Plusdeck 2c: Cassette-to-MP3 converter (Equipment)

 Review

As a child of the 1980s I have accumulated a large collection of audio cassette tapes over the years. While other kids collected Transformers and A-Team action figures, I was spending most of my money on music cassettes. Eventually, like almost everyone else, I made the switch over to CDs and have since been enjoying the sonic clarity and convenience of recorded music in the digital domain.

As cassette decks become increasingly harder to find I wonder what to do with my old cassettes. That's why I was so happy to hear about Plusdeck2c. The Plusdeck2c is a fully functioning cassette player for your PC computer that also converts your cassettes into MP3 or WAV format so you can archive them into the digital domain. With a few mouse clicks you can record your audio cassettes onto your hard drive and then burn them to a CD or transfer them to your MP3 player.

Installing the Plusdeck2c in my computer was a fairly easy task. The Plusdeck2c requires an empty 5.25" bay for installation (please refer to the other technical requirements above). Once I slipped the deck into the tower, I secured it with a couple of screws and connected the power and the cables that were provided in the box. All of the cable connections were plainly laid out in the instruction manual. There are no complicated drivers to install, only one small piece of software which is the application that is used to control the deck and process the cassettes into digital files.

The front of the Plusdeck2c has all of the transport controls that you would expect to see on a cassette deck; start, stop, eject, etc. I must admit that my heart skipped a beat when I first popped a cassette into the deck and heard the comforting old familiar sound of servos and gears of a cassette deck, though I had to listen a little harder for these sounds since the Plusdeck2c has the quietest hardware I have personally heard on a deck. For those folks that don't require a "hands on" experience, you can use the Plusdeck2c application to control the deck from your computer screen with your mouse.

Within minutes of installation I was able to create my first MP3 files from a cassette. Basically, the Plusdeck2c works by sending its audio signal to your computer's audio input and it records the signal, converts it to WAV or MP3 and saves it to your hard drive. As a user, all I needed to do to was insert the cassette, adjust the line-in volume on my computer (this information is in the users manual), give a name to the file I was about to create, and click on the convert button. Plusdeck2c did the rest. After converting several different cassettes from different eras, I did find that newer cassettes are louder and have a broad dynamic range so they require more finessing of the volume levels to avoid distortion in the conversion process.

I can think of several applications for this deck aside from converting music cassettes. This deck is a great solution for those stacks of teaching cassettes that every church has in the back closet. What better way to make sure that your churches past services are preserved for years to come than transferring them to CD? Also, I know people who have been singing in church for years and they have lots of performance track cassettes that they can't buy on CD. Plusdeck2c would be perfect for them too.

I was surprised how practical and easy it is to use the Plusdeck2c. As different of a concept it is to have a cassette deck in your PC, this product isn't fancy or complicated. It only promises to do one thing: play cassettes on your PC and allow you to process them into digital format. It does just that and it does it well.

Review by Jeremy Dunn