I decided to purchase the USB cassette converter from Aldi. I tend to be careful with Aldi products as I've experienced a relatively high failure rate that has ended up quite costly. For example a PVR Recorder that lasted six months and an evaporator that lasted a day. The product Aldi sell seem to put quality control onto the consumer. That is sell it first and if it breaks, the consumer will return it. I regret not pursuing the PVR but Aldi just duck shoved the issue onto me, and in the end I couldn't be bothered. I suspect many others probably experience the same. I find around one in three of the items need to be returned.
Some items however are great value so you're stuck with a good priced item, but the risk it won't work. In this case the USB Cassette Converter was effectively dead on arrival. I inserted the batteries and thought, hmmm. They certainly aren't making good contact. I tried turning the unit on and nothing. I really did want to convert some cassettes so I decided to investigate. The spring the connects the negative end of the battery had dislodged. A paper clip and a few minutes of jiggling and the unit was ready to go.
This type of unit for an IT person is pretty simple. Plug it in, run the software, start recording, stop recording, edit the file into separate tracks and save each file. I tried the included track splitting software (can't recall the name) and it was rubbish. The software wasn't able to identify tracks without missing what I consider quite a bit of the start of a track. That to me wasn't acceptable. The main software included with the unit is Audacity which is free open source software. At least they've packed the software so it was easy to install and the MP3 encoder was included. The encoder in the past hasn't been included when I've downloaded Audacity from the internet. Since I'd used the software before there wasn't an issue learning the software.
It can be quite tedious splitting the tracks, saving them and then updating the properties with artist, title and album information, but once done, it is done.
There was one more little gotcha. The instructions state you can use USB to power the device. I couldn't see a way that could be done. The device simply didn't work for me unless the batteries were installed.
Overall another dead-on-arrival Aldi product, but at least this time I could fix it and the device was usable.
Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for IT support.
Some items however are great value so you're stuck with a good priced item, but the risk it won't work. In this case the USB Cassette Converter was effectively dead on arrival. I inserted the batteries and thought, hmmm. They certainly aren't making good contact. I tried turning the unit on and nothing. I really did want to convert some cassettes so I decided to investigate. The spring the connects the negative end of the battery had dislodged. A paper clip and a few minutes of jiggling and the unit was ready to go.
This type of unit for an IT person is pretty simple. Plug it in, run the software, start recording, stop recording, edit the file into separate tracks and save each file. I tried the included track splitting software (can't recall the name) and it was rubbish. The software wasn't able to identify tracks without missing what I consider quite a bit of the start of a track. That to me wasn't acceptable. The main software included with the unit is Audacity which is free open source software. At least they've packed the software so it was easy to install and the MP3 encoder was included. The encoder in the past hasn't been included when I've downloaded Audacity from the internet. Since I'd used the software before there wasn't an issue learning the software.
It can be quite tedious splitting the tracks, saving them and then updating the properties with artist, title and album information, but once done, it is done.
There was one more little gotcha. The instructions state you can use USB to power the device. I couldn't see a way that could be done. The device simply didn't work for me unless the batteries were installed.
Overall another dead-on-arrival Aldi product, but at least this time I could fix it and the device was usable.
Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for IT support.
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