DIGITNOW USB Audio Capture Card Grabber for Vinyl Cassette Tapes to Digital MP3 Converter, Support Mac & Windows 10/8.1/8 / 7 / Vista/XP

I bought this to digitize old LPs so I could play them in the car. It works perfectly. My computer doesn't have a DVD drive, so I couldn't use the included software disc, but I just downloaded the software. I probably would have done that anyway, just to make sure I had the latest version. It's really easy to use. Plug the USB end into the computer, run RCA cables from the "Tape Out" plugs on the amplifier, plug those cables into the female RCA plugs on this adapter, start the software, and play the LP. The learning curve is maybe two minutes, adjusting the gain to eliminate distortion, and you're good to go. The sound quality is excellent, far better than needed in a car, even one with a good stereo.The unit appears reasonably well-constructed, though it's unlikely to be put under any stress, so it's unlikely to break from use. Overall, for the price, and considering that I'm just an ordinary consumer, not a sound engineer, this device does everything I need, at a bargain price.

I had a few old cassette tapes I wanted to digitize, and it's been a circus trying to figure out how to make it happen. Hooking my old Walkman up to my computer's line in wasn't working, so I tried one of those all-in-one devices next, but I didn't like the sound quality. At the same time, I didn't actually want to spend a fortune on audiophile equipment just to do a couple of ancient tapes, sentimental though I was about them.Enter this little device, which turned out to be exactly what I needed. I plugged the 3.5mm end into my Walkman's headphone port, plugged the USB end into my computer, and the digitizing software recognized it instantly. I successfully converted all the tapes to MP3. They sound just like they used to, as far as I can tell. For the use case of "I have an old tape I'd like to transfer to my phone (and preserve before it finishes falling apart)," this does the job and does it well.

Once I got this working, it works very well. Good sound quality and easy to use (but I have some experience with other recording software which was helpful). The only problem I have with this product is that the instruction manual is not very detailed, and there are a bunch of functions I still don't know what they do. Also, I kept getting an error message: "Error while opening sound device. Please check the input device settings . . .." It was most frustrating, and the instruction manual had nothing about it. I had to Google for the solution and I found that in the "privacy" settings on my laptop, access to the microphone inputs was restricted for most apps. Once I removed those restrictions, this started working, and it has been very useful in transferring live recordings I have on cassette tapes to mp3 format. I have Windows 11.

The learning curve is with the Audacity software that you will need to download for free (you'll get begged for a sale on some other stuff you may or may not want, but the basic free software got the transfer done for me as well as the editing). If you have never used digital recording software adjusting to the right levels, balancing or visual editing, you'll want to take some time to figure it out (or not if you prefer distortion and/or dead space at the beginning and end of your recordings ;-). I've done analog and digital recording prior and was copying initial trial tracks to my computer in fifteen minutes (which included the time to download the software). Once the overall peak level and proper balance was set in Audacity, I was off to the races and edited out the dead spots with each MP3 track as I saved it.

I needed a solution to a very specific problem: I have a few tape playback devices that I was trying to calibrate but didn't want to spend a lot of money on a wow and flutter meter, so I decided to give wfgui (free software) a try. Only caveat was that I had no means of connecting my tape decks to my laptop. When looking for a suitable solution, I came across this gadget that sounded like the perfect fit. Instead of digitizing my tapes, I simply needed a way to input the signal to my laptop so wfgui could evaluate it. I didn't have to install a driver and it was a smooth plug&play installation. I connected my tape decks to the RCA inputs and plugged the USB part into my laptop. Done. Then I selected the microphone as input in wfgui and the signal showed! Note: the calibration tape I used was ordered from Hanspeter Roth in Germany - go check him out!I'm sure it will work for its intended purpose as well but I don't foresee myself needing that any time soon :)