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USB turntables: yay or nay

M

mcdonougha

Member
Lately I've been trying to figure out if these USB turntables are any good. Obviously they plug directly into your computer so you can record your vinyl easier. My question is are these turntables any good and do they do what they're made to do effectively. I'll never quite buying my vinyl but this may be an option to help preserve my collection.
 
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mcdonougha said:
Lately I've been trying to figure out if these USB turntables are any good. Obviously they plug directly into your computer so you can record your vinyl easier. My question is are these turntables any good and do they do what they're made to do effectively. I'll never quite buying my vinyl but this may be an option to help preserve my collection.
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Nay. All that I've seen are junk.

There are much better ways to do this at about the same cost. Namely, getting a good used vintage turntable, a modestly priced decent cartridge and downloading some open source freeware software programs (like Audacity) to record them into your computer. You can buy a fancier audiophile grade phono preamp, or just use the phono section of an old receiver and record out of the line-outs. Even the most jury-rigged system such as this would outperform the hunks of plastic with a usb cable that I've seen.
 
Sansui Louie said:
Nay. All that I've seen are junk.

There are much better ways to do this at about the same cost. Namely, getting a good used vintage turntable, a modestly priced decent cartridge and downloading some open source freeware software programs (like Audacity) to record them into your computer. You can buy a fancier audiophile grade phono preamp, or just use the phono section of an old receiver and record out of the line-outs. Even the most jury-rigged system such as this would outperform the hunks of plastic with a usb cable that I've seen.
Click to expand...

I agree with Sansui Louie.
Depending on your budget, another option is to use an Alesis Masterlink HD recorder and record at 24/96.
 
mcdonougha said:
Lately I've been trying to figure out if these USB turntables are any good. Obviously they plug directly into your computer so you can record your vinyl easier. My question is are these turntables any good and do they do what they're made to do effectively. I'll never quite buying my vinyl but this may be an option to help preserve my collection.
Click to expand...

Don't waste your money on the junk that is out there. :thumbsdn:
 
Look at the price....

Consider that one of the hallmarks of a half-way decent table is that it has some mass, at least in the platter...

You can lift these things with one hand....

Either go the receiver route as recommended or there is this, which I am considering getting:

http://www.enhancedaudio.com/dc_seven.htm

I think there may be a DC 8 by now, not sure.

Best,
C.
 
I might also add that whatever you use, consider the quality of your soundcard into the mix. If it's 'whatever came with your computer', consider an upgrade.

Or, maybe you'll find (like I did) that you'll fall in love with vinyl all over again and say 'the heck' with converting it to a digital format. This is what originally got me back into vinyl several years ago...a project to convert a rare album of my father's (Music for Non-Thinkers - The Guckenheimer Sour Kraut Band) to CD.
 
The USB TTs that I've seen are junk.

A reasonable sound option that should make recording easy and playback decent is Hagerman's ripper. hagtech.com
 
Currently USB players are still in their novelty marketing stage for the general public. The more serious equipment will follow. I found it is best to use the line input on the sound card. I also found gold plated cables (keep them short and thick) are the best to use. But to obtain the best reproduction recording it should be done as a WAV file and played back from a WAV file. WAV files are none compressed files and are large but they have 0 loss. MPG, MPG3, And CDA are compressed files which lend themselves to be able to store a lot of DATA in a small space making them ideal for mobile and portable play back devises. The trade off is quality, WAV large file high quality no loss, but can't be played on mobile or portable players, all other file formats are small files that can be played back on most devices at the expense of quality.
 
If it has to be USB, then how about the one by Audio-Technica? At least they've been in the cartridge business for a long time.
 
Blah! Blah, I Say!

It's weird but Turtle Beach Sound Cards are now cheap compared to the gamer-centric sound cards and they are perfect for this application. I had one in my PC and just bought a Y-cable to pipe music from the Sansui G8000 into the card. It knew how to level it. I didn't adjust a thing. Booted up a software package, GoldWave or some other software, and only changed the settings to max out bit rates. The quality was impressive. I duped some Greek folk music and Rembetico music from ancient cassette tapes and records. I like the fact that the card was designed for music applications and sounds tremendous with headphones when I want to listen to a video news clip from a blog or a piece of music that's been mailed to me as a sound file. The bonus is that it just knows what to do with a signal from a line out without any effort from me to mediate the transmission whenever I want to digitize some analog music.

Peter

mcdonougha said:
Lately I've been trying to figure out if these USB turntables are any good. Obviously they plug directly into your computer so you can record your vinyl easier. My question is are these turntables any good and do they do what they're made to do effectively. I'll never quite buying my vinyl but this may be an option to help preserve my collection.
Click to expand...
 
I must plead guilty to personal bias when I recommend to bypass every thing ( maybe not a preamp; depends on cartridge out put voltage) and use a RCA to mini plug adapter (gold of course) and plug directly into the sound card and then use Nero Wave Editor or SoundForge. In the source box of your editing software you can pick line or sound card mixer. Then use the filters to clean things up, next cut and paste to separate tacks, add start and end dead sound between track, add a pinch of effects to taste and then burn a CDA that will play back on all CD players. Or leave as a wav. file for 0 loss 100% reproduction. Or!!!
And here is where guilt by omission happened. I own an old Dazzle DVC80 interface card, one of the first. It is made by Pinnacle a long time expert in optical storage devices for graphic houses. My Dazzle 80 is like using a stone axe to fall a tree and that is why I did not mention it. The current Dazzle product are fantastic. My interface has RCA audio and Composite video inputs on onside and a analog to digital converter chip in the middle with a USB2 out put connecter after. It will do audio, video, stereo, and you can out put to audio and video tape also. It comes with there own famous Hollywood Software program (the bundle version) with which is a full AV editing and burning package. There is no reason to buy a USB turn table. You guys have the best TT's ever made and all you need is to ad the interface between your TT and your computer ( the turn table people are doing the same and are up charging and have limited use). You can also get Bluetooth and WYFI versions. Happy BackUPs!!!
 
Didn't Vinyl Anachronist say in an article there is going to be an audiophile USB turntable available fairly soon? I myself have my stereo connected to my PC via the tape out, Monster Cabled to the sound input on my tower and use Audacity set at 32-bit float and they sound pretty good to me. :banana:
 
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