A cheap USB cassette deck that actually sounds good! 

Dang, that is not bad at all. I recently passed up an ION Audio Tape 2 PC at Goodwill, but now I'm curious how well that one works.

I'm surprised you haven't been hit with copyright issues due to those songs you played. (or did you?) . This device doesn't sound too bad from what I can tell, but it still looks really cheap. I wish there were something out there like this that cost maybe $150 to $200 that was built really well, you know, made to last so to speak.

i just want to say that i really appreciate the detail you go into and how you give a lot of care to what's on the screen and the audio quality.

Also, I'm extremely impressed at the quality of the rip.

Another great video. This channel and Techmoan are life savers at my boring job.

All the songs in your videos are just so good. I've enjoyed watching and seeing all your different types of videos. Very well done and looking forward to more.

That's cool, I actually have one of these things. I found it in a trash dumpster one time, brand new, unopened, still in the box! (Ridiculous what some people throw away! Maybe they just thought it was a junk player so they tossed it without even trying it... whatever, their loss, my gain!) I still haven't used it to record from a tape to USB, but maybe I'll try it now!... It's also really cool that it still works as an analog LL to USB audio converter, even without having to use it as a tape recorder in the process! It's also nice that it doesn't require any software or driver installs on any computer, it just acts like a normal USB thumb drive and is automatically recognized by whatever computer that you plug it into. Nice review, thanks for re-igniting my interest in its usefulness!

The music samples you included sound so good! 😍

EXCELLENT choice of music for this demo!

Sounds really good! Nice to know there is a machine out there that can do this effectively for folks who aren't into the vintage equipment. For use with vintage analog outputs, one could use an audio out to USB adapter. cable.

Happy New Year VWestlife aka Kevin! Thank you for providing the community with your informative videos since 2006! I enjoyed your videos for 8 years already and your video is not boring but rather entertaining for us general viewers to enjoy.. Sincerely, Fred..

great review! and informative audacity tips! thank you

After checking your review, I got a hold of one of these cheap on ebay. I'm glad I did! Pretty damn good. Thanks for the review!

Happy New year Vwestlife.

I've seen the 8 bit guy's episode and got disappointed with his cassette recorder, but your solution just blew up my mind! Thanks for your amazing solution for recording cassettes to digital format.

Very precious tips, man! Thanks for sharing.

_Relax,_ _Listen to one cool cut after another,_ *ＣＤ－１０１．９*

You've just got me hooked onto Jazz music. Thanks VWestlife!

Good Morning VWestlife, Wishing You & your Family a Happy & Healthy 2017! Thank You for the excellent & very informative videos.

That sounds like one of my cassettes! Great video!!! 🎶💖

This was very helpful you just gave my old dell an extra life now i just need to get a deck. Thks

Interesting review and suggestion!

Actually sounds pretty good considering it's going through USB, then an Audio format on your pc, then encoded onto youtube. Hope you've had a great New Year Vwestlife :)

That's interesting, I do the opposite. I've got my professional tape deck hooked up to my computer. And I record all of my music from CD's and computer MP3 files unto the compact cassette. People get amazed how good my tapes sound. It's cuz I use studio quality Type II chrome and Type IV metal tapes and studio quality Technics tape deck. I love audio compact cassettes. You can fine tune them, they come in different formats, they last a very long time (I got tapes from 1960's which still sound good today). They come in different styles, brands, colours etc... Tapes are awesome!

I love this channel, great and informative video's

Not bad apart from the slight wow and flutter, I could really hear it on the sax in that jazz piece.

What a great device. Thanks for sharing. It sounds like it has good signal to noise ratio.

I love cassettes still! I'm no hipster either because I actually grew up throughout all of the 90s using tapes and still use them now. Finding decent blank tapes has become a struggle though! Online prices are insane for the quality offered. I've found a dollar store in another town which sell them for a much lower price but I can't imagine their stock lasting! It's a shame as there's a nice, tangible practicality to opening a new tape and loading it up. There's so much nonsense about them sounding terrible about but a well recorded tape loading in an old, properly engineered tape deck is just as enjoyable to my ears as any CD or spotify session. Yes, the quality is slightly lower but not to a degree that most normal music lovers, like myself would notice.

