WIKOO SUPER USB CASSETTE CAPTURE The hodgepodge of questionable design choice(s). Black with chrome accent. The cassette bay door unexpectedly opens via side-switch, with hinge perpendicular to the (standardly located transport controls). There are no guide rails, the tape is held in place by the combination of a shallow cradle design in conjunction with the closed lid. The transport controls are represented by chrome buttons in a configuration I’ve never seen on a portable; they are labeled in what can be characterized as “hardly-seen” raised text on the chrome accent, without a contrasting color. The PLAY button is isolated in a centralized location, where an open/close latch mechanism typically resides. Directly above it is a DIR button, and slider switch to toggle continuous playback mode. Moving to the right, FF and REW buttons are near the corner, with a lone STOP button located below them, in line with the PLAY button. Around the corner is the standard volume dial, headphone jack, and previously mentioned OPEN latch. Plus a micro usb jack. Wait what? Underneath the window, topside of the cassette door is the printed text “AUTO REVERSE - STEREO - HI-FI - MEGA BASS” with no sign of a MEGA BASS switch in sight. Also no mention of it in the user manual. The user manual itself is mostly comprised of outlining how to install Audacity and record through usb. I’m unsure why anyone would get that far. MEGA BASS, ha! Good one. More like Nega-Bass. I’ve heard better low end response by holding up a tape recorder’s integrated mic to a cheap boom box speaker. Listening to The Four Tops, it sounds like James Jamerson was playing in another room, through a closed door, with a high pass filter set somewhere in the high 80Hz range. The emphatic midrange is most prominent, however overall bandwidth sounds thin. Not to the point of being nasally, but the extreme ends of frequency response… don’t respond. Very AM radioesque. Very forward, boxy. Depth of soundstage is all but absent. The resulting recipe is an ear-fatigue machine. I can see 2 useful applications for this unit. The first is digitally transferring talk radio (or books on tape) recorded to cassette. The only musical application is for playback of noisy (as in noise-rock) lo-fi recordings. Moody mood music. Even then, there are better options at every price point. This is comfortably resigned to the “better than nothing” camp. I don’t even want to waste my time messing with the USB function. Perhaps self-defeating when it’s a primary design feature, however this unit stumbles at the first hurdle. You’re better off connecting any Sam Goody Special to a PC’s line input with an aux cord and recording to Audacity that way. AVJ
