cassette conversion
wrote:
I have a box of old cassettes in the attic (like a
million other blokes). Rather than consigning them
to the dust bin, I'd convert them to MP3 files. Anybody
have suggestions for a converter?
What's your budget?
Playing cassettes cleanly is actually a bit of a pain in the neck, due
to azimuth stability problems. You can buy a Nak Dragon and spend a lot
of money, but it'll let you be able to do unattended transfers without
having to worry about azimuth error. (You'll still have to worry about
getting Dolby levels right, though). For less money you can get a Tascam 122,
spend some money to get new belts on it and add an extender to make the
azimuth screw more accessible.
I could buy one blind, from Amazon or Best Buy, but
I wonder if there are differences in quality, among
competing models.
For the most part, any cassette deck based on a stamped metal chassis is
going to have stability problems.
I plan to do one tape per day. It should require minimal
baby sitting - just start it, then let it run to completion,
and switch off, on its own.
PS Some of the tapes are metal, some CrO2, some plain
vanilla (whatever that means). And differing cutoff filters.
So that's a complication. As I recall, there were players which could recognize these various types. How did they do that?
They used notches in the back of the tape, but you're better off not trusting
the notches because they aren't always correct. Some people would deliberately
set them up wrong to make tapes brighter (to compensate for the azimuth always
being wrong).
God, I hated cassettes.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
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