Reshow Cassette Tape Player – Portable Tape Player Audio Cassette to Digital Converter, Compatible with Laptops and Personal Computers Convert Cassette Tape Recorder to iPod Format (Silver)

This has been so fun to work with so far. I've had cassettes I wanted to convert for genealogy research and this was a great tool. I could choose to listen while it was converting or just let it run. The ONLY thing I can say in the negative (and maybe there is a setting I haven't found in Audacity yet) is that if you let the converter run the Audacity software will continue to run even after the Reshow converter has reached the end of the cassette, so I don't recommend leaving it alone for a long time.

Well, I bought this just for a backup player besides my proper Walkman and decks to prolong their life (head wear, etc.) Surprised that they are actually now the 3rd generation (according to them). You can see the interior of this model. I do not find any lubrication inside, which makes the button feels stiff. Belts are actually good, and the gear motion is pretty quiet. BUT the flywheel definitely warped on one side, as I could see vibration when it is rotating. This also contributes to one HIGH WOW AND FLUTTER on the reverse side. I do get the following technical specification from my experiments with this little player:Wow and Flutter: (Forward) 0.25~0.33% WRMS, (Reverse) 0.35% ~ 0.5%, with a ~42Hz oscillation. Forward side is okay as expected, but I can't bear with the reverse side. Horrible.Frequency response: approximately flat in 100Hz - 12500Hz, treble have signal up to ~18000Hz, which is good, but there is NO low bass. There is barely any signal left. Therefore do NOT expect "Mega Bass" in this unit. Sound is clean, mediocre stereo separation, but at least it is stereo... Stereo is GOOD.Headphone Output: High noise floor, maybe around 40db of SNR. There is motor noise, but it is okay (not awful on my unit). There are only 4 electrolytic capacitors, but they are rated at 105C, okay. Output is not powerful, but enough to drive most of headphones.Edit (03/20/2024): I asked for a replacement and sent me a new one. This one is MUCH BETTER, with acceptable WOW & FLUTTER at 0.25%RMS, which is the average of the cheap Walkman back in the days (Low end of Sony, Aiwa, etc.) The circuit must have some design flaw, as the bass is still not present. Did modify it with better belts, add lubrication, and replace some capacitors with larger ones (due to the size limitation and there are no info about the board layout). The LAG668 chip it uses does have a default bass booster sample circuit available online, but I cannot add it due to size limitation. But, I changed the two capacitor near headphone jack from 100uf to 220uf (barely fitted), and it do have LITTLE improvement in bass response (from 80Hz to ~60Hz) but level is still lower than expected. But I am pleased now and will not touch any further unless something goes wrong.

I have so many cassettes that I want to digitize, but I didn't think it was possible for me to do it on my own. Well, with this cassette recorder, I can. Once I downloaded the Audacity software, it was pretty easy to figure out how to transfer my cassette recordings to my laptop. Audacity has many cool features that I would like to learn but don't have the time, so I stuck with the basics. The sound quality is fabulous.

But then I suppose, what else should I have expected for the low price. But, as often happens I was persuaded by a 4 and half stars rating. And, it also had "auto-reverse", which most of these cassette units don't have anymore.My first complaint is the door, and how it latches and releases. It is very clumsy and user unfriendly. But, I could have gotten past that, except for as soon as I started recording, the auto reverse kept kicking in, and then it kept changing directions. And it took all of 2 and a half "whole" minutes for this to start happening. And from my long experience years ago, with recording and dubbing cassette tapes and such, I know this malfunction is caused by a weak activator, on the auto reverse mechanism. So, as soon as a tape gets a little age on it, these cheaper units have trouble playing them.The same tape worked fine on my regular tape deck unit. But it does not have auto-reverse, which is very important, if you don't want to have to keep flipping your tapes over by hand, to record side 2.Don't be fooled by the "auto-stop" feature, many of these sellers tout these days. Because they all should have that feature. But these days, few of these cheaper manufacturers are building units with auto reverse, which was once almost a standard feature, back in the 1970's and 80's.But I sure wish someone would build a truly quality unit, for producing mp3 files from cassette tapes. I would gladly pay a hundred or even two hundred dollars, for a descent quality unit. But all that seem to be out there now, with any quality to them, are older, mostly worn out looking machines, ND the sellers are usually asking very exorbitantly high prices for them.And it is such a crying shame, That about all we have to choose from that is new these days, is cheap junk. Because these units might work OK if you have a dozen or 2 dozen tapes to transfer. But I have hundreds of tapes to try to process, so this is getting to be very frustrating for me. (End of Rant :) )

Excellent for converting cassette tape to MP3