Cassette Player/Recorder

DO THIS IF YOU WANT A GOOD SOUNDING RECORDING!!This 2 minute read will save you HOURS OF TIME....I wish some one wrote this before I started on this project. I bought this due to the positive reviews and that it is made by Jensen and they are supposed to be an audio company right...car stereos anyone. Anyway, I have about 30 cassette tapes from the 1990s that have interviews, my kids talking and playing guitar with friends. I used a $50 boom box with the worlds worst mic(built in to the boombox) for some of the recordings so I did not have the best equipment at the time and did not realize that I would be messing with these 30 years later. I am a computer graphics person, musician and a semipro photographer...so I use computers and software a lot. I also tried the best rated usb cassette recorder that amazon sells the Cassette to MP3 Converter, BlumWay Portable Cassette Recorder Player, It was hard to use and would not record to the usb after 2 tapes...sent it back. Do not waste your time with it if you value your cassettes. The Jensen is about $8 more, solidly built and will last. SO buy it as it is easy to operate and you can see the tape moving...big buttons...and it just works like it is supposed to. Even your grandmother can use it. It is the best alternative for doing this project...I spent HOURS trying to find the best option and even considered buying a $200 cassette deck of ebay, but I did not want the cost and the hassle of setting up a big unit that I would not use again once the tapes were recorded.I used the Jensen with a VTOP USB2.0 Analog Audio Capture Card Device Compatible for Windows (price $19). Works much better than the headphone jack. This plugs in to my windows laptop and makes it easy. You can use the headphone jack but this picks up a lot of random noise. The recorder takes 4 C batteries and also comes with a AC power plug. So here is the IMPORTANT part...If you use the power plug(wall outlet) you will get very loud humming/buzzing or electrical interference when you try to listen/record through the computer. So loud it will ruin your recordings. I tried multiple plugs and computers in my house and all had the hum(it is a grounding issue with the recorder itself and it picks up electrical interference which will end up in your recording) It will not do this if you use the batteries and the recording sounds fine. I have a lot of tapes and did not want to mess with buying C batteries or getting a rechargeable kit of batteries($25more). The solution and the answer is this problem is a noise isolator..."Smof Ground Loop Noise Isolator for Car Audio/Home Stereo System (Eliminate The Buzzing Noise Completely) with 3.5mm Audio Cable, Black Ground Loop Noise Isolator for Car Audio/Home Stereo System"The cost is $10 and it removed ALL of the electrical noise and the recording is as good as the tape! If you do not use one of these you will be frustrated and sorry that you are trying to record all those tapes with poor sound quality...the buzzing is so loud that you can not listen to the recording. Any noise isolator will work and a $30 one is not any better than a $10 one as they all do the same thing.So for about $50 I have a good system to digitize my tapes. NO it is twice as much as the cheap China usb recorder, but I know that the time spent recording will not be wasted and the recordings will be as good as the tape....and you will SAVE TIME in the end. I use adobe audacity to capture the recordings as I have a subscription for my work, but most any program will work. A good FREE software is audacity sound software.(audacityteam.org). It is pretty basic and easy to use. When I put a tape in the Jensen to record, I set a timer on the software for the length of the tape, usually 46 minutes for my 90 min tapes, so the recording will auto stop when the tape is over. That way I just load a tape and hit record and it stops recording when the timer is up(I put one in and go to bed). It keeps you from making hours long recordings that you have to edit later....no timer and you have to turn off the record button or sit by the Jensen to stop it(again a time issue if you have lots of tapes). Audicity also has a timer mode and a quick google search will tell you how to set it.** Also save your recordings as wav files for the original and make a mp3 copy of the file to share.**Also, do a 1minute test recording before you start to record the entire tape so you can set the volume on the Jensen correctly as it acts as the gain for the recording. Failure to do this can result in a recording to low or too high and both will sound bad***So if your cassette tapes are important to you, do it right the first time and spend a few $$.

Very well made and very easy to use!

Here is the email I just sent to the manufacturer of this alleged recorder:● Hello. I bought your MCR-100 cassette player/recorder on Amazon a couple of months ago, and finally had a need to use it today. I wish I had tested it while Amazon's return window was still open.I used cassette player/recorders for decades, until technology allowed me to record on my phone instead. These were inexpensive portable devices -- nothing fancy at all. But they recorded pretty clear sound, and served my purposes well.This device DOES NOT. Cassette technology is so old, so simple, so inexpensive -- yet you have somehow managed to make a device that barely qualifies as a recorder at all.I used a brand-new Maxell 60-minute tape. I tried recording first with the plug-in microphone (which is so flimsy that it won't even stand up). I put the mic about three feet away from me in a silent room with no fan or AC running -- but the recording was extremely muffled and noisy, and my words were often impossible to understand. I tried again with the built-in mic, but that was no better.I wasn't expecting great recording quality -- just a way to document a song I'm working on before I forget it. But this hopeless little machine isn't even good enough to do THAT.I'm hoping that maybe I've gotten a lemon here -- maybe this particular recorder has a missing part or something. Maybe one that's operating properly would do a significantly better job. That's why I'm writing to you: to ask if what I'm describing is really the best your device can do.If not -- if you believe your product is actually better than this -- then I ask that you switch this one out for one that works right.But if you really are selling this MCR-100 as if it were a reasonably functional recorder, then I hope you will (a) think about your reputation and design something better, and (b) send me a refund.

For listening to Language tapes and being able to hear pronunciations perfectly this player I am VERY happy with. With language tapes you usually need to quickly rewind back a few seconds to re-hear certain parts and this player does a pretty good job. Then the pause button to give you more time to respond to phrases is just perfect.I found that I could use my left hand thumb to press play & rewind quickly and then use my right hand thumb to pause the tape while my mind processes the newest information where I need to reply put loud so that the tape does not get too far in front of me. So yes you are working two handed and it is very time efficient.If any of you are doing the same I also found that when the pronunciation is sketchy I could use my iphone to listen to the tape and write out the sentence so I could see what is going on with text. Fantastic !Anyway, the unit is made of strong plastic as the old days of solid metal are over. The only part of the recorder that seems delicate and might break easy is the slide out carrier handle which is why I dont give a solid 5 rating.Music enthusiasts should consider something else as the intent of this machine is not for high quality audiophile. At highest volume the speaker does rattle the sound a bit BUT things are still completely acceptable.Stay away from those fancy blue-tooth with radio option products if your main reason is to listen to or record tapes. I returned one already and wrote a review. I found the sound quality for the professionally produced tapes I was listening to was really horrible.

Works like a charm

Sometimes older things work best and this is one for simple voice recording.