Mojo’s Pick of the Week – USB Cassette Player

Posted on February 6, 2019 by Mojo

I’m pretty excited about this random eBay purchase! Honestly I just wanted a portable cassette player so I could listen to tapes of my old band to pinch ideas from. Having the option to record via USB right into the DAW was just a bonus, especially for $15 new!

Officially it’s called the “Super USB Cassette Capture” and it’s got that made in China cheapness about the plastic. But it does feel solid mechanically and definitely does exactly what it says it does: play cassettes and offer a USB computer interface to record from cassette into a Digital Audio Workstation.

Included in the package: cassette player, mini USB cable, cheap earbuds, instruction manual in reasonable English, and a 3″ minidisc containing Audacity, the free Open Source DAW. The instruction manual also gives the web addresses for downloading both Audacity and Lame (which it recommends to use for making MP3s). If you already have Garageband or any DAW at all, you don’t need any additional software.

Not included: 9v adapter, batteries.

Controls: play, stop, eject, fast forward, rewind, volume, dir (direction) and auto-reverse on/off.

Outputs: 1/8 phono (headphone) and what I understand is a USB 2.0 Mini B connector.

The manual says it will run on USB power. Otherwise, 2 AA batteries are required.

I was able to record very easily into Logic by connecting the USB cable, selecting input device “USB PnP Audio Device”, arming an empty track and hitting record, then playing the cassette. The only variable was the cassette player volume, which determines the input level, but the recording was clean.

Very happy with this purchase so far, definitely worth $15!

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Mojo’s Pick of the Week – Oontz Bluetooth Speaker

Posted on October 27, 2016 by Mojo

I love this thing. It’s not the biggest, or the loudest, or the coolest to look at, but this water-resistant little guy is one of my favorite pieces of audio gear. The sound is clear and full, and the battery life is great. I’ve had it since the summer when I bought it for myself as a birthday present, and since then it’s been to the beach, on road trips, in the darkroom, in the backyard. It’s small & light enough to toss in a backpack, and being IPX5 certified water resistant means I don’t worry about getting it wet at the beach or when it’s in the kitchen while I’m washing dishes or whatever.

The Oontz Angle boasts 10 watts of peak power and gets about 5-7 hours of playtime on a charge. It charges with a USB cable like a phone, and in fact is a handsfree phone receiver (though I haven’t used it that way). Did I mention it sounds good? Like really good? I picked it over other, louder and bigger ones because the sound is great, and size is perfect – it fits in a cupholder and frankly to me is the perfect size for a portable speaker. It may not be loud enough to power a busy pool party but for most purposes it’s great. Well worth the less than $30 I spent on it. If you’re in the market for a Bluetooth speaker, check it out the Oontz Angle.

Mfr: Cambridge Soundworks
Website: https://theoontz.com
Price: $27US

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Mojo’s Pick of the Week – Behringer Behritone C5A Speaker

Posted on November 17, 2014 by Mojo

The Behringer Behritone C5A and its updated sibling, the C50A, are copies of the famed Auratone speakers, known for being so bad they’re good. They became staples in music studios after mixing and mastering engineers discovered that if they could get a track to sound good on the little brown cubes, they’d sound good anywhere.

I’d considered picking them up before but it didn’t occur to me that I really only needed one to do the job, until I read Graham Cochrane’s post on them recently on his excellent Recording Revolution website. The combination of this lo-fi speaker and mixing in mono have completely changed the way I mix.

The speaker itself is an active 30W, 5 1/4″ speaker with a 90 Hz to 17 kHz frequency response and retails for about $99US. I was happy and lucky to get mine on ebay for $65 shipped. It has XLR, 1/4″ TRS and RCA input connectors plus a gain control. I am using the 1/4″ connector with a mono > stereo adapter and run through my computer stereo out. The main trick to this speaker is to acclimate your ears by listening to songs you know well on it and hearing the difference from what you think you know. Reference tracks are a must. But mono mixing on this speaker forces you to concentrate on the midrange meat of a song, and can quickly help you to fix overlapping frequencies for better clarity.

I went a step further and decided to simulate this speaker in the box just for fun, by creating a Logic channel strip preset with the Gain plugin set to mono, the EQ rolled off gradually below 500 Hz and above 2 Khz (a Bob Katz suggestion) and very light (1.5) compression. Running your mix through an optional channel strip like this prior to stereo out will give a good impression of how your mix will sound through a limited range mono speaker.

The speaker itself? Wonderfully crummy sounding. It’s a game-changer for me and I can already hear my mixes getting better. Definitely worthy of a Pick of the Week.

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