Review on 🎶 Grace Digital GDI-Tape2USB200 USB Tape Player with Integrated Mic - Includes PC/MAC Software (Discontinued by Manufacturer) by Gary Duncan

I have literally hundreds of cassettes I wanted to digitize for the iPod so I thought buying the Grace Digital Tape2USB200 made sense. That's true, but there are a number of "buts" you need to know before making a purchase. First of all, the original device sent by Revain broke within two days - various knobs didn't work. I sent it back and a replacement arrived a few days later and seems to be working great. Here are some of the things you need to consider before purchasing: 1) Immediately discard the Audacity software CD that came with the device. and go to audacity.sourceforge.net and download their 1.3.12 beta. It works much better than the Audacity software that came with the device. 2) Digital copying is slow. Those of us who are used to inserting a CD-ROM into a computer and downloading the entire content in iTunes in 30 seconds will not be found. Copying from tape to digital is a one-to-one process. A four-minute song lasts four minutes. So if you need to record oodles of material, make sure you have the time it takes to complete the routine. 3) After downloading the song, you need to stop the device, enter the song name and artist and save before you start the next song. This adds between 30 seconds and a minute to each song. 4) If you want to record the whole album instead of splitting it into individual songs, you can do that, but when you put it into your iPod or iTunes, the whole album will show up as one recording, you can't search for individual tracks or groups. So I found it better to record song by song even though it takes more time. 5) Sometimes and for some reason I still haven't figured out that the song is being recorded and you can view the wavebands in the Audacity software. Then suddenly the band of waves fills the entire line and you realize that you are no longer recording but are getting noise. When that happens, I stop the tape, erase the data recorded up to that point and start over. It doesn't usually happen again, so the settings don't seem to be the cause of this problem. This is especially frustrating when it happens at 3:30 of the 3:45 song. You still have to start over. It also means that you always have to keep track of the project if you don't want to. Summary: I'm glad I bought this device, but it's not as easy to use as I was hoping. This takes a lot of time, so I found that instead of digitizing everything, I got really picky.