A secret about Magnavox D8443...

For years I have heard that the sound is not that great on these models. I was lucky enough to find one at a thrift store but I never got around to showing it any love so it sat on my shelf.
It is true, they don't have a proper line in. You have to engage the weakest part about the box to make it work, the cassette mechanism. When you do, the sound is not too strong. But have you tried this? Bypass the cassette player altogether and use a splitter for the external mic. Play your ipod through this, make sure the button is all the way down on "EXT MIC". Find a station on short wave that makes almost no hiss at all. Try this and let me know how yours sounds. Of course it's not going to have the power of Lasonic's "Magnamod", you need a special talent for that, but it should sound pretty alright. here is a video of mine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVCjNbCNXUQ&feature=youtu.be

Cheers OSS

Hey that actually sounded alright. No distortion?

No distortion if you cut your ipod volume back to 8.
This is the splitter to use.


Cheers OSS

Man....I wish I would've known this years ago. I got rid of mine because I could not play my Ipod. Nice job man!

Genius!!!! I'll tell my buddy!

I'm going to try this this weekend!

Hi OSS,I have just a one 1/8" to 1/8" so the left side was working but your right,this works great!
I just need to get a splitter cord so I can use both sides.
Thanks for this.😎

Where can I get one of these cords? I'd like to get one.

Ghettoboom767 said:

Where can I get one of these cords? I'd like to get one.

Click to expand...

I bought mine at Radio Shack.

Cheers OSS

Thanks!

I've got one of those cables...gonna give it a try

Old school Scott said:

For years I have heard that the sound is not that great on these models. I was lucky enough to find one at a thrift store but I never got around to showing it any love so it sat on my shelf.
It is true, they don't have a proper line in. You have to engage the weakest part about the box to make it work, the cassette mechanism. When you do, the sound is not too strong. But have you tried this? Bypass the cassette player altogether and use a splitter for the external mic. Play your ipod through this, make sure the button is all the way down on "EXT MIC". Find a station on short wave that makes almost no hiss at all. Try this and let me know how yours sounds. Of course it's not going to have the power of Lasonic's "Magnamod", you need a special talent for that, but it should sound pretty alright. here is a video of mine.


Cheers OSS

Click to expand...

That's from Kristyles. One of my favorite albums. Released on my 23rd birthday.

I've just ordered one of these. I'm going to try it on a couple of non line-in boxes.

I was just jamming on some tunes with my Magnavox D8443 and I was wondering if anyone has tried this yet? What were the results?

Cheers OSS

Old school Scott said:

I was just jamming on some tunes with my Magnavox D8443 and I was wondering if anyone has tried this yet? What were the results?

Cheers OSS

Click to expand...

I told my buddy to try it. I haven't heard it myself but he said it sounds way better than the blank cassette method. Louder too I guess. Id still want to hear it for myself, but I'd assume it would be better on batteries too, not having to run the deck every time.

Yup. It works well. And yes,better on batteries. Especially good since 90% of these have non-working cassette. It picks up a bit of static when it's really windy outside.

I just tried this on a couple of my boxes, but o couldn't get it to work on the AM stations, only through the cassette setting. The RX F4 isn't very loud, but it seems on the 5085 it comes out louder and fuller through the mic in over the line in. My Sony CFS500 has no sound.

Sorry to necro this thread, but the splitter picture is a little blurry. I assume the EXT Mic inputs are 3.5mm? If so, you could add two 3.5mm male-to-RCA female mono adapters and just adapt them permanently to standard RCA inputs.

This is a great solution to the distorted Line-in circuit in D8443s, so thanks for the write-up.

Every time I've tried playing music through Mic jacks, the sound was crappy because it didn't have deep bass or crystal highs like a proper Line In would. But if you're dealing with somethng like a D8443 then I guess it doesn't matter since that box can't produce deep bass or crystal highs anyway lol.

i have owned to 8443 a few years ago but i sold them because they sounded so crappy and having no Vu metres didn`t help either it made them look boring, but i might look out for another at some point just to play around with it..