Scosche® deckedOUT - Universal Cassette Adapter

Can't believe what I was missing out on!

Over the years, I had only owned one cassette adapter, and it was atrocious... the audio was actually OUT OF PHASE, so I never bothered with them again. Recently, my trusty ...Read complete review

Over the years, I had only owned one cassette adapter, and it was atrocious... the audio was actually OUT OF PHASE, so I never bothered with them again. Recently, my trusty FM transmitter (that was just a few months old) developed major audio issues, so I had to replace it. I actually bought a SCOSCHE transmitter that worked very well, but then I read up on the quality difference between FM transmitters and cassette adapters. Given my previous experience, I was shocked to read that people actually preferred cassette adapters when an AUX input wasn't available.

Since STAPLES has such a generous return policy (and the cassette adapter was half the price of the transmitter), I decided to give it a try. I could NOT believe the HUGE difference it made! With my FM transmitters, I always had to turn my radio all the way up and leave the iPod at max volume to get even an acceptable sound level. The SCOSCHE transmitter was a slight improvement over what I had, but with the cassette adapter, not only is the sound MUCH clearer than with the transmitter, I can leave the iPod at 3/4 volume and I still don't have to max out the volume on the radio. This leaves me some "crank it up" room on both if needed.

The only downside I can see to using a cassette adapter is that it's not silent like an FM transmitter. I'm not saying I hear it all the time, but of course every time I get in the car and turn on the radio, I hear the tape deck start up, so it's a lot like listening to an endless cassette rather than having the silence of a CD player. I can sometimes hear the soft clicking of the mechanism between songs or when listening to quiet music and stopped at a traffic light, etc. It's definitely not noisy, but I'm aware of the mechanism, which of course doesn't happen with CD. That's a very minor gripe, and the huge improvement in sound quality is well worth it. I would definitely ditch this thing if I was able to plug directly into my car's stereo system, though.

The only other thing that bothers me is the flimsy wire going from the headphone plug to the adapter. It's plenty long, and I worry that one day I'm either going to yank it right out of the adapter or snap it in half if it gets wrapped around something. I definitely need to wrap up the slack and maybe fashion some sort of strain relief for it, but it does the job for now. I saw an adapter made by MONSTER that had a much more durable cable, but it was twice the price of this one, and that thick cable probably would have bothered me as much as the thin one on this unit. Just wasn't worth the extra cost, so I guess I have to be careful with this one.