Excellent video!!!

Thanks for introducing me to that last song

George Benson...Richard Elliot....Spyro Gyra...Anita Baker...

I have thought on and off about starting a cassette collection. There is something more interesting to me about it than vinyl. Nice to know there's a good device to record those with if I ever start my collection.

This sound great! I couldn't believe it! All of those great music samples brought me back to the 80's.

This one doesn't sound too bad at all! I usually detest USB audio hardware, it always causes issues with programs forgetting the settings or mixing up devices.

a lot of "headphone jacks" on modern laptops are actually software definable jacks that can be selected to be used as a mic or line in as well as headphone and line out.

Happy new year!

My friend once purchased an expensive USB audio interface for podcast recording. He didn't realize that the Zoom H6 recorder he already owned, works as an audio interface, once you hook it up to the computer with USB. I think that even the cheapest H1 Zooms work as USB interface.

Very nice sound, great actually.

great tutorial, really well made . I digitized a cassete for a out of print Hal Leonard Book, recently from the Chris Amelar Jammin Series, I found when you go R L out RCA jacks , you get R Mono L mono What i did was go 30$ Beringer UCA 222, to USB then using a generic driver into CUBASE 8 Then did 6 Channels and EQd sets of R and L channels one track at a time to get track separation so I had as follows A1 A2= scooped midrange Ballance 50% R and L A3 A4 = high cut low cut all Midrange Ballance 15% R and L A5 A6 stereo split = lower volume R and L Ballance 100% of higher frequence treble Then it was mixed down int 1 wav file and entered a 1 channel Mastering , where it is funneled into 16bit (Which is the most common bits for phones computers CD players etc) i put a little maximizer on there to make it a little bigger. I found if the recording is not rare and out of print , you may be better getting an m4a file of a Digital remaster I seem to remember Jimmy Page of Led Zep, being one of the first guys doing Digital Remastering , he would goto the vault and get the actual master reels and run the board out into a digital board to get real ambiance and ACTUAL Digital Stereo Also when CDs first appeared in the early 90s , after liner tracking turntables(lol) you saw AAD and ADD also DDD . Analog Digital . the 2 inch tape on the master reels were put through a different board . RUSH power windows, may have been the very first , DDD recording released mainstream Now a days you can subscribe to Spotify and stream Digital at 4K for like 10$ a month , and Download as much as you want , of course people in general, are not actually going to Download that much content as a collector or DJ might. I saw the CHICAGO doc on NetFlix, the one member says ," Back in 84 when technology was just getting good...I mean, becoming inventive, or as to say just more stuff available, the drummer got electronic drums" I just have to laugh at the amount of BACK Peddling in that statement . "Getting good " would be like mis speaking for what was available back then! XD

The best test of wow and flutter on a tape deck is a pre-recorded piano performance. If the transport isn't steady, it's immediately revealed. I think I'd rather have a vintage tape deck with a better transport. But I enjoyed your video! I subscribed.

What's the track and artist name of the sample you played when you test recorded the mp3 player through the *LINE* *IN* on the tape deck? I have the other 1st, 2nd and 3rd but Shazam didn't recognize the fourth.

Cool looking unit

I love those radio liners.

This is a great video very helpful does the Grace have autoreverse feature thanks.

can it be used the other way around? as in play music in your laptop and transfer the songs inside a blank cassette tape?

I bought one of these. Does what it claims. But still nothing beats a vintage quality recorder.

What's the sampling rate of the audio recorded via the USB port?

I like that Grace machine. It's a very nice looking machine, and seems to work well.

Right away I noticed the unusually heavy bass and flutter in portions of the audio. Other than that, and all of that is pretty minor, it really does sound quite good. I'd be curious to know if the lack of Dolby NR decoding in these units has to do with the lack of suitable ICs being available, and no desire on the maker's part to spend the money on a discrete component implementation. Is it possible to play something from the computer over USB to that unit's sound hardware and have it recorded on tape? There are some cheap USB DACs on eBay with line level inputs and a few of them (particularly one that's seen in a blue colored aluminum shell with multi-channel outputs) are really quite good.

