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The Digisette....revisited

docp - 2012-10-29 06:24

Just a decade  back 'cassettes' were still things people could identify without asking what the heck you were holding in your hand, but mp3s were fast becoming the easy way to store and listen to music.

So what about us with our diminishing supply of healthy Type II and Type III cassettes...the Digisette and the Mobiblu soon to be followed by China's answer came along as the perfect cross over devices running along similar lines of your car discman to tape player adapters.... a cassette shell with a build in 'head' to transfer the music from head to head

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docp - 2012-10-29 06:28

http://www.dansdata.com/dah220.htm

 

Digisette on ebay right now item :360502443085 for Eur 99.99

The Chinese equivalent on ebay for $ 13.50 !!

 

I think anyone who has a walkman or a boombox had better keep one of these things aside. Let's think of it as listening to music mastered in ADA or DDA format ...going back to analog

blaster - 2012-10-29 06:42

I actually have 2 pairs of the last one pictured...the first ones that came out...and the new ones with the remote...it would be cool if they improved it even further with an indicator of tracks or a digit LED of some sort...all in all an awesome product!!

johnedward - 2012-10-30 20:40

The ORIGINAL DIGISETTE !  Well here ya go guys I picked one up on eBay while back brand new in box shrink wrapped.  Note orig price of $159  on box.  I agree it would really be a great product if it had indicator for songs/display.  Still a fun wonderful idea and my Walkman collection is not trying to kill me in my sleep for having a MP3 player --- they think its a tape 

I bought some cheap 512 MB multi media cards.  Each hold about 125 songs.  Different cards for each type of music ;-)   

 

DIGISETTE MP3 Portable Player



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nevone - 2012-10-31 00:37

and a good thing would also be that this digisette will work on almost any boombox/walkman that haves the belts ruined...

docp - 2012-10-31 00:55

The only drawback is that the Digisette is 'switched on' by the take up reel spinning. Activating movements like FFW or REW enable jumping to the next song or previous based on the same mechanism. I haven't tried using my Digisette/Mobiblu in a unit without belts...guess I should

isolator42 - 2012-10-31 04:12

I have one of these. 

It saved my Hitachi 3D7 whose motor was all but worn out & couldn't play a tape at constant speed anymore, even with a new belt. The Digisette sounded great because the head was OK, & the FFWD & REW mp3 track skip still worked.

Nice bit of kit   

nak.d - 2012-10-31 11:52

Has anyone tried one of these devices with a something like a WM D6C, DC2 or even a DD9? If they were that good and using a top end WM pays sound quality dividends, I may considering investing! Would the "head" on these things cause wear 'n' tear to the WM heads at all?

claret.badger - 2012-10-31 12:38

in a word "no"

 

"head to head" is not the best way to play music - a cable is better

 

 

i don't now the science - I just know the above through listening experience in the 80's

 

docp - 2012-10-31 19:53

Looking at it from two angles .....yes a direct aux in /cable would have no hassles and if it were a high quality cable you'd have no 'loss' but then again if you were to talk about using a walkman without a conventional cassette there is no line in

So apart from the first point being that these cross over devices might serve as an important workaround in place of regular cassettes thereby allowing us to carry on enjoying our walkmans the second point is related to sound quality.

If for discussion sake we were to talk about induction from one wire to another being the basic principle of how the discman cassette adapters or Digsette transfer audio information ,then we realize you can have results ranging from real lousy to really decent if not audiophile perfect (like the aux in,of course) based on the multitude of parameters like :
1. Head quality in the cassette adapter/Digisette : can it produce the entire 'magnetic range' of audio frequencies that the walkman head is going to 'translate'
2. Head distance and alignment - azimuth issues : If both heads are even ever so slightly misaligned sound quality can plummet.

I sat and made myself a cassette adapter for my discman in mid 90s using a playback head , a headphone cord and a cassette shell and that's when I realized how simple and yet how exasperating the whole design was. Putting things together hardly took half an hour...getting the precise alignment to satisfy my ears took almost an hour as I had to make sure it played equally well in the car and on my Panasonic RX C45

I have used the Digisette both in my wm10 and in the car and have on occasion used a car cassette adapter to link up my phone to play music. The results were decent enough with balanced enough lows and highs ...I do love listening to music and have a medium threshold ...which is to say I am not that easy to please but then again I won't ever own a Nak . For the average collector who aims to safeguard his/her ability to actually use a walkman by inserting something in that has the decency to even look like a cassette, the Digisette ,Mobiblu and their Chinese cousin are excellent things to buy and keep aside as a contingency plan whIle  they are still available ...

docp - 2012-10-31 20:01

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-j...s_sound_quality.html

http://www.head-fi.org/t/10341...te-adapter-or-aux-in