If you did a lot of cassette recording pre-millennium, chances are you’ve got piles of cassette tapes in the house, whether they’re from bootlegs you made at the local club, your own band’s garage jamming or maybe even your toddler chattering away into a microphone.

The Alesis TapeLink USB digital archiving cassette deck lets you preserve all of those memories if you want to burn them to CD, store them on a PC or listen to them on your iPod.

The TapeLink USB is a dual deck that has dubbing and playback, and connects straight to a computer via USB (and what it says is typical plug-and-play operation). The audio output comes in 16-bit, 44.1 kHz flavor so your recordings are digitized in CD-quality, and it works with metal and CrO2 cassettes.

Other features include:

• Full auto stop so your older tapes don’t break
• LED level-meter for visual level reference
• Normal and high-speed dubbing modes
• Dynamic noise-reduction circuitry

The deck includes a software suite with EZ Tape Converter, Audacity audio editing and BIAS SoundSoap SE professional noise reduction to your recordings will sound like they’ve gone through the rigors of a professional editing studio.

Alesis says the TapeLink USB is available now at musical instrument and pro audio retailers with an MSRP of $299 and estimated street price of $199.

Arlen Schweiger - Editor of Electronic House Magazine

Arlen writes about home technology installations and product news and reviews for electronichouse.com and Electronic House magazine.