What is Digg?90 Comments
- robt3hpirate, on 10/12/2007, -2/+24after seeing the "inexpensive" way to turn your vinyl into digital I decided I would do some searching on the internet ( mainly amazon.com) and this thing cost about $130 roughly. now tell me this, wouldn't a more inexpensive way would be to run to a garage sale and pick up an older/hopefully working turn table and just run that into your mic port on your computer and record? no matter what if you pay 130 vs 8, you're still going to have quality loss, so.... why not go for the "super" inexpensive way? now if it cut it up into tracks and labeled them, THAT would be interesting ( i assume that shouldn't be too hard, tell the program artist - album and based on that information look in some massive storage device *cough*google*cough* and cut it up depending on that. )
- mikeyaj86, on 10/12/2007, -9/+22Because iTunes is now the only piece of audio play back software used?
- captaindan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Record players and line level inputs aren't compatible. The signal produced by a record player is much weaker than line level, so it has to be pre-amplified before it can be used with equipment that expects a line level signal.
- DeMarko, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12I have a feeling audiophiles won't be happy....hold on...audiophiles are never happy XD
- Goosemaster, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11the needle and the built in A/D converter probably sucks on this thing...
Technic 1200 + card with could a/d converter and high SNR = better than this by a MILE - matt0baba, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8never thought i would see "vinyl" and "USB" in the same sentence
- soogy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7It comes with Audacity (which is free, by the way), which can do what you're looking for.
- captaindan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9"DIRECT DRIVE = ENORMOUS AMOUNTS OF NOISE"
That may have been true thirty years ago, but modern direct drive turntables have rumble below -75dB. Maybe your direct drive would be less noisy if you turned off caps lock. - captaindan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Unless you're short on cash, don't waste your money. This turntable is junk (belt drive? please), and the "bundled" software is free. Anyone with records worth converting already has a decent direct drive turntable. Spend the money on a phono-to-line converter (unless you have a mixer with phono inputs and line level outputs, in which case you already have one).
If there's a product worth mentioning on that site, it's the iDJ: http://ion-audio.com/products/digital_mixing/idj.html - cliffzdude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I am amazed how many people have absolutely no understanding of turntables. I guess its my time in college as a DJ in the 80's that gives me insight, otherwise I'd be a digital audio child as well.
Turntables output is the output derived from a tiny little needle vibrating in the record's groove, that output is not amplified, so you need a pre-amp. A receiver with a phono input has a built in pre-amp. The phono input takes the very tiny little signal and amplifies it up to line leve, what we're used to form tape decks, cd players, and just about anything else we use today.
So, going out and buying a used turntable is a great idea, so long as you also find a pre-amp or use a receiver with phono inputs...
Ahhh vinyl, given an analog amp it still sounds so warm and lucious. I just can't handle the clicks and pops though. Back in the day, a real high end audiophile would buy a new LP, take it home, tweak their turntable for 15 minutes to make sure the settings were spot on, then fire up the reel to reel (33 IPS) and make a dub. They you'd only play the dub made on the reel to reel from then on, unti it wore out. Why? An LP with a few plays on it has almost no tics or pops, those come from wear and tear.
What a pain in the ass it was, but as you can see how much we computer geeks like to tweak there was something to be said about having something to tweak... It was just totally inconvenient! - tacom8, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6and the 1200s aren't some weak ass belt drive system with no quartz timing either.
save your money kids! - ScoTTeh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Go the Stanton ST 150's they have built in digital out.
- ProfessorRiffs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I work for a company that sells these. Over 600 are backordered, simply because they're so cheap. Good luck getting one!
p.s. Ion is the cheapest %$#t in the world. Ever. - phlux, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6FINALLY!
I inherited a rather large collection of Jazz 78 records from my grandfather. many of them have only bee playeda couple of times and have each time they were played lighted penciled onto the label (e.g. "xmas '45") - I have been looking fro somethign that will allow me to capture them to machine...
I have a 78 player from Restoration Hardware - but it doesnt have ANY outputs - jsut a built in speaker. I have had a hard time finding a 78 player with outputs so i could do this. (cheaply)
Thanks Submitter. - dkurfurst, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I am glad I saved all of my old equipment and Albums. I have been ripping my old records to MP3 / CD's for years. I am using a Technics SL-1800MK2 Direct drive studio quality turn table with an Ortofon Concord cartridge. I pipe it thru my old Pioneer Receiver -SX_3500 (which has Phono inputs) and then use the tape output on the receiver and send it to the line in on my sound card. Clean it up with a few tools and Voila! My favorite Album that I ripped was Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon Original Master Series - This album kicks Ass far superior audio quality than any CD out today! Long Live Vinyl
- BrunoTheGreat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Interesting find. The quality of Numark products varies from product to product. I have an old CDN-22 that still works quite well (even though it's at least 7 years old).
