Years ago, i bought an Aiwa (if you’re a teen two decades ago you would have heard of it) branded cassette tape player so i could future proof myself, to be able to play some cassette tapes i had in my possession. Unfortunately, it broke down, and, like everyone who’s lazy to do backup, my intention of digitizing my cassette tapes did not materialize.
By the way, i have a cassette tape with a recording of my voice when i was a toddler. I felt it was important that i make a digital recording of it for keep sake. I’m pretty sure not many people have a recording of their childhood voice from decades ago, when a cassette tape recorder was hard to come by.
So i started looking for a cassette tape player, and they are actually available. In fact, many of these cassette tape players come with a usb jack allowing you to plug in a thumbdrive, and it would save a digital recording directly onto the thumbdrive. Such a device would set you back by S$17 or more. Not really expensive actually, but then i thought it would be way cooler if i got myself a real cassette tape player that just plays a cassette tape. Might even be fun to bring it around.
And so i found this on Taobao that fits the bill. I managed to grab one for 51 Yuan (S$10). Very cheap. It supposedly contains a high end sound decoder to reproduce CD-like quality sound. Well, i gave it a spin today and found that the sound quality is truly superb. So my mission is accomplished – to make the best digital recording i can out of the 40 years old cassette tape. Probably more amazingly, the cassette tape itself is able to retain the voice very well.
If you’re attempting to do the same as i did, i wholeheartedly recommend this product. The enclosed lithium ion battery is no longer functional, and it was clearly stated on the product page that this was most likely going to be the case.
You may be curious about some of the extra functions this cassette player is capable of. It has an internal memory that can hold 480 seconds worth of sound clip (mind you this was before solid state mp3 players became prevalent), so you can play the clip over and over again. This is meant to help in learning how to dictate foreign words and phrases (i.e. English). The Chinese are certainly an industrious bunch!
