New Toy, Report the First: Cassettes

[gnomi]

Yesterday, my new toy arrived in the mail, and after work (and after a couple of other things), I got a chance to test it out.

Equipment:

-- One Mac iBook G4
-- One Sony Dual-Cassette Deck (very similar to this), acquired as a graduation gift when I graduated from high school in 1989
-- One InstantMusic Vinyl & Cassette Ripper, which came with a bunch of cables (so that one can connect to the output device of one's choice)
-- One cassette of The Skidmore Bandersnatchers' "Live from the Edge," acquired my senior year of college.

Procedure:

After some false starts with setup (the directions that come with the Ripper are not the best), I successfully connected the cassette deck to the toy and the toy to the computer. I installed the software that came with the Ripper and fired it up, immediately finding a clear, logical GUI. I hit Record on the software, hit Play on my tape player, and wandered out of the office to watch Monday night's Daily Show and Colbert Report. Near the end of the Daily Show, I heard the "Click" that indicated that the tape had come to the end of the side. We paused TDS and I went in to flip the tape and hit "play" again. Returning to the living room, I watched the end of TDS and most of Colbert before I heard the "Click" again. I stopped the computer recording, and had it process the sound file created while we watched the end of Colbert.

At the end of the show, I went back to the office to find that the software had not only recorded the sound file, it had made guesses on where the track breaks were. I started the process of checking and resizing the tracks (some of the breaks were not in the right places, but they were not too far off), but then I got too sleepy, so I put the rest of it off until today.



The procedure was really simple, and I highly recommend this product to anyone who wants to be able to easily make mp3s (or other music formats) from cassettes or vinyl recordings.

When we go out to my parents' pre-Pesach (AKA Monday next), I'll check the make and model of my turntable, and in not too long I should be good to go with testing the capability with vinyl, as well.

Comments

[jenwrites.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I'll be intrigued to hear the results of your vinyl experiment. Most of the music I want to save is locked on vinyl, not cassette.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'll surely be posting the results of that experiment.

Though if it goes as smoothly as the cassette experiment, there may not be all that much to report.

[eal.livejournal.com]

Yes, but reporting that it works -- for those of us Father's day shopping from your blog -- is a good thing.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

True, indeed. I'll let you know, hopefully in time for Father's Day.

[cellio]

Thanks for the report! We, too, need to solve this problem.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

It worked beautifully, and considering the relatively low price of the toy ($50 for the PC-compatible version, $60 for the Mac-compatible version, plus shipping), a good deal all around.

[cellio]

Have you done the vinyl experiment? An article in this month's Consumer Reports implies that recording from turntable to computer might require an amp as well. ThinkGeek is silent on this point.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

I haven't yet done the vinyl experiment. Good to know this ahead of time, though. Thanks for letting me know!