Retro: Play Audiocassettes In Your Computer

Got a bunch of old tapes? A lot of people do. I’ve got a small duffle bag full of them. For those that don’t feel like using a lumbering audiocassette deck via a “Y” connector to the “Line In” on your sound card, the PlusDeck is a nice tidy alternative.

Does it work? It sure does.

Additional notes:

As a musician for many years I went thru scores of tapes. It was the most cost effective way to record your stuff if you couldn’t afford a reel-to-reel system. Even in the mid-1990′s compact disc recording systems were prohibitively expensive, so we all used audiocassette multitrack audio systems (such as the venerable Tascam 424). They did the job, were reliable and most importantly, they worked.

Today’s home audio systems don’t have a tenth of the build quality the old beast-sized tape decks did. If you notice, the vast majority of those decks today still work.

An example vintage tape deck:

Some may find the above ugly; others find it cool looking.

No one uses tape decks anymore. They are as obsolete as floppy diskettes, notorious for having boatloads of white noise (i.e. hiss) and have a vastly inferior sound quality compared to digital.

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  • http://pcrestoration.blogspot.com/ Bob Plumer

    It’s also sold at Cyberguys.com. I’ve seen this around for awhile and would love one of these. Thanks for the review of it.Finally a use for those old Van Halen tapes.

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