ION TAPE 2 PC USB

Author's product rating:   

Sound Quality	Excellent
Recording Quality	Excellent
Look & Design	Excellent
Durability	Excellent
Value for Money	Good

Advantages:	high sound quality, diverse functions, record to tape mode, record from tape mode
Disadvantages:	usless instruction manual, useless recording programme, not all cables supplied

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

The sound quality is good, so is the recording quality. The look and design are brilliant and so is the durability! It's an extremly good cassette deck with a level meter indication feature as well as noise reduction and dubbing which are just the start! In my opinion however, this should just be sold as a normal tape deck as the only real feature that lets it down is the transfering "2PC" mode which is actually the main idea behind this deck!

Disadvantages

As described previously, this tape deck has only one real disdvantage and that is the transfering of a tape to computer media. The software itself seems reasonable enough at first glance since the CD-ROM media actually includes two programmes: a music editing programme called audacity and also the main feature which is the media converting programme. This programme is brilliant since it has an automatic song recognition system, so the programme can search for the correct details of the song. However, when recording large numbers of media and also in many tracks and not as one tape, there is one feature that is missing: next track (and/or a pause button).

Since this programme has not got this button and is in the form of a media recording "wizard mode", it means that you will need to record the one track at a time. This is made even more tedious because of the already mentioned "wizard mode" as the only mode available. After each new recording (track) you will have to cycle to the end of the wizard and then start over, wasting 1 minute every time for this which when you have 50 odd so tapes to copy (like me) is not the best option.

There are a couple of other minor disadvantages like not all needed cables and spliters being supplied and the instruction manual not being clear enough. These however do not impact end rating of this product in anyway as you will see below.

There is finally, also no remote conrol which makes the system only just simpel to use.

Advantages

Although this section will describe the actual tape deck and not the feature for what you would originally buy this deck for, you will see that there is nothing wrong with the tape deck at all so this still makes a great buy, with the aded extra of the recording facility.

Connections/Back panel

The back of the deck is simple and yet contains all the ports for all your possible electronic connections.

• Most importantly, a line-out port for attachment with your Computer or any other audio system supporting a line-in port. This is a stereo system so the line-out port is a port consisting of two overall ports which are white and red for both speakers. When connecting to a computer you will need to buy a stereo adapter to be able to connect the stereo device to one port.
• Secondly, there is a stero line-in port so you can also record direct on to a tape from any electronic sound source.
• Next, there is a USB port for connection of the device to a compuer easily. The USB cable is not always neccesarily supplied but was supplied with my one of these cassette decks. This can be used as an alternative to a line-out port if your computer does not support line-in although the manual is not entirely clear about this.
• Finally there is a gain adjuster for adjusting the db gain or volume in other words of the system locally.

Front panel

On the front panel of the tape deck there are two tape slots with "B" (the one on the right) being the one you are able to record too. You can record from either of the two slots. The standard tape deck features are present such as play, pause, record, etc.

There is one reason whyt this tape dek is the best deck i have ever had, and this is because of the sound quality. Even with very cheap and feeble speakers the soun quality is too a very high quality. This may be because the front display panel features a level metre indication as well as noise reduction.

The manual is very thin and quite unhelpful so this is the reason why I have still not understood the reason for the buttons: PLAY Cr02, DUBBING, HI.SP.DUB and REC Cr02. There is also a counter for deck B but I also do not know why this is there either.

Finally, when recording to a tape, you can adjust the recording volume level apart from the db Gain.

Overall this tape deck is a beauty. With its branded design and high sound qaulity as well as a diversity of functions you get everything you need to play your old tapes but not record them. This is just an added extra even though the whole concept was meant to be the other way around. So, it's a superb tape deck! But nothing else!