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

Works great exactly like advertised.

I used to be a Grateful Dead Taper. I followed them for 2 decades typing their shows to 1/8" metal tape compact cassette using a Sony D6M and Nakamichi Shotguns. I just got this to connect my Sony to a Laptop and feed the analog signal to Audacity and export to 320 bit MP3. The quality of this dongle is absolutely perfect. Even these 35 year old tapes sound absolutely CD quality.

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 :)

I sold my vintage cassette tape deck and while prepping it for delivery, I found some old family recordings I wanted to digitize. I was able to delay delivery a couple of days and got this device via next day delivery - problem solved! I spent 5+ hours trying to get the device to talk to my standard Windows 10 computer. I followed the install directions for the HW and loaded the ancient version of Audacity. Audacity appeared to find the device (USB microphone) without any problem and showed that the output would be sent to a file on the computer, just like it was supposed to. I verified that signal was present on the tape deck output and amplitude was good. Audacity displayed no incoming audio stream and produced errors when I tried to record - basically it said there was no source. I did the usual Windows routine - check the drivers, delete the drivers and then reinstall - still no audio stream. I tried switching USB ports, etc. without any improvement.I downloaded the latest version of Audacity and installed it. Still, all I got were error messages when attempting to record. Checked the Audacity "Help" and didn't find any hints other than to confirm that the errors indicated no input.Time was up, so I made the recordings by playing the tapes through a speaker and using a cell phone microphone and app.I hated giving this device a one star rating, but it does appear to be defective. I noted that few other reviewers reported such problems. Unfortunately, I can't comment on the recording quality. I have no other use for the device, so am returning it.

Already hag audacity downloaded and a basic understanding of it so this product was plug and play simple. I couldn't be happier.

The first one of these I ordered never worked. I wasted a couple of hours tinkering with settings on my PC and Audacity, trying different settngs, connections, etc. with no success. My Win11 PC never properly recognized it as a USB audio input device and what little audio it would pick up on occasion was garbled beyond recognition. I finally gave up in frustation and returned it to Amazon for replacement. The replacement unit arrived a couple of days later in a shipment damaged box but seems to work OK after a couple of test recordings. My PC recognized it right away after plugging it in the USB port and while I did need to make some changes to internal settings it was up and running pretty quick. I'm only giving this item 3 stars due to the wasted time and hassle with the first one, which makes me question build quailty and long term durability.