UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum - View Single Post

knobtwiddler · 25th Nov 2022, 1:58 pm

Most laptops have pretty decent built-in soundcards now. Ignore anyone who tells you that they're not 'audiophile' quality, as that will be irrelevant for a format that gives ~60dB signal-to-noise ratio.

My advice would be to find a late model cassette deck such as a Yamaha KX-393. They made thousands and Richer sold loads. It's not uncommon to find these in a virtually unused state. My partner had one she bought in '98, and when I tested W+F it gave the factory spec.

The last OEMs standing in the cassette game were Sony and Yamaha. Sony belts often turn to goo, but the Yamaha ones seem pretty good. Audacity is a great, free program for the laptop. KX-393 + laptop will give results that a pro with a Revox / Nak deck will struggle to beat on pre-recorded cassettes (pre-rec tapes were rarely paragons of audio quality - as a rule, rolling your own on chrome / metal tape gave better results).

Whatever you buy, make sure to play a few worthless tapes extensively before anything that has value to you. As Ted wrote in the Tape group here a day or two back, modern cassette machines really are vastly inferior to what came before in the 80s and 90s. The only one worth looking at is the Teac, which offers modest performance for a £400 price tag. The Yam 393 will likely outperform the Teac, at about a 1/4 of the price.

25th Nov 2022, 1:58 pm	#9
knobtwiddler Octode Join Date: Mar 2016 Location: London, UK. Posts: 1,047	Re: Best Way to Convert Tapes to Digital. Most laptops have pretty decent built-in soundcards now. Ignore anyone who tells you that they're not 'audiophile' quality, as that will be irrelevant for a format that gives ~60dB signal-to-noise ratio. My advice would be to find a late model cassette deck such as a Yamaha KX-393. They made thousands and Richer sold loads. It's not uncommon to find these in a virtually unused state. My partner had one she bought in '98, and when I tested W+F it gave the factory spec. The last OEMs standing in the cassette game were Sony and Yamaha. Sony belts often turn to goo, but the Yamaha ones seem pretty good. Audacity is a great, free program for the laptop. KX-393 + laptop will give results that a pro with a Revox / Nak deck will struggle to beat on pre-recorded cassettes (pre-rec tapes were rarely paragons of audio quality - as a rule, rolling your own on chrome / metal tape gave better results). Whatever you buy, make sure to play a few worthless tapes extensively before anything that has value to you. As Ted wrote in the Tape group here a day or two back, modern cassette machines really are vastly inferior to what came before in the 80s and 90s. The only one worth looking at is the Teac, which offers modest performance for a £400 price tag. The Yam 393 will likely outperform the Teac, at about a 1/4 of the price.