Cassette Deck for Digitizing?

D

dustgazer

New member
Hi,

Not sure if this is the right forum, but since this is my first post, here goes:

I know an elderly woman who has a ton of old cassettes that have content on them that cannot be replaced, and she would like me to digitize them.

I have a decent enough DAW (Delta 66 with decent breakout box, line inputs, Adobe Audition, Reaper etc.) so I'm all set on that end. I just need a CHEAP cassette player with a line out that will do the job. I've had some bad luck buying old, once upon a time relatively high-end (Nakamichi) decks on eBay, because they get beat up over the years and I'm not interested in learning major cassette deck repair. Besides, 3 head vs. two head et al shouldn't make any difference for A/D conversion, right?

... So I thought I'd go for something new with a variable speed function, and am looking at the Sony TC-WE475 for $130. It doesn't need to be great. Just good enough to perform a decent rendering. Anyone have any experience with this gear, or a better idea for doing this without spending a ton of money?

Thanks in advance.
 
Do you know if any noise reduction was used on the tapes? If so, you'll want to use a deck with the same type of NR. If it's chrome or metal tape, you'll want one that can play them. Just general things like that.
 
As you are not recording the cassette tapes, only playing them back, you have no need for a 3-head machine. I do think variable speed would be very good to have- I have had plenty of cassette tapes begin to go out on me- nothing you can do if it gets to the point of squeal, but if they have stretched a little, or something else leads to them not playing back at the correct speed, VS will be there for you.

I have never seen any noise-reduction used on cassettes other than Dolby, "B" being the most common, but I have seen some cassette decks that could encode with Dolby C. Like Diggy said, you want NR and different biasing.

One thing I would stay away from is a deck that's auto reverse. That kind of cassette deck often has a spring- or servo- changing head, which snaps 180 degrees quicker than the eye can see. I've had the screws that hold the head in place back out, and it is a PITA to get them screwed back on.
 
Thanks for the responses. Yeah, I've done a little bit of this cassette conversion stuff in the past ("Can you put these tapes of my old high school rock band on CD?"), and the single biggest PIA I've had— whether due to tape stretching or simple mechanical variance of different older and probably original cheap or worn out machines— is the speed/pitch can get slightly off, and of course even a little tiny bit is extremely noticeable.

I just want a clean, smooth and speed variable tape motion. Extra features such as auto-reverse, remotes et al are irrelevant, as is recording quality, since I have no plans to record cassettes ever for any reason. The usual NR would be helpful, of course, because you can only do so much on the digital software end. "Garbage in/garbage out" and all of that...
 
stevieb said:
I have never seen any noise-reduction used on cassettes other than Dolby, "B" being the most common, but I have seen some cassette decks that could encode with Dolby C.
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Decks with B, C, and HR Pro were pretty common towards the late 80s. Granted, a little old lady might not know enough about tape decks to shell out extra cash for all of that.

stevieb said:
One thing I would stay away from is a deck that's auto reverse. That kind of cassette deck often has a spring- or servo- changing head, which snaps 180 degrees quicker than the eye can see. I've had the screws that hold the head in place back out, and it is a PITA to get them screwed back on.
Click to expand...

Can't say I've ever seen that problem with an auto-reverse deck. It is a pain to get the screws back in if you remove them though.
 
I do a lot of cassette transfers, my main cassette deck is a Luxman, which is a high quality hifi cassette deck. The luxman has dolby B,C, HX pro and normal, chrome & metal tape biasing. I have also tested the luxman for correct speed running and it's right on. The Luxman has auto reverse, but it's not used.

I also own an old TEAC deck that has Dolby B & C plus DBX. Which I drag out if a DBX tape turns up (my very old masters were DBX cassette in the days before dat).

If I am not sure which (if any) dolby was used, I usually just have a listen to see which setting sounds best, sometimes tapes recorded with dolby play back better without it on due to the original deck having crap dolby.

There was a few decks that come out with dolby S, which sounded great, but they are not very common.

Cheers
Alan.
 
witzendoz said:
I There was a few decks that come out with dolby S, which sounded great, but they are not very common.

Cheers
Alan.
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I have a deck with Dolby S. It really did sound good.
That HX pro or HR pro doesn't need to be decoded ..... it's just soemthing that gives a better signal/noise and freq response while recording but any deck can play it back if I remember correctly.
 
Someone once told me the Dolby S circuit used on the 238S was prone to failure. Anyone here ever experience that?
 
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