Hi there,

I received recently this curious walkman. It's most curious feature is that offers easy digitalization of tapes.

Although digitizing tapes is not definitely something I'm interested in, I decided to buy this walkman because I received one of those typical emails with a good deal: normal price -> 43 euros. This deal -> 18 euros.

Hmmm, I don't have so much to loose for only 18 euros, so I thought "why not?"...

The package is very small and contains only the esential: the walkman, an USB cable and a CD with the EZconverter software.

What's special with this walkman is that it includes the A-D converter and a USB output. This way the audio is digitized inside the walkman, so the sound card of your computer has nothing to do. This way recording level is carefully adjusted in the factory, and it avoids clipping or low level recordings.

Operation is veery simple, as it does lack many switches that are common in many walkmans: Megabass, autoreverse or Dolby. Even tape selection. In fact, there are no switches at all: just the volume dial.

Buttons are big and hard to press and mechanics feels solid and "clunky" (is that the word for a loud mechanism?).

After a few minutes, I got the first problem: the speed became high and I could then start listening "smurfs", so I took out the two batteries and leave it in the box for some days.

Today I picked it up and it looks that is works properly again ¿? Something interesting is that it can be powered by the USB, without having to use batteries at all. Good idea!

I want to perform a complete conversion to MP3 that I still didn't do, but first measurements with pink noise and my oscilloscope shows that it lacks a lot of bass. Overall the impression is a decent sound quality but low bass.

I'll update this review when I do the conversion... (more to come).

Bye for now,

i don't want to minimize your bargain, but on ebay it sells at £19,95 --hardly 80 euros

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ION-...;hash=item3ccb3c122f

nevertheless i believe it's a must-buy, if only for its name

I'd be interested in what kind of mech the unit uses - it may also be interesting to hear the results by uploading small sound clips . Thanks for the review Hugo, looking forward to update.

it's gonna be bobbins
the hardware is hardly top notch

i'd stick to decent tape deck connect to PC via phonos' and rip to a lossless format and NOT mp3

These seem to use a basic mechanism common across Chinese sourced generic "Walkman" cassette players. 

I use a Plusdeck 2c on my daw setup for transfering mines and customers tapes to wave, lossless file, works great, features autoreverse and autocut, which spits the tracks, so can leave it unintended. It not a bad deck, decent quailty transport and full logic control, plus can control thur software. The only downside is you have a serial port, so you may have to buy a addition card. The only one I recommend.

But you are better off using a regular tape deck, to sound card, with good editing software. I just pickup the plusdeck 2c, due to it mounted in the bay of the computer and limited space, at the time was also interesting, but also use a dragon. Have external audio processors and NR proceesors to do the decoding and software take care of the rest.

Don't worry

I correct my data: the original price was 43 euros, not 80 (sorry, I told it without checking it), so it was more than 50% off.

That one you point to is refurbished, but it's a good price too (25 euros aprox.)

Not a DD transport, for sure :-) I believe that's a entry-level inside.

I'll try to upload clips, but I remember I'm empty of free minutes in my Soundcloud account...

Claret, can I ask you why seems you hate compressed music? Hey, it's not that bad 

What sound card do you computer uses?

i have a personal intolerance of mp3's

maybe it's my jaded ear - but mp3's always seem lack "width" when you listen to them

I can hear mp3 compression a mile off - and I much prefer ATRAC compression
but rather that i prefer flac or pcm or just analogue compression

Hate to ask. But can you do a inside shot of it? Just want to see what AD they are using and tranport. Was almost going to buy one just for that very reason.

Aha, I understand. I thought the same when I had my first MP3, a Creative with so many advanced features but that it sound like a sardine can.

I can tell you that I never considered MP3 a bad format. In fact, MP3 is a slightly newer format that has also very sophisticate technologies. It has also seen a few updates, like the ATRAC.

Many MP3 are bad because of three problems:

- the bitrate (flux of information by second) is low. A low as 96 or even 64 kbps (kilobits per second). 128kbps is usually enough for high quality, but higher is better.

- the software used to compress. Many free softwares used to use budget quality compressors, specially a few years ago, before the open-source LAME.

- The algorithm: the majority of MP3 uses CBR algorithm (Constant Bit Rate), but VBR (Variable Bit Rate) is way much better. The more instruments and sounds in a particular part of a song, the more bits are needed to store it. CBR uses always the same room for  information, so when there are many sounds, the quality goes down. VBR adapts itself to the quantity of sounds, giving more bit when there are needed.

I use the most modern algorithm (ABR, Average Bit Rate, a modern variant of VBR) with around 196kbps (but I used fixed 128 CBR for many years until 2005 and the quality is still very good) compressed with LAME (that's also embedded in many softwares and many MP3 files you can actually buy comes compressed with them) which is widely known for offering excellent quality.

Did you consider the possibility that the problem could be not the MP3 itself but the mp3 player / sound card or even headphones?

Please, you explain what equipment you're using for digital music so we can see what's happening.

PS: I remember  a supertest made by the magazine Computer Bild (that we have also translated in Spain) with a huge audio compressors comparison. They picked up a few expert audiophiles, set up a high-end HIFI with high quality digital player and measured their quality in a blind test. The LAME and WMA9 (yes, Microsoft's codec) were some of the best...

UPDATE: I tried to play one of my reference tapes but I had to adjust the internal speed screw because it was very slow speed.

The audio quality is not bad... it's a shame. The wow&flutter is HUGE. In fact, it's so huge that I think something is going bad inside. I opened it (yeah, for the first time) but the two belts are in good condition. I started to record the audio but the audio is hardly listenable; it's so bad that it's anoying...

So I postpone the test until I find another belt to replace that is tighter, to see if the problem is that. Maybe the problem is the high temperature that we still have here (around 24-28º that make the belts longer and slip a bit...

I took last night a pair of photos very quickly with the phone (don't expect the same quality as when I shoot with my DSLR) just to show you the inside.

And the circuitry and DAC, retrodos. The board couldn't be opened more; there's a very short cable inside the prevents it, so I only could see two IC: one very small and one taller.

Just as expected. Cruddy generic mechanism.

To let you hear how bad does this piece of cr*p sounds, here you have a record of my 12-min reference mix song (see info here)

That sounds so bad it's LOL funny! 

I guess these guys from this review didn't convert just one song or even heard how does it sounds...

"A winning product!" LOL ;-D

That's tragic. Is this how it sounded straight out of the box from new?

That is the worst I've heard from a new device no matter how cheap. I'm glad I've always kept to my policy of "too good to be true". It may be only €18 but how many cash strapped people have been robbed by purchasing such rubbish cheapo devices.

Besides, the notion of converting analogue cassette to digital is something I have difficulty with. The quality of the results could never justify the effort in my opinion. Unless of course something like a Sony D6C and very high quality recordings/tape were used as source..............but even then???????????

Digital to analogue yes ( with good equipment and tape), but the other way around????????

Holy crap I was not expecting it to be that bad! ridiculous amount of w/f. Motor feedback is present as well. I've heard better from similar cheap/cruddy mechanisms.