What was the tape you played towards the end where the DJ instructs you to turn over the tape? I've never come across a radio show produced for tape before.

Nice video as always. Luckily I have a focusrite audio interface. I like it because it supports XLR, 1/4 inch, and rca. I can use it to record any audio but it isn't very cheap. It's cool that they made some specifically for tapes though

I've had one of these for several years now and have had no trouble with it. Even better now that I have a better and faster computer than I used to.

10:12 what type of cable did you use to get stereo recording from your ipod to the grace deck? I have a similar-looking cable that splits in the L-R but for some reason only gets mono sound from the left ear and it awful - any ideas? Thanks!

I came up on one at the Goodwill in Los Alamos,ca in good condition for 9.90 can't wait to try it out

Hi, my name is Ryland, I have myself a Grace tape2usb and I am in India my Uncle got me the player, however I fear about the power input will it differ from the adapters we use here or should I get something different and I have a heaven load of cassettes. Please advice. Thank you

You have all best songs collection by the way

Who else was diggin' the smooth jazz version of I'm not in Love by 10cc?............Anyone?

Wow, sounds good!

Thats a great idea and much nicer than most devices that just create super low bitrate mp3s. Another way would be to use an external usb soundcard and a seperate tape deck.

the fact they even give you a linear wall-wart is a neat thing in itself.

i use a cassette player from the 70's as my main one, actually there's a neat story behind it. it's a multi media system that also has a radio, phonograph (record player, i say phonograph because it sounds neat) and 8-track player. i got it as it was being tossed out at my township's fall cleaning thing for free, next year i got a free karaoke machine with microphone, both working.

Fantastic! I have a lot oc cassette full of my composition, and I need to tranfer them in my computer...great news...do you know if there is something even with higher quality? thank you!

Those rips sound fantastic, the quality is unreal.

Even though I don't use it anymore, that is why I hung on to my Pioneer 3 head deck from the late 80's. I suspect nostalgia may set in 1 day for me to resurrect it back into my system, but I tend to play more vinyl or use minidisc for own recorded stuff.

Just saw your other video about the Pioneer CT-W616DR, the tape deck that reduces tape hiss. Would recording to my computer with that make the MP3 sound better, or does it not really matter?

Thats some good ,,modern casette recorder that doesnt suck" type machine.I like the design and the sound of it is amazing.

But can I record FROM the computer to the tape deck with USB or will I need the RCA/3.5 adapter?

I think thats ridiculous that they gonna try get rid of the 3.5 mm jacks. heck I heard the iphone 7 has no headphone jack. bluetooth headphones are what your to use but fact is i have bluetooth headphones. the connection can suck . even the sound can skip. .

I've been curious just how bad those cassette to USB converters really are, but could never justify paying for something I knew would be a lost cause. The quality of the Tape2USB would be more than adequate for most every cassette tape transfer undertaken. I'd be interested in seeing a review of the "weeny modern" computer that made a brief cameo in this video. :)

Compliments on that Gato Barbieri at the end.

just curious.. can you actually record your blank cassette tape using music from your pc?

Can you record digital to cassette using this device with the input connections ?

This tape deck has amazing quality

I got a model EzCAP230 recently and it would only use about an 8gb flash card. That is actually plenty, but all I had on hand were much too large to use. One thing about it though, is that it will not break down all the individual music clips into separate files, but just copies one file. This is an issue for me, as I have a lot of different music pieces which have different instruments playing the same tune and I wanted to put the better stuff onto a CD once I go through each tune. Will this recorder allow single files to be made of the music being copied with it? Very nice video and I picked on up on Ebay after viewing this. My old reel to reel players were great and I spent a ton of time in making tapes with all the bells and jangles to try to have the best quality audio possible, but that was in the day when record players and turntables actually were produced with very good quality and so were the old reel to reel tape recorders at the time.

happy new year

These are discontinued? I bought a brand new one a month ago, under the Plexgear name

