In article <
27a75074-a71e-44ab-9683-ee15ce3e4042@googlegroups.com>,
<
rdelaney2001@gmail.com> 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?
I could buy one blind, from Amazon or Best Buy, but
I wonder if there are differences in quality, among
competing models.
Rather than buy a whole dedicated "cassette to digital" converter, I'd seriously consider sticking with separates. Find yourself a decent
used cassette deck - there are plenty around - and hook it up to a
basic USB "sound card" (dongle, really). Buy a USB sound dongle that
has a line-level input.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-6-Channel-5-1-External-Optical-Audio-Sound-Card-Adapter-Laptop-Notebook-PC/401524542860?epid=1400167209&hash=item5d7cba4d8c:g:CQIAAOSwFFtaw-mi
is one that ought to work out fine. There are many more, both more
and less expensive.
My guess is that even a middle-of-the-line cassette deck from decades
past, if in good condition, is likely to outperform the dedicated
"cassette to USB/MP3" decks on the market today. You'd need to check
its condition before buying, of course (failed belts or rollers would
probably be the commonest fault) but if you check local flea markets
and hamfests and Craigslist you can probably chase down a good one for
a good price.
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?
As others have noted, there are extra notches cut in the back of the
cassette, which can be sensed by switches in the cassette deck. Te
different media formulations varied in both the frequency
emphasis/de-emphasis, and in the amount of bias signal that was mixed
into the audio signal before it was fed to the record head (IIRC,
standard ferric used the least bias, CrO2 and "ferrichrome" used more,
and metal-particle required the most bias).
Most commonly, "standard" or "ferric" tapes use 120 uS equalization,
and the others used 70 uS. However, even this wasn't completely
fixed... some commercial tapes were recorded using a chrome or
ferrichrome medium, but used 120 uS equalization so they could be
played back properly even on low-end cassette players that weren't "chrome-aware".
Some cassette decks skip the "auto-detection" feature, and let/require
you to set the bias (for recording) and equalization (for recording
and playback) manually.
Be aware that many cassettes, stored in an attic for years, may not be
in great condition for playback. Lubricants in the tape may have
dried out with age, humidity might have led to mold growth, binder
failure could cause the oxide to come off the tape, and dried-out
adhesive could cause the leaders at either end to separate from the
tape when you rewind or fast-forward. I have no doubt there's a lot
of lore out on the Internet about how to restore a failing cassette
tape to playability... whether it's worth the effort will depend on
the material.
Commercial pre-recorded cassette tapes were usually mass-produced
using a thermal "printing" process which didn't result in terribly
high fidelity... even if the tape is still in great condition and
fully playable, it won't sound great by today's standards.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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