now have the songs saved, named, and noise is removed. You don't need that tape any more. You win!
