Grace Digital GDI-Tape2USB200 USB Tape Player with Built-In Mic Includes PC/MAC Software

• Save your cassette tapes in stereo directly to your PC or Mac
• Includes a built in speaker to monitor your recordings or play the tapes (regular or chrome) away from the computer or on your home stereo
• Connects to your computer via USB or your home stereo to play tapes via standard left and right RCA jacks.
• Built in counter to monitor your recording time
• Package includes: USB recordable cassette player, Audacity software for Mac and PC, 9V DC power adapter, USB cable, RCA cable and user manual

I literally have hundreds of cassette tapes that I wanted to digitize for an iPOD, so I thought the purchase of the Grace Digital Tape2USB200 made sense. It does however there are a number of "buts" that you need to be aware of before making the purchase. First, the initial unit sent from Amazon broke within two days the various control dials did not work. I returned it and several days later a replacement arrived which does seem to work just fine.

Here are some of the issues that you need to consider before making this purchase:

1) Immediately discard the CD-ROM software from Audacity that comes with the device and go on line to audacity.sourceforge.net and download their 1.3.12 Beta version. It works much better than the Audacity software included with the unit.

2) Copying to digital is a slow matter. Those of us used to putting a CD-ROM in a computer and having the entire content load into iTunes in 30 seconds does not happen. Copying of tape to digital is a one to one process. A four minute song takes four minutes, so if you have tons of material to record be sure you have the time necessary to do the procedure.

3) Once the song is downloaded you have to stop the machine, enter the name of the song and artist and save it before starting the next song. This will add an additional 30 seconds to one minute to each song.

4) If you want to record an entire album and not break it up song-by-song you can do so, but when you put it into the iPOD or iTunes it will be the entire album as one entry, you cannot seek out individual tracks or bands. Thus I found it better to record song by song although it takes longer to do that.

5) Occasionally and for a reason I have not yet discovered a song will be recording and you can watch the wave bands on the audacity software. Then all of a sudden the wave band fills the entire line and you know you are no longer recording, but getting noise instead. When this happens I stop the tape, delete what was recorded to that point and start over. Generally it does not happen again, so the settings do not seems to be the cause of this issue. It is particularly frustrating if it occurs at 3:30 of a 3:45 song. You still must start over. This also means that you need to be on top of the project at all times if you do not want this to happen.

Summary: I am glad I bought the device but it is not as easy to use as I had hoped. It takes a lot of time to do it and so I have found that rather than digitalizing everything, I have become very selective.

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I am now 75, and if I can do it, anybody can do it...This cassette player works great..! I already have several MP3 files uploaded to zSHARE of my digital piano gospel music specials in one day! I'm glad now I paid a little more and got this one...it was worth the extra.

The play back sounds excellent, and just as good as my original tapes made back in 1963. The play back is stable, and never changes from the correct pitch. The player is solid and powerful enough to play old cassettes that sometimes try to stick or stall and lower the sound or pitch.... We don't want that to happen! This tape player is Recommended!

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The machine set up and use was easy. Started copying tapes right away. The quality of the copy was identical to the original. The one problem: something broke. I copied four tapes. At the completion of the fifth, I couldn't eject the tape. Although there seemed to be no problem in how the tape fed (looking through the deck window)--and the fact I could rewind and play if I held the keys down---I could not eject the tape. None of the keys worked properly at that point. I could not get my tape out. I called the manufacturer and they said I had to ship it back in order to remove the tape. Since that would have put it past the 30 day return of Amazon--I tried taking it to someone locally. No one wanted to work on it--they said they would have to damage the machine in order to fix it. There was no easy way to open the tape deck. That is the problem. The local tech also said that this type of machine is cheap. When I objected that I didn't think $100 was cheap--he said that that type of machine had internal parts that were cheap and easily broken. I will tell you though--Amazon customer service was EXTRAORDINARY. They let me return the player (cassette still stuck in it unfortunately) and sent me a replacement. I have the replacement--but am honestly a little hesitant to use it....I am a fan of Amazon. I was not happy about not having a solution to fixing the problem locally however. I will say that when the machine works--it works well. But when it doesn't --it doesn't and it's not easy to have fixed.

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Other purchasers of this product gave it a great review, so I decided to try it. No matter what I tried, I could not get the internal microphone to shut off, so it was recording the room sounds and my tapes were just in the background. I returned it and got a replacement but still had the same problem.

The stop/eject button, which is required to insert a tape into the device, didn't work. Wouldn't you think that this would be the first thing the quality assurance department would do before packing it up and sending it out? Buyer beware!!! I don't think these things are tested, and I don't think quality is on the top of Grace's list when it comes to these products. They're obviously poorly made and low quality. Get an analog cassette player and just use the audio output. That's what I'm going to do.