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Sound Reinforcement - Forums for Live Sound Professionals - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Live Sound Forums => Pro AV Forum => Topic started by: Bob Cap on April 18, 2014, 02:15:33 PM
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Have a customer stop in the morning looking for a cassette tape player to USB output so he can transfer his cassette tapes to his computer.
I told him to just hook up his cassette deck to the input on the computer.
He doesn't have a cassette deck anymore... :)
Anybody have one they can recommend?
Bob Cap
Gilbert, MN
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Have a customer stop in the morning looking for a cassette tape player to USB output so he can transfer his cassette tapes to his computer.
I told him to just hook up his cassette deck to the input on the computer.
He doesn't have a cassette deck anymore... :)
Anybody have one they can recommend?
Bob Cap
An Alesis iO2 and your choice of cassette player.
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How about something like this?
http://www.amazon.com/Ion-Tape-Express-Cassette-Converter/dp/B00A73KQPY/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1397962774&sr=8-4&keywords=cassette+tape+to+usb
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Have a customer stop in the morning looking for a cassette tape player to USB output so he can transfer his cassette tapes to his computer.
I told him to just hook up his cassette deck to the input on the computer.
He doesn't have a cassette deck anymore... :)
Anybody have one they can recommend?
Bob Cap
Gilbert, MN
Something that doesn't require any computer futzing, but still has USB if you want it:
TEAC AD-RW900
http://www.amazon.com/Teac-AD-RW900-Recorder-Reverse-Cassette/dp/B006BUVOZ8
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Something that doesn't require any computer futzing, but still has USB if you want it:
TEAC AD-RW900
http://www.amazon.com/Teac-AD-RW900-Recorder-Reverse-Cassette/dp/B006BUVOZ8
What part of this do you not understand?
"Have a customer stop in the morning looking for a cassette tape player to USB output so he can transfer his cassette tapes to his computer."
...from the OP. Client WANTS to use his computer.
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...from the OP. Client WANTS to use his computer.
I'm jumping ahead to the next part of the conversation a few months down the road where they talk about using it for a couple of tapes and finding that it's too much work and is there a way to do it without so much manual work in the computer - slicing and dicing the audio they've captured.
If the customer asked the question, my assumption is that they have a box full of tapes, not just one or two. If it was one or two, I'd think they'd just ask a favor of someone they know who does audio - "can you transfer these for me?"
There'd be some resale value in the standalone unit as well, so overall a low risk, high expected outcome for the customer's actual problem. If it was cheap, we'd be recommended services that do this for you - that fact they're not common shows that the problem is all in the labor.
Tom.
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I have thought about setting up a way for our church secretary to transfer old archived tapes to digital-they could just drop a top in a couple times a day. I just wish Audacity or some other DAW software had an "auto stop" for recording that would stop recording after say 4 minutes of no audio so I don't fill up a drive with white noise. I guess it would be asking too much too have the usb cassette drive (there are some available-but I have no experience to recommend) communicate with the software to pause during tape reverse and stop and end of tape. Can't believe that would be extremely difficult-and probably a market for it. Obviously creating tracks would take time-though Tascam tape/CD decks have that capability built in-just a bit pricey for most people.
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I purchased a similar unit and used it to transfer a tape while I was on a train to St. Louis, MO. It worked quite well. The unit I have does not have auto reverse on it, It came with Audacity,
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I just wish Audacity or some other DAW software had an "auto stop" for recording that would stop recording after say 4 minutes of no audio so I don't fill up a drive with white noise.
I can't say if Audacity does or not but ProTools, Cubase, and Nuendo all have session duration settings. They are easily configured for a time limit.
Lee
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If you have a few thousand tapes to digitize, you can probably justify spending a few thousand bucks one of these:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/562786-REG/Graff_Of_Newark_LC60553_LC60553_Stereo_Cassette_Digitizer.html
Any USB-based system will probably be limited to 2x speeds at most. The above will operate at 4x or 8x speeds.