Black Boxes: Digisette Duo-64 Digital E-Cassette

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by Chris Raley
Winter 2001

Digisette
(973) 455-7084 [www.digisette.com]
$230

The Duo-64 Digital E-Cassette from Digisette is an MP3 player that allows you to download MP3 files or audio books from the Internet to a small cassette-tape-shaped device. You can take 64MB worth of MP3s with you to play on your car's cassette deck or you can use the device as a stand-alone. A built-in mike also allows you to use the Duo-64 as a voice recorder.

The Package
The Duo-64 comes with software, two rechargeable NiMH batteries, two chargers that double as AC adapters, headphones, a USB cord, a carrying case and silica gel.

The Duo-64 itself is the size and shape of a cassette player with a lot of control buttons and ports, considering its size. The memory card, which can store up 64MB and is expandable to 128MB, can hold up to six hours of music and 10 hours of spoken word. The Duo-64 has a file download speed of up to 2.5 megabytes per second.

Hook-up Time
Once we had the Duo Manager & Voice program, RealJukebox and Audible Manager installed, the battery charged and Duo-64 hooked up, we loaded an MP3 file from the Internet into the player with ease. To add our MP3 to our PC, we simply clicked on the file, dragged it down to the flash memory display and dropped it there. One neat Duo Manager & Voice feature was its ability to display how much memory you have total (64MB) and how much you have left, so you can judge whether or not you can work with certain files.

In the Pocket and On the Road
The Duo-64 is great when just used as a separate player. Its size means you can slip it into your pocket and cruise to tunes with ease. The sound is clear and sharp, even through the supplied headphones, and pressing the play button while in operation allowed us to toggle through the EQ settings.

In addition to its use as a stand-alone player, you can unplug the headphones and attach the Duo-64 to your auto tape deck. Accordingly, you can adjust the EQ with your own stereo. This worked without a hitch. The only drawback to using it in your tape deck is that if you want to skip a track, you have to take the player out, press fast-forward and put it back in.

We also discovered that you can hook up the Duo-64 to your stereo tuner. Simply plug the male end of an audio cord into the headphone jack, and left and right into the CD slot on your tuner, and you're set.

Finally, we tried the voice recorder. We simply slid the top switch to "record" and held the play button down for a couple of seconds to activate the recorder. When we were done recording, we pressed stopped, moved the top button to "on" and listened to the playback.

The Duo-64 from Digisette is a great little player. Aside from the minor drawback in tape deck use, you won't hear any complaints from us.

SMART SPECS