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Cassette-Shell Sized MP3 Player/Recorder
octa-g writes: "USA Today tech reviews is featuring a nifty little cassette sized MP3 player that records analog audio. 'The Digisette Duo-DX can copy cassette tapes in a dual-well tape deck or boombox. Or you can make recordings by connecting an output cable from a stereo source to the Duo's earphone port and holding down the Duo's play and fast-forward buttons.' The ability to record audio straight to the player, or to record some of my old tapes/LPs to MP3 without a computer or other recording equipment intrigues me." This sounds like a good way to add fast-forward to the old car radio.
Here is the product's actual website.
"Honey, can you fast-forward NPR to 7:00 am? I want to see what my commute is going to be like tomorrow..."
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Cool! Now if they can just make an track player in the shape of a CD, I'll be back in business, baby...
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
The unit you are refering to has been out for quite a while. The unit being reviewed here is actually quite new, and rather more advanced then what you are refering to.
This particular device allows you to control playback with your tape deck audio controls, and if placed in a tape recorder, actually allows you to record directly to MP3. This could be a very nice function for college students recording lectures as they can transfer the lectures back to PC for archival purposes.
This is actually a NEW (as in news) way to present the whole cassette-shaped MP3 player metaphor.
The Rome that you linked to is seems better in that, you can FF/RW from the tape deck's controls. You also can have an LCD display. Finally, the review complained about the buttons being flush mounted, the Rome offering overcomes this issue.
The only thing missing from the Rome offering is the abillity to record which will be important to some and not to others.
Probably an ASIC - some hardware dedicated to doing just MP3 encoding. It's also probably CBR MP3s, which are much easier to encode quickly than VBR.
;)
So to answer your question, no, I wouldn't say it's all THAT impressive.
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I suggest you go to Google Groups and search for group:rec.running ipod. This question is almost a FAQ there.
As an unscientific recollection of past threads, a minority of people seem to have problems with it, but most don't. Multiple people have recommended slowing to a walk and punching forward and then back a few tracks, forcing the disk to spin up and fill the cache so you can run for another 10 minutes without any disk activity.
I use a cassette adapter to listen to mp3s (and the rest of the audio coming from my computer) and the sound is crystal clear. The low quality of sound you are refering to comes from the magnetic tape itself, not the tape player, so this player should be capable of high quality output. And as the previous post stated, it holds 96 MB and is upgradable to 160... Which is pretty decent. Read the article, maybe you would have caught that.
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you get lots of flutter and wow if the thing doesn't seat properly and moves around.
Wow and flutter are expressed as percentages of variance from the ideally constant speed of the moving tape. Wow are the low-frequency variations and flutter are the high frequency ones (sort of a quivering). There are no moving tapes in the device(s) you're describing, so it seems to me that wow & flutter are not possible. Poor alignment and cheap components could certainly degrade the sound, but I don't think it's wow or flutter you're hearing.
here, I was intrigued enough to look it up.
digisette
First of all there is the issue of using flash memory based MP3 players. Unless you're willing to buy added flash cards and pay out the nose for them, it's not the way to go. If I only want to listen one CD's worth of music, I'll burn one and whip out my old Discman. 64mb just doesn't cut it anymore and if you get flash in 256 your poor credit cards is getting raped for a boat load of cash.
Better options for MP3 playing is the MP3 CD-R(W) and a portable player. For around $100-150 plus the cost of the CD you can jam 300-600+ minutes on a blank disk depending on media type and the compression you use.
--OR--
There is the option I went with. I picked up a Nomad 20gb Jukebox for $230. It has 20gb of space on it (I have nearly 500 songs at 256k and I still haven't hit 25% of drive usage). It can record to MP3 on the fly by using the line input on the unit itself. It has front and rear speaker outputs so I can hook it to a set of Harmon Kardons with the sub and front and rear satalites and get really killer sound out of it. The only drawback that I had with the unit was no real way to carry it, but that was solved with my leatherworking skills I picked up in the SCA...made a custom leather belt pouch to hold it, so problem solved.
Now granted there are those out there that prefer the iPod, or other hard drive based systems, but hte theroy is the same between them. HD is cheaper than Flash...hands down. For my $230 I got 20gb storage. Flash memory for that same amount of storage is going to cost you say $300 for a sony mp3 player that comes with 128mb with it PLUS you would need to purchase 159 additional memory sticks at a cost of $17,600 ($110 each). For just what I'm using in storage (5gb) you're still talking about $4400 in memory sticks alone.
I don't know about you but if I had that kinda cash I'd be spending it on a Plasma TV rather than MP3.
The gizmo in the article is nifty and all, but is it going to be worth it or will it fall the way of the MP3 player springboard module in my Visor? IE Sitting in the box that it came in waiting for someone poor fool on E-Bay to take it off my hands?
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
I owned one and it worked great in my wife's Honda CRV, but in my Honda Accord, the tape deck wouldn't properly align with the heads on the mp3 player. I tried plugging the cassette adapter into one of those Sony cassette -> cd adapters and it worked fine. Of course, that kinda defeats the purpose of an MP3 player that can be used without an adapter.
The only other thing I didn't like about it was the flimsy battery door. That would definately be a tape job after a few months of use.
Here is my review of it on Amazon.com
I was excited to see that the Digisette improved from it's orginal design and made a better tape like MP3 player. Unfortunately, on my Honda 2001 Accord, the tape deck won't align properly with the head in my cassette stereo, causing lots of static and distortion. It's not the player itself, because it works fine in my wife's Honda CRV. Actually, it works if I use an old Sony cassette adapter plugged into the mp3 player.
Im not an electronic engineer, but I think if Digisette would make the head on the mp3 unit bigger, it would have worked fine. I compared the head of the mp3 to the Sony cassette apadter I had laying around and the Sony head is much bigger.
Digisette support was very helpful and had me try a few fixed, but none fixed the distortion and static.
As far as the controls and stuff, everything worked fine. Like I said, if you have a 2001 Accord, I wouldn't recommend it.
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