Experiences with cassette deck adaptors? Specific question within...

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve had an Android phone for about eight months, but I’ve only recently become aware of cassette deck adapters, like this one, mainly intended for use in cars. It seems like it would be a great thing to have when the CD player breaks down, or if your car doesn’t have one, but I haven’t been able to find a lot of information online about this. I do find customer reviews, but these are almost entirely limited to declarations of how much they liked the product, or didn’t like it. They don’t go into details that would answer specific questions I have about the product.

Nor does the manufacturer – Philips, in this case – help much either. I’m reluctant to call the 800 number of a huge corporation, one that makes all manner of electrical appliances great and small, to ask about a $10 adapter. Something tells me: that way lies only frustration. As far as I know, I can’t go look at one in a store and ask questions.

My confidence is not greatly inspired by the fact that Philips uses the word “leaflet” to describe the two-page .pdf which is all they offer for anyone to look at. I don’t think I’ve heard the word “leaflet” since Julie Haggerty said it in the movie Airplane!. And that was in 1980. Not that I think there’s anything wrong with Philips products. As a matter of fact, we have a 32-inch Philips analog TV–one of those heavy monsters that’s also nearly as deep as wide and requires two people to lift–and it still works great, despite having been used nearly every day over the 13 years we’ve owned it. No, when I talk about my confidence, I mean my willingness to engage one of their CSRs.

So, on to my question. As you can see from the picture, you plug the cord into your phone or mp3 player, where the earbuds would go. At the other end of the cord there’s this rectangular part of the same dimensions as a cassette tape, which you slide into your cassette player. But come to think of it, if you still have a cassette player in your car it’s pretty old, no? What if the cassette player, like ours, no longer plays tapes, but chews them up instead? Some of you older folks might remember the days when strips of cassette tape, thrown from car windows by their frustrated owners, littered the highways and byways like brown confetti. What I want to know about cassette adapters is this: is there an actual bit of tape in there which needs to thread properly in the machine, and which gets “played” between spools, just like a regular cassette tape? If so, I don’t think it’ll work in our older car’s cassette player, because that won’t play regular tapes anymore.

2

Wow. I think the last time I used a cassette adapter was on a road trip in 1996, to play stuff from my laptop.

Anyway–no, there’s no tape in the adapter. You can see that from the picture in your link, can’t you?

A real tape is encoded with a magnetic field. As it slides over a sensor (called a “head”) in the cassette deck, the sensor reads the field and decodes the audio signal from it. The adapter has a little stationary electromagnet that matches up with the head instead, and uses the signal from your player to produce a variable magnetic field for the head to read. There might be something to put tension on the reels, to fool the deck into thinking there’s tape (some decks have sensors for that), but there’s nothing to spool out and get tangled.

It’s still possible that your deck is broken enough to not work with the adapter–odds are that there are mechanisms that move the head, and if they’re on the fritz, it won’t move into position to read the adapter. That’s not as common a failure mode as eating tapes, though.

3

Per Balance there is no ‘tape’ involved. The tape adapters will not work with some cassette head units that kick the tape out if they sense no pulling resistance. Interestingly the cassette decks that do this are the more advanced types. The Phillips units I have used worked fine with excellent fidelity.

They’re 10-20 bucks. Take a chance! You can return it to Walmart if it does not work.

4

I’ve used them for about 20 years or so, in every kind of tape player from car stereos to boomboxes. They work fine. I even used one in a cassette player that wouldn’t advance the tape anymore and had no problem with it. Like astro said, it’s only 10 bucks. Return it if it won’t work.

ETA - In fact, I have that exact Philips model. I highly recommend it. It’s a sturdy, well-made adapter - and quiet, too. The cheaper ones tend to make some kind of mechanical noise which can be very annoying.

5

I use one in my car a 2001 Taurus with a cassette player. The adapter works great with my I-Pod had it for three years, no problems. Well maybe not a problem but an annoyance, when there is a pause in a song or you have the time between songs set for more than 3 seconds the cassette player will think there is nothing “on the tape” and try to switch to the other side of the tape or fast forward to search for the next song.

6

Some models can be a little rattly/whirry as their empty spools spin on the machine’s heads, but that won’t bother you as long as the music’s louder than the noise. I’ve always found the sound quality pretty amazing, even on my very old, cheap car stereo.

7

I don’t remember what brand I had but when I used one back in the day, one of the channels refused to align properly so I would only get music in the right or left speaker. Or just as bad the defective channel would work intermittently. I have no idea if a different/better adapter would’ve fixed the issue - I just gave up on it altogether. YMMV

8

It could have been a problem with the head in the cassette deck getting out of alignment. I had that problem with my last cassette deck. I verified the problem was with the deck because tapes sounded the same in it. I replaced my cassette deck with a new stereo with an auxiliary jack in the front of it. I now play my iPod through the jack.

9

My truck has an old stereo with both CD and cassette players. When I first started using my iPod in the truck, I used one of those FM adapters. It sort of almost worked acceptably when staying around here (very rural - not too many radio stations on the air). When I traveled, it was a nightmare, as I had to change frequencies every time I went in range of new stations.

The cassette adapter has been fantastic. I plugged it in, and it’s been working flawlessly for probably five or six years. My only complaint is a slight tick-tick-tick noise when it’s running.

One caution: When I first started using it, I noticed that I had to turn the music up pretty darned loud to be able to hear it, and there was a noticeable hum. Then, while fumbling for something else, I hit the button that switches between side A and side B. I about got blasted out of the truck by the volume. I had accidentally set it to side B when the adapter is designed for side A use.

10

I use one in my old truck that only has a cassette deck. I bought it years ago for less than $15. I wasn’t expecting much but thought what the heck; if it works for a year it’ll be worth it; years later it is still working perfectly. Before that I had a FM adapter and that was next to worthless.

11

Just as a curiosity, is there any way other than the FM transmitter to do this if your car only has a CD player? I would imagine not…

12

Not that I know of.

When I’m in a car with only a CD player and I want to listen to my own tunes, I have a little battery-powered speaker I can use. More often, though, I’ll just use the earbuds. They give me the music without blocking my ability to hear sounds around me (like sirens or horns).

13

I used to use such an adapter for my old car (2001 PT Cruiser). The first one I bought was cheap, and the sound quality was poor. The second one was from a more well-known brand (maybe Memorex?), and it gave pretty good sound quality.

I also tried one of those FM transmitters, but the signal quality was horrible, and I stopped using it.

When I got a new car last fall (which had Bluetooth, allowing me to wirelessly play music from my iPhone), I retired the adapter.

14

There’s no actual tape, just a thing that, I think, rotates against the tape deck’s head unit.

My car is a 2006 and had a cassette and CD player - and I used such an adapter quite a lot until the cassette portion of the player simply died. There was no “aux” input to the stereo. The sound was acceptable, for audiobooks and the like; there was some background noise however. I pretty much never used it for music.

I think I had a total of two different adapters - one died and was replaced. All in all, it’s an inexpensive way of playing your iPod or whatever on the car radio.

I ultimately replaced the entire radio, when we were planning a long road trip and we really wanted to be able to play our own stuff. The new radio has USB input so I can play from my iPod directly (controlled from the in-dash unit). I could play from my phone as well but I don’t keep much music on that so I haven’t tried it.