- Hi! It's Parris from Epic Review Guys,
and if you don't know what these are,
this video's probably not for you,
but if you're like me and in the corner
of a closet of your house you've got a box
full of cassette tapes, but you don't
even own a cassette player anymore,
well, this little guy claims that it can take
what's on the tapes, digitize it,
and bring it into the modern age.
♫ Epic review guys ♫
This device by AGPtEK is like a Walkman,
if you remember those, a little, portable cassette player.
Inside of it though there are some computer chips,
basically a sound card that takes the analog sound,
converts it to digital, and then sends it out
through a USB cable,
so you can plug it into your computer,
record those files, and then play them anywhere.
This goes for about 20 dollars.
I'll put a link to it down below this video.
Let me show you what you get in the box.
If you remember the old Walkman,
this really looks like a Walkman.
Just a couple buttons on the top,
your USB cable, headphones as well,
so you can actually listen to your music.
Also included is a tiny little CD.
This has the software that you install
on your computer and then a little instruction book
that I need reading glasses to read.
Now, I've got maybe 300 cassette tapes in that bin.
I brought a few of them up here on the table,
and there is no way to record them faster than they play
which means a one-hour tape takes one hour to record.
You gotta go back and split it into two songs.
this one starts here; this one ends here.
You've got to take the file; you've got to give it the name.
If you want it to work in iTunes or something,
you've got to put in all the identifying information
of the name of the song, the artist, the genre, the album.
It's a lot of work,
so I've got a few of my songs, my tapes from the 80s,
Simon and Garfunkel, Erasure, Gordon Lightfoot,
Ray Charles, but these commercially produces tapes,
I can buy again.
I can buy the mp3s of them or I could buy a CD of them,
or I can just sign up to Spotify or to
the Google Play Music, eight dollars a month,
and listen to them all whenever I want
without having to buy them,
so these commercial tapes I'm really not
interested in going through the time and effort,
the hundreds of hours to get them
into mp3 format on the computer.
The ones I'm interested in, are these recorded tapes
that I did myself.
The ones I'd really like to recover include
this one from 1987.
I was in air-traffic control school in Oklahoma City.
Here's the device with the door open
where you put the cassette tapes in.
Play, rewind, it also has a button on top that will
auto-switch the tape to play in the other direction
which is handy if you don't want
to have to come and flip the tape over.
On the end we've got the volume control,
the USB port and the headphone jack.
I put in my air-traffic control lab tape
from January 30th, 1987.
Now going to hook this up to the computer,
so it installs the drivers,
and then install the software.
I have Windows 8 on my laptop
which is a Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro,
but anything from XP on up should automatically
install the drivers, so I think it's a little more work
if you're on the Mac side.
You just plug in the device in the USB port,
and you should get some sounds going on here
as it installs the driver to make this work.
Had to use my external CD drive
to take a look at this little disc.
All that's on here is an old copy
of the Audacity recording software that
I actually need to get a newer version
to work with Windows 8 anyway.
Also, the drivers, which automatically install
and a copy of the manual, which at least would be
easier to read than the tiny print on here.
I downloaded and installed Audacity version 2.0.5.
It's about a minute and a half to go through the steps.
The set up is pretty easy.
It's just next, next, I agree.
Decided to make sure there's actually
some audio on that tape that's
almost 30 years old now.
Here's the little panel that you pop off.
This gives you access to put in the two double a batteries,
then I should be able to play the sound through this,
at least through the headphones that they give me.
Well, amazingly, after 30 years,
there's still pretty good audio on this tape.
Now, I was able to listen with the little earbuds included,
but I remembered I have the As Seen On TV Microboom,
which I can plug an audio source into,
and you'll be able to hear this.
Now, the first person speaking is my partner
who's calling in on the radio,
acting as different airplanes, and other centers
asking for clearance.
- [Voiceover] Williams Center
- [Voiceover] McAllister Tower request clearance.
November five one zero three eight
to the Wichita Airport.
- [Voiceover] Active runway, advise any changes
- [Voiceover] Active runway, three six
- [Voiceover] Stand by
- Stand by!
That's me while I tried to figure out
where all the different planes were
and where these planes could go through.
I wasn't particularly good at air-traffic control,
so be glad I didn't choose that
as my full-time profession.
I came over here, rewound it a little bit,
and pressed play.
Came here in the Audacity software and hit record,
and as you can see, I've got something.
Now when I go to play it back...
- [Voiceover] Active runway, advise any changes.
- [Voiceover] Active runway three six
- [Voiceover] Stand by.
- Stand by.
So, now, I've got to export this as a sound file,
an mp3 or some type of digital file,
and then I can send it to somebody.
I can play it on any of my electronic devices.
I can burn it to a CD, play it in the car
if that's where I want to hear it.
Here's the file as an mp3.
I've saved it as air traffic in my documents.
I could email this to someone.
They can listen to it.
I can pull it into iTunes or Google Play Music.
It won't deteriorate anymore now that it's been digitized,
and I can listen to it whenever I like.
- [Voiceover] Active runway, advise any changes.
- [Voiceover] Active runway three six.
- [Voiceover] Stand by.
- And I found the tape that I sent to my family
after I'd been in Japan for a few months
and wanted to share the experience with them.
It goes along with the photo album.
Here's a little of it.
- [Voiceover] Hello again from the streets
of downtown Tokyo.
We're talking to you from (mumbles) town called Ikebukuro.
On this first one, we're going to take you
through where we went when we first arrived here.
Perhaps you can hear the traffic in the background.
- And I just got done listening to the tape
of my brother, sister and myself singing Stand By Me
at a Karaoke bar in Tokyo after a few drinks,
and boy I kind of wish the fidelity of this tape
had been reduced over 30 years,
cause we sound bad as ever.
Sorry I can't play it for you since it's Youtube.
So, if you're looking to take a trip down memory lane,
this AGPtEK device is pretty good, lets you listen
to your cassette tapes and also record them
onto your computer, so you'll have them forever.
They won't deteriorate any further.
Only 20 bucks, again we have a link
to it down below if you'd like to check it out.
So, I've got my next few weekends cut out for me
sorting through all of this, deciding what to keep,
putting it on the computer, labeling it,
but at least then it's done, and I'll have it forever.
Then the question is, what am I going to do with these?
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