ION Tape Express Plus | Cassette Player and Tape-to-Digital Converter with USB & 1/8" Out

I needed to convert my tape collection, and we tired of using headphone jacks. This thing is fantastic.In response to other reviews:1) The unit is plenty loud enough even with the cheapo included headphones2) it's not meant to be used as a walkman. Don't try and you won't be disappointed.3) The included software has good intentions. Poor execution. Use Audacity, not iTunes.Pros:1) It's the right price2) Easy operation3) True plug and play on Vista. Just plug it into a USB port and it worked instantly with Audacity. Did you hear that? No driver problems! Very unexpected, very welcome. This gets ignored when it works well, but people complain about it when it doesn't work.4) Loop feature. Turn on the tape, walk away, come back when it has done both sides.5) Auto volume for recording. Don't have to mess with it.6) No batteries, no power cordsCons:1) Plastic body. It'll hold up for my tape collection, but I would never take it outside.2) Hum during recording. Don't know if it's the tape or the player, but it happened on both cassettes so far.3) No auto-stop. When it has played both sides of the tape, it should know that it is done, right? It doesn't.How to use it (or how it works for me):Plugged in the USB cable (no battery needed, none used). Put in a tape. Pressed play.I have used the included software option and the Audacity option. Audacity is better. Here's why: the included software has a feature. It auto-detects when a song ends and another song begins. But it is not 100% (it missed 3 breaks in the tape I just did, and it was a commercial music tape). And it does not have a noise reduction function, which it desperately needs.Using Audacity, download it for free. Then follow the links on the Audacity site and download the lame MP3 encoder. That's the name, not a description. It works great. Using this setup is simple:1) start Audacity2) click record3) press the play button on the unit4) when you are done recording, click stop in Audacity5) stop the player6) select a small section of "silence" in the recording.7) in the Effect drop-down menu, select Noise Removal8) Click Get Noise Profile9) Select the entire recording (all 90 minutes at once if you have a recording that long)10) in the Effect drop-down menu, select Noise Removal11) Click Remove Noise. Wait for it to finish.12) You can easily see where songs start and finish, so highlight 1 song, go to file-->Export selection as MP3, and save it. Do this for each song. You now have the songs saved, named, and noise is removed. You don't need that tape any more. You win!

Do NOT by any means purchase this piece of equipment!!! I bought the ION Turntable several months ago to adapt all of my old vinyl albums into mp3 files. It was fantastic and worked perfectly! So I thought this ION product would be just as good for cassettes. WRONG!!! I have never been so disappointed in a product as I was with this piece of trash. I put in my first cassette and hit the record button on my PC. The tape speed was NOT consistent, causing the music to modulate between several different keys and waver up and down every few seconds. If you know anything about music (I'm actually a musician and music teacher) you know this is not acceptable. At first I thought maybe it was just a bad cassette, but after trying several different cassettes it was clear that it was indeed the unit. I had to actually find an old tape player from the basement and patch it through the aux port in the ION turntable to transfer the music from the cassettes through the turntable to my PC. Fortunately that worked because I was really pressed for time to finish a project using those old cassettes. So the bottom line is my ION cassette adapter is now in the garbage, and you need to do a little more research to find a better product because this one is NOT IT!!!

I've got a lot of tapes. Some of them are irreplaceable demos from bands my husband has been in. This has been a great way to preserve those tapes.The cassette player is sturdy enough for sitting next to the computer, I would not recommend using this as your go-to player for your workout at the gym. It is all plastic and would not survive rough use. But since you're buying it to convert tapes to MP3, why would you be taking it for a jog anyway?It has several options for power. There is a 3v power port, there is a battery (two AA) compartment, and you can just plug it in to your computer via USB. The power port and the battery options are nice, but in my opinion, redundant. You're plugging it in to your computer. You shouldn't need batteries.The door opens from the side and swings wide so there's no need to finagle your tapes in through a narrow door slot. I really like that you can just set your tape in. Since you can position your tape properly before shutting the door, it really cuts down on the risk of it eating your tape. I've had more trouble with the other type of door, so this is a GREAT feature.It has play, FF, RW, stop, and direction change buttons, and a loop switch.The headphones are nice for reviewing or listing to the tape while you record, but don't expect great bass performance or anything.I didn't bother with the software. After reading the reviews for it I decided I had everything I needed with Audacity. I am familiar and comfortable manipulating audio files with Audacity and it give you many options for sound normalization. If you are a total newbie to audio manipulation, you might prefer the included software. But I'd really recommend giving Audacity a try. You will need to install the mp3 export codec to export to mp3. I already had everything loaded and ready to go on my system though.So, to review, The player is not the sturdiest design, but unless you plan on using it as your primary cassette player, this isn't an issue.The headphone's aren't top of the line, but they're great for reviewing your tapes.Read the other reviews for the included software to see if it's what you want, and if not, try Audacity.