Cassette to MP3 conversion USB devices.

[Dave2002]

Hello. Long time no see!

Yes. Excellent value for money.
Plugged in to your computer they need no internal batteries and, using the Gramophone Input (NOT the CD or MP3 inputs) on your Magix Audio Cleaning set, they work exactly as your old LPs and 78s do.

Go for it. It only costs you two cups of Starbucks:

HS

I wonder if I was unlucky. I have bought one of these for around a tenner, but the quality really is rather suspect. Somewhat surprisingly for a battery device there seems to be a lot of low frequency background noise - a bit like hum - though could be induced from the motor. I've not returned it yet - though I'm seriously thinking of doing so - to my surprise I seem to have a window of opportunity up to mid January 2015.

I was not expecting miracles, but I did expect better than this. As a result of this I bought another cable - very cheap (I paid 90p, but these are now only 66p - http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/..._ya_os_product), and will most likely feed the output either from an old Walkman (we still have a battery one which works) or a CD/Tape player into my computer.

I may just check the device one more time before packing it up for a refund.

I am interested to read about the positive comments re Magix though. I frequently use Audacity, but maybe Magix has some useful and easy to use features which would make it worth my while buying.

[richardfinegold]

I had hung on to my cassettes although I hadn't played them for years. I picked up a Nakamichi Dragon at an Estate Sale for about $100 and excitedly plugged it into my system, which has undergone considerable upgrades since I last played any of these. They sound awful, especially the prerecorded ones. Some ofthe ones that I had made back in the day from lp were better but with a really unacceptable amount of noise. mp3 sound infinitely better, imo. I tossed the cassettes and anyone who wants to makea translatlantic trip to pick up a Dragon let me know.

[Dave2002]

I had hung on to my cassettes although I hadn't played them for years. I picked up a Nakamichi Dragon at an Estate Sale for about $100 and excitedly plugged it into my system, which has undergone considerable upgrades since I last played any of these. They sound awful, especially the prerecorded ones. Some ofthe ones that I had made back in the day from lp were better but with a really unacceptable amount of noise. mp3 sound infinitely better, imo. I tossed the cassettes and anyone who wants to makea translatlantic trip to pick up a Dragon let me know.

My experience with pre-recorded cassettes is that most are really pretty poor. However, cassettes recorded at home on a good deck can sound very good, and hard to distinguish from CDs. Where things get more interesting is when cassettes have been recorded on a lower quality deck. Sometimes these will sound OK if played back on the deck they were made on, or a similar one, but can sound really dreadul if played back on a higher quality deck.

Where the material is still available, either on LP or on a newer remastering to CD or other digital format, I would suggest that replacing the cassettes and binning the tapes is the way to go, but if there is material which might still be of interest which is otherwise unobtainable, then try to get the best out of the cassettes - somehow!

[richardfinegold]

My experience with pre-recorded cassettes is that most are really pretty poor. However, cassettes recorded at home on a good deck can sound very good, and hard to distinguish from CDs. Where things get more interesting is when cassettes have been recorded on a lower quality deck. Sometimes these will sound OK if played back on the deck they were made on, or a similar one, but can sound really dreadul if played back on a higher quality deck.

Where the material is still available, either on LP or on a newer remastering to CD or other digital format, I would suggest that replacing the cassettes and binning the tapes is the way to go, but if there is material which might still be of interest which is otherwise unobtainable, then try to get the best out of the cassettes - somehow!

I had checked before I tossed the lot, and there wasn't anything that wasn't available in some other format.
You may be right about the quality of replay depending upon decks. The Dragon-and who knows what shape this is in-would have been a far superior replay machine than anything that I had previously owned. However, with the rest of my system changing so much, and even the dwelling change since I last had a cassette player, and my fauty memory, who knows?

[richardfinegold]

See my message #21

Magix Audio Cleaning Lab is only one of several fairly low cost sound editing systems which can do the same thing, ie. Copy the recording onto a wave file, clean it up, removing extraneous noises, insert track markers, delete unwanted items, equalise frequencies to taste for each individual item and finally Export the finished product to CD, DVD (if longer than 1'20") or as a wavefile or MP3.

It's not rocket science - even my brother can do it.

Have a go.

HS

My wife doesn't know how turn my system on. The joy of separate components.
Welcome, HS. I hope that you are well.