Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re like a lot of people who fondly remember the days of mix tapes, you probably still have a lot of old audio cassettes lying around, slowly deteriorating over time, crumbling into dust. If you’re like most people who have memories of those audio cassettes, you’ve always meant to do something about it but never really figured out what. 

Now Thanko, makers of strange and unique USB gadgets, has unveiled the Cassette Mate, which looks a lot like an old cassette player or Walkman, is about the same size, but when connected to your computer will rip the music from your audio cassettes and save it in MP3, WMA, or WAV formats. 

Admittedly, if you’re pulling music from an audio cassette and you’re worried about audio quality, file format may not be the first thing you worry about, but the important thing is usually to get the recording into a digital format and then you can work with it. 

The device does have some features in addition to ripping your audio: it will split tracks for you and allows you to pop in 2 AA batteries if you actually want to listen to those tapes on to go. Otherwise you’ll need to connect it to your computer via USB. The Cassette Mate is currently only available in Japan for the equivalent of about $35 USD. 

[via Wired]