Earlier this year, my Uncle Ron passed away. Ron was a great sax and clarinet player. Growing up I can remember hearing tapes of Ron play. I have a clear memory of driving with my Uncle Gus to fish for bass with Ron's music playing as we drove in the pre-dawn darkness to a Kansas pond.

My dad gave me three tapes of Ron playing to convert to CDs. One of the recordings was quite old. One tape from 1970 that was probably a few generations old.

I realized that I didn't have a cassette player and even if I got one, I'd still have the problem of jury rigging the recording into a computer and converting it to a CD. After dodging my dad's emails and questions about the conversion for a while, I was beginning to get desperate. I pondered the problem for a while and finally stumbled on cassettes2cds.

Just like it sounds, cassettes2cds converts cassette tapes to CDs. It's mainly meant for converting old prerecorded cassettes into CDs for current use. You know that old Police, Led Zepplin, or Duran Duran cassette you have sitting around, it can be made into a CD. (Don't even pretend that you didn't buy one of these albums. I know you did and you probably also bought a Michael Jackson album as well in your younger days! Next you'll try to tell me you don't know the words to ABBA songs and hated Grease. Friggin' liars...)

Where was I? Oh yes, the base cost of the job is $7 per CD, less if you convert a large quantity.

I emailed the guy who runs the site and asked a few questions and he seemed to know his stuff. Throwing caution to the wind, I sent the tapes off.

When the tapes arrived I got an email telling me so and daily updates on the status of the conversion. In about a week, a box arrived.

I popped a CD in and sure enough the tape had been transferred. The CD was good quality, considering the source.

The CD is printed with a label that you write the text for online.

For $7 a CD, it's a terrific service. Sure you could do this stuff at home if you had the right gear, the time, and patience, but for those that don't cassettes2cd is a godsend.

You can also get MP3s made if you want. (No, you whiny ass iPod lovers can't get cheesy AAC files, you need to settle for manly MP3 files to listen to on your crappy white earphones.)

So, cassette2cds gets the Cruftastic seal of approval.

Posted by michael at September 01, 2004 10:21 PM