Hello. This does look marginally better than the new cassette deck fare currently out there. There are two things of note that I feel everyone who undertakes "digitizing" their tapes should be aware of. The first is proper head alignment. I see a little hole just below the cassette door about where the azimuth screw for the record/play head would be, which tells me the user can make this adjustment, which is critical. Tapes are recorded on different machines, each with the head alignment likely slightly off, so the treble/high end may be rolled off, leaving tapes sounding "flat" or "dull" when you play them back here. Adjusting the head azimuth (with a small Philips screwdriver, like what jewelers use) for each tape until you hit that "sweet spot" is essential. The second thing is wow & flutter. The new machines out there now are atrocious in this regard, and that's partly because they only use one motor to drive the capstan (which pulls the tape across the heads at constant speed) and the reels. A two-motor machine (whether belt or direct-drive) means one motor is used just for the capstan, and the other for the reels, which results in much more stable and accurate tape speed. There are other points to consider, but again, I feel these two top the list when prepping for transferring cassettes to digital. By the way, though admittedly irrelevant to the discussion, I disagree with your assertion that not that many people used Dolby noise reduction. It was VERY widely used and was virtually "standard equipment" on tape decks, less-so with arch-rival dbx, tapes made of which only sounded good if you could play them back with it, but relatively few decks used dbx.

Does someone know a site who ships one of these for brazil? ;-;

You have good taste in music!

"Weenie modern computer." Seems accurate.

I got 2 of these grace and I love them

I would be curious to know the wow and flutter of this machine. the tape playing at 7:00 seems to suffer heavy wow, perhaps it was on the recording side or the tape has stretched over time...?? Is there a heavy flywheel inside the player? quite sad there's no dolby B decoding since it is more complicated than just dropping the treble... great video, thanks!

I've had success converting reel-to-reel recordings with a USB sound card and Audacity.

i liked the little cassette video on bottom right. did you have to break a deck for that footage?

Enjoyed the video. One feature that would have been nice to have on this is pitch control. I know you can adjust pitch in software, but it seems it never sounds as good as an analog pitch adjustment. By the way, I used Shazam to figure out the songs I didn't recognize.

Hey VWestlife. Can the line inputs of this cheap USB cassette deck be used for recording music from 8-track tapes? :)

When I bought the PC I'm using now, I specifically asked the guy at best buy if it had a line input jack. I also told him I'd be using this machine for games. I have a lot of first person shooter games, most are older (Half Life 2, Doom 3) and this machine plays them with no issues. My new laptop does not have a line input which sucks but I don't use the laptop much anyway. I use GoldWave for audio editing because I know it well and used it for many years. I have a few cassette machines to record tapes to the computer but the belts are breaking down on them. My Sony Casette-Corder is still running strong but it's only mono.

so does this deck allow you to record music and make your own mixtapes?

most laptops, even the cheap ones do have audio input, it's just using the headset jack. Get a 3 ring 3.5mm splitter. I have one so I can use my ipad as a guitar amp.

Interesting video.

5:35 That is a beautiful waveform

Do you have a video of how to edit out the noise from your cassette tapes using audacity? Thanks.

nice video!!!! what is the model of the Panasonic cassette deck you have in this video?

I actually made sure my computer motherboard had a full cluster of AUX jacks on the back, all 6, 4 out 2 in, but I used my driver to allow the 2 in to work as outputs, and same with the 2 front jacks

It is using permanent erase or electeomagnatic erase??? As well AC or DC BIAS RECORDING???

Hey VWestLife, I have a question about this player. I just bought one on eBay, new in box. I tried it out and it plays great. But when I went to record a tape to audacity, I would get a flatline beep throughout the audio. I’ve messed with the different volume knobs, turned the mic on and off but nothing worked. I tried removing it in audacity, but it just degraded the audio from the tape. I am unable to return the item to the eBay seller. Would you know what is causing this problem?

But is it possible to record from USB to tape? I'm looking for a solution that allows me to to continue to use my datasette.

Hey, do you have a clean copy of the sample used to test recording of music? Around 9:10. Sounds wicked muddy in the bass and I'm curious if it's the source or the device. You did reference it having too much bass.

Just passed on one at the goodwill, should have got it!

Towards the end, it sounded as if that radio dj actually ENCOURAGED his audience to tape his shows hehe