[geoff]

On 2/06/2018 1:15 PM, Mike Rivers wrote:
On 6/1/2018 6:45 PM, wrote:
I have a box of old cassettes in the attic (like a
million other blokes).Â* Rather than consigning them
to the dust bin, I'd convert them to MP3 files.Â* Anybody
have suggestions for a converter?

I'm aware of boxes that have a cassette transportÂ* and spit out audio
data, usually via USB. I suppose they work, and although
analog-to-digital conversion isn't hard to do at least pretty well for
cheap, most probably have pretty poor quality cassette transports. For
$20-$30, you don't get a very precise mechanical assembly. If all you
want to do is get an easier way to listen to what's on your cassettes,
one of those would do. Looking at the "random" selection on Amazon, I'd
guess that the one from ION is probably the best of the lot. At least
it's distributed by a company that also offers up decent quality audio
products.

The best way to do the job, if you care about getting all the sound
quality you can off the cassette, is to get a decent cassette deck and a
decent computer audio interface. In the best of all worlds, you'd have a
Nakamichi Dragon but even a Sony or Yamaha or TEAC cassette deck from a
yard sale or thrift store, with a good cleaning, will probably be better
than what you get with a "converter." Mate a USB audio interface, even
an inexpensive one like a Behringer UCA-202 or -222 will do a better job
than whatever is in a "converter" box. Mate that with a program like
Audacity with its MP3 converter added (or splurge on disk space and use
"full cassette quality" 44.1 kHz WAV files, set the recording level
properly, and you'll get better results than shoving the cassette into
an unknown box and letting it do its thing.

Most cassette decks select the proper equalization curve for the type of
tape based on sensing notches in the shell as someone has explained
here. A deck will let you listen with Dolby noise reduction in or out
and decide which one sounds right if your cassettes aren't marked as to
whether they use it or not. There's no automatic way to detect that.



Depending on the nature of the cassettes, a cassette deck straight into
the mic/line in of a laptop or desktop may be sufficient quality.

geoff