From what I've seen, 99% of the ones you find are cheap solutions for digitising cassettes, usually with terrible quality, mandatory compression, and shipped with bloatware.

I want just what is on the casette, no misguided "optimisation" (if any remastering needs to be done, I'll do it myself), and I want to write audio to it as well. So basically, it has to be a tape drive that acts as an audio interface to the computer that I can take input from (record from casette) and send output to (record to casette).

Not an immediate need, more like a long-term want-have, so I can't put an exact figure as the budget, but suffice it to say, I'm poor as fuck.

#AskFedi #AudioCassette

**CoffeeGeek** @coffeegeek@flipboard.social · Jul 2, 2024

Jul 2, 2024

CoffeeGeek @coffeegeek@flipboard.social

#NCP

Went down a bit of a rabbit hole today, checking out vintage Walkmans.

I won a baseball hitting competition back in 1985ish as a kid, and the first prize was a Sony Walkman WM-F10 model, which was at the time (and I think to this day) the smallest cassette tape audio player ever made.

Sadly, someone stole it from me a few years later.

Saw a video on a restore of the WM-10, the radio-less version of this machine, so dived a bit into ebay etc.

HOLY COW. WM-10s, WM-F10s, WM-150s, broken "for parts" are selling for $300, $400, or more. One pristine one with new belts etc sold recently for $750!!!

What's weird is, this isn't audiophile stuff. The WM-10 was horrible for audio. The WM-150, as I recall (my girlfriend had one) was really good for audio on the other hand. Those in working condition sell over $500 today.

#walkman #vintage #audiocassette