Backup To The Future

The vinyl revival is now in full swing, and the legacy format is being embraced by electronics manufacturers on a remarkable scale. There are several new USB turntables on the market now, helping to bring those dusty old 45’s into the digital era, but Ion Audio are now gunning for another former great – the cassette tape…

Yes, it’s a dedicated tape to PC unit for backing up your classic mixtapes to mp3, so you can relive the glorious playlists of your past on an audio player that’s probably smaller than the neat digital watch you had back then. Appropriately enough, the device is called TAPE2PC and features support for cutting-edge chrome cassettes (CrO2). One can only hope it also has an auto-reverse function. The twin deck unit doesn’t require any drivers, and ships with Audacity (Mac and PC) and EZ Tape Converter (PC) software packages – all for about £100 in the UK.

Of course, this is hardly a technological breakthrough for the more hardware-savvy listeners out there – after all, anyone with a battered old walkman, a PC with a line-in and an appropriate cable can follow this guide to digitise their tape collection.