Cassette Tape to Digital Conversion

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Cassette Tape to Digital Conversion

Post by Jathon Delsy »

Anyone know anything that can convert cassette tape to digital?
There are loads of these all over the internet, under many different brand names, but I had one and they're very cheaply made, and also my one had faulty panning, giving one side louder than the other.
I just wondered if anyone knew of anything better?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reshow-Cassett ... ljaz10cnVl
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Re: Cassette Tape to Digital Conversion

Post by Tomás Mulcahy »

This has been discussed many many times on the forum already. Search for the forum posts or here's a link to my blog post about it. It's aimed at beginners/ hobbyists so YMMV.

But to answer your question: AFAIK currently no one makes a deck with anything other than a cheap OEM transport in it. IMHO you're better off with a decent secondhand stand-alone hi-fi cassette deck around £100. Stick with Sony, Technics, Pioneer etc. etc.
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Re: Cassette Tape to Digital Conversion

Post by Tim Gillett »

The panning issue you mentioned can also be due to the original recording. Many cassettes were recorded in mono where panning didn't apply. Obviously if every one of a wide range of cassettes plays back with one side consistently higher than the other then you'd normally suspect a problem with the player rather than the recordings.
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Re: Cassette Tape to Digital Conversion

Post by ConcertinaChap »

The TEAC AD-850 is a CD and cassette tape player that has a USB port and will digitise and record a tape onto a flash drive in the USB port. It's limited to 128 kbps which is a little low. I have its predecessor the AD-800 and it's a very competent bit of kit, but be aware it isn't cheap.

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Re: Cassette Tape to Digital Conversion

Post by James Perrett »

Even the expensive Teac decks are no more than a cheap Tanashin transport wrapped up in an expensive case these days. No-one makes good cassette mechanisms these days. Fortunately there are still plenty of reasonably good secondhand cassette decks around.

Here are a few previous posts on the subject...

https://www.soundonsound.com/forum/view ... th#p659924

https://www.soundonsound.com/forum/view ... th#p577480

https://www.soundonsound.com/forum/view ... th#p516778

And in my view the most important thing to get right is matching the head azimuth to the tape which means taking the head cover off and adjusting the screw next to the head with a non magnetic screwdriver for maximum treble when listening in mono.
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