3C,electtronic,MP3,Notebook

TaoTronics TT-CM001 USB Portable Tape Cassette To MP3 Converter Tape-to-MP3 Capture Adapter Digital Audio Music Player With Headphones and Software Cd- FOR PC

List Price: 39.99
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Product Features:

Plug and play USB device convert your old mix tapes and cassette to MP3 to Playback on iPod / MP3 player or burn to CD.

Flexible battery or USB-powered operation.Comes with tape converter software to guide you through transfer.

Portable design fits in virtually any bag and enables you to play and transfer anywhere.Audio editing software included.

Audio output enables you to listen on your stereo, headphones, or other speaker system.

Features Auto Reverse.Rediscover your old cassette tapes on the go.

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Technical Details:

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Customer Reviews:

Works as advertised!

This item works as advertised. It's no frills but it gets the job done. It will play the tape and then auto-reverse so you don't have to turn the tape over.

Once you have the setup done, just pop in a tape, start audacity, hit RECORD on audacity, and then PLAY on the unit. The tape will play at the usual speed, this is not a high-speed dubbing unit. Note that audacity will save the file in its own format, but you can then go in and select sections and export them in MP3 format.

HOW TO DO IT

If you have a Windows 7 PC, go to Audacity's website and download the Win7 version, and install it BEFORE you plug in the Taotronics unit.

Now plug in the TaoTronics unit. Skip Windows looking for an update to the driver.

After a pause, you should be informed that the unit is installed and ready for use. Subsequent uses on my Win7 PC did not acknowledge that the unit had been plugged in but it still worked.

Run Audacity. These are the settings that worked for me on a Windows 7 PC:

For sound level, you can either work with the microphone input level, or you can use the Volume wheel on the unit.

The unit will do an "auto reverse" which means it will play the entire cassette, sides 1 and 2, and then stop. It also has a setting that looks like it is for "endless play".

The player will stop at the end of the tape, but if you rewind/fast forward it appears to just wait for you to hit "stop" so I wouldn't do either of these and leave the room or you might stretch your tape.

Readers Digest walkthrough:
1. Install audacity.
2. Plug in the Taotronics unit.
3. Put the tape in the unit. If you haven't played it for a while, you might want to fast forward and then rewind to make sure the tape isn't wound too lose or too tight.
4. Hit the record button on audacity.
5. Hit the play button on the Taotronics.
6. Make sure you have the unit set to just play two sides. The player will stop at the end of the tape, but Audacity will keep recording so you have to stop Audacity yourself.
7. If you want MP3s, you will need to:
a. save the file as an audacity project
b. select sections of the project in audacity and "export" them in MP3 format. To do this you will need to download the Lame encoder and let Audacity know where that file is. I suggest you put it in the Audacity folder.
c. keep doing b until the end of the audacity project file.

UPDATE: Audacity will automatically export tracks for you!

Using audacity to automatically split and save your album tracks

Go to the beginning of your project and delete all but about 3 seconds of silence. Do the same at the end of the project and in the middle of the project (between the album "sides"). Don't delete it all, as audacity will be using the silences in your project to split the tracks. You will have to make sure of enough silence before the first track or it won't be recognized.

Select Analyze / Silence Finder. Accept the defaults and click OK. Audacity will now find the spaces between songs using the silence areas.

Audacity does a pretty good job of finding the spaces between tracks but it's not perfect, so you should take a look and make sure there aren't extra tracks were the silence between songs was too long. You can delete a label by editing its name and just backspacing until it disappears. NOTE: you will almost always get a label at the end of the project.

Now put in the names for the tracks in the label markers. Do this with Tracks / Edit Labels.

Now set up the MP3 tags for the files. This is how an MP3 player can show you the title, album, etc. when you play an MP3:

Go to Edit / Preferences and untick Show Metadata Editor Prior to Export Step.

Go to File / Open Metadata Editor and enter the performer name and album name.

Go to File / Export Multiple.

Set the format for your exported files (Mp3 usually). Audacity should remember this after the first time you do it.

Set the export location (audacity can create a folder if it doesn't already exist.)

Select "split files based on labels"

Select "numbering before label/track name" (to insert the track number so the files sort properly)

Select Export

Wait

Hope this helps everyone. Please consider doing a "how to" like this in your own product reviews!

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