Tape Trail Reel to reel, cassette and other analogue tape formats.

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In a word...

Posted by realistico (A) on March 10, 2013 at 19:36:49

In Reply to: New to the Tape Scene posted by Mkanke on March 10, 2013 at 11:37:13:

No. Those portable tape recorder/players are ok for speech, but pretty mediocre for music with any fidelity. It is not even stereo. The market for component quality stereo cassette decks has really collapsed over the past bunch of years and pretty good stereo decks have been available at virtually give away prices at yard sales and thrift stores etc. You really do want to find a good quality component stereo cassette deck from a name brand maker like sony, JVC, Harman/Kardon, Technics, etc. or even Nakamichi.
The tips on that superuser.com site you linked seem like good ones, and I would follow them. I would definitely agree that whatever tape deck you get, you would most likely get better results by recording from your computer output to the line input of your tape deck rather than to the microphone inputs. Ideally you would connect the line output of your computer into an input of a stereo amplifier or receiver to which you also have connected a stereo cassette deck you can record onto. Otherwise, you can go from your computer output directly to the line input of your cassette deck using a cable that has a stereo minijack on one end and two RCA plugs on the other. Then you can monitor and set levels on your cassette deck using headphones. (Most cassette decks have a headphone jack, often with it's own volume control.) Even mix tapes that you intend to play on those little portable tape players, old school boom boxes or even cassette walkmen will sound better if you first record them on a good quality cassette deck.
Good luck, and have fun.
--Matt
"When you think everything is someone else's fault, you will suffer a lot."
--Dalai Lama

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