I've never heard of Ion until today, but apparently Ion=Numark
The address for Numark's world headquarters is:
Numark Industries, LLC
200 Scenic View Drive
Cumberland, RI 02864
USA
The address for Ion is:
Ion
200 Scenic View Drive
Cumberland, RI 02864
I guess Ion is Numark's economical sub-brand?
Maybe I'm just a little slow here and everybody else already knows this, but I found it interesting. - 32bitwonder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Last year I decided it was time to digitize my very small vinyl collection. After a bit of searching I managed to pick up a nice Technics turntable and preamp at a garage sale for $15.00. The turntable needed a new stylus and belt which set me back another $50 CAN or so. I've been very pleased with the sound I've been able to achieve with this setup (recording via the line in on my sound card). I can't say as to the sound quality vs this USB unit, but it proves digitizing your vinyl can be done on the cheap quite effectively.
I've since tripled my vinyl collection by finding more obscure albums at garage sales - albums that never made it to CD. This kind of searching becomes quite addictive actually. I rip the vinyl and split it into individual tracks and archive them to FLAC files on DVDs. Loads of fun. ;-) - jdog1016, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@lucas911993
Dark Side of the Moon is a great album anyway. Anyone who says that you need to buy some obscenely expensive equpment to listen to it "properly" needs to better spend that money to buy a clue. Try listening to music instead of equipment.
BTW, I collect Pink Floyd vinyl. - fyngyrz, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Anyone know if there is pop and click reduction in the supplied software? The site is pretty vague about it.
- robt3hpirate, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6I've been ripping vinyl that way for at least a year. (mainly my grandmother wants her old vinyl playable on her new stereo). I've never had that problem. I can only make speculations to your problems with the distortion it could be any of the variables of the player to the software to your input settings on your sound card, however I'd lean towards the input settings on your soundcard, by too low i assume you mean its very quiet, and distorted means its too loud, you need to find the middle ground.
- dandyhighwayman, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Any time I have tried to use the analog input to rip vinyl, it always comes out distorted or too low. At least this solves that problem.
- dandyhighwayman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3http://www.thisaremusic.com/stuff-and-things/ions-new-ittusb-is-exactly-what-it-says-it-is
Another link with a review. I am ordering one today after reading this! - Cyber_Akuma, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I remember hearing of two other Vinyl playing technologies, I wonder whatever happened to them.
One used a laser instead of a physical needle to avoid wear and tear on the record.
Another (which sadly he stopped work on early on the project) was an attempt to make a application where one would scan high-resolution images of the record then the program attempts to decode the image into sound. http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~springer/
I would have loved to see something more come out of the "Digital Needle" idea. - NicP, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2so do the numark ttx's scottie
- zbeast, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3So when is the RIAA going to sue them for creating a piracy tool :)
- coztopia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Unless you're gonna scratch, yo, save your bucks. get one of these:
http://www.project-audio.com/main.php?prod=debut&cat=turntables&lang=en
motor, belt, platter, arm and cartridge- fully manual - so your money goes into the bits that matter for sound. Will need a preamp. I got my turntable for $A350 and Cambridge Audio pre for $A110, and it's totally sweet. Recorded some of my dads 33s into CEpro and cleaned them up, came up a treat. - Waredgo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hmmmm.....
Looks familiar - http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product?sku=801258 - dandyhighwayman, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5More info:
The turntable encodes the analog signal of the turntable into a digital signal, which is then imported into whichever program you're using, in this case Audacity.
At that point you have to track it off manually and save the files to iTunes. Audacity also offers several other tools that allow you to clean up the audio, as well as normalize the levels. - ZombieFlanders, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2As long as it can transfer your tune well enough, that's all that matters bro.
- BrunoTheGreat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3If you want quality, you don't buy a $130 turntable with a built in A/D converter.
You buy a quality turntable, a quality needle, a quality audio-interface, and some quality software.
If all you want to do is convert vinyl, you don't even need anything advanced for the software, although the ability to edit the waveform to fix any flaws is nice.
Also, some people mentioned above that they always get distortion and noise when recording:
A) Don't use a regular computer sound card, especially if it's hooked up internally to the CDROM drive, these are notorious for having a ton of noise.
B) Get some quality cables and make sure they're not sitting next to power cords.
C) Make sure your stylus is in good shape and that the output of the turntable is clean.
D) Adjust your recording levels. If you're clipping.... lower the volume!
You don't need a special product to do this... and this product isn't adequate if you're at all serious about converting vinyl. - kindrobot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2My father recorded a song when he was a kid at a recording studio he was
painting and the only copy he had was on a 78, this will be great for me to
finally archive it before it turns to dust. (yeah, my dad was old when I was born)
And lucky you for having those 78s. Will you share them in some fashion
after you've ripped them? I bet you have some real classics in there. - burtonownz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Why would you want to make your vinyls digital in the first place? If you cared anything at all about preserving the sound quality and not the song, you wouldn't go near this.
- TomP, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Wonder what the RIAA would think about this :P
- Tom | http://www.tomwrote.info - GenXXX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Belt drive serves the purpose most people are going to buy this for, to record their old records. Anyone looking to do some scritchy scratchin DJ action ain't gonna be looking for some USB record player in the first place.
- Kriz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1how much are these? Damn company websites not listing the price.
- trebe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I thought this meant usb powered. Like it would get power through usb and play into your comp. Now that would be cool.
- chadell, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1That's exactly what I did with my analogue audio tapes. It did not cost anything because I used a 10 year old walkman to playback the tapes.
- dayquil, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1there is nothing inherently wrong with belt drive. just with cheap and ***** belt drive.
- iamsam, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Unlike most users I have access to a recording studio and professional audio equipment. I host a weekly show on a local community radio station. So if I wanted to transfer my old vinyl records to digital I would do the work in one of the radio production studios. I play the record and then record directly from the soundboard into the computer. Then I'd process the audio to eliminate/reduce any pops, clicks or other noise. Though its kind of a shame I got rid of most of my vinyl. ;)
- ericpp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The mic input on your computer is amplified, but it still sounds horrible. You're better off hooking it up to an amp/receiver and then hooking the amp's output to the line-in input on your computer.
- koolaide, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Pfsh. Get a Technics 1200, a Shure M44G cartridge (the ortofon concordes are good too, they just tear up your wax), and a nice preamp (cheap DJ mixer from eBay). 10x better than this.
- 4tygames, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Sorry, the player only plays 33 1/3s and 45s, not 78s. The software included on the disc allows for 78s conversion, but the record player does not actually play that speed.
To find a good record player that plays the 78 rpms, go to ebay, that's where I found mine :-) - jdog1016, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2a warmer sound != a better sound.
I personally love the sound of music on vinyl, but I also know that digital music at a high enough sampling rate (lower than most people like to think) is, to the human ear, better quality/closer to the original than vinyl, and also indistinguishable from any music of a higher sampling rate. And yes, it will also last a lot longer. - rimco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1My question is at what sample rate does it send the information? Records are an analog source that recreates the sound waves nearly perfectly, which is why they "sound better" according to some people (which I agree a bit). Since it's digital, it won't be that pristine analog sound any more... I wonder if the AUX output is analog. Shame it doesn't do 78 RPM on the turntable, since I have a really cool set of records that are 78 RPM and no record player that goes that fast.
- kickmenow, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2It is compared to this: http://www.elpj.com/
- elShaggy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I found my father's day present.
- stmiller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1USB1.1 is fine for 16bit/44.1 stereo I/O.
- bchow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@burtonownz
You need to digitalize your music to play it on the go. And if you do it right, it doesn't sound so bad.
Still, I'd not invest any money in a product like this. This is aimed at people that can't manage hooking
up a quality turntable to a computer, that's all. If you can do this, you're better off with a use real turntable
and a new needle.
This is my current approach:
I use a Technics 1210 MK 2 turntable connected to Yamaha hifi receiver (used as a phono preamp)
I use a MD recorder as an A-D converter and have that digitally connected to a USB soundcard
that supports 1:1 digital input. I use Audacity to capture the sound.
For 78 records I use a battery powered Vestax Handytrax turntable with a special 78 needle.
BTW, the sound quality you can get out of old 78s from the 50s is pretty amazing.
You would not believe it until you heard it for yourself.
BTW, while's I'm writing this, I'm actually converting LPs using above mentioned system... - pekar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0ART USB Phono Plus-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vox/101026932/in/pool-make/
This is what you want, it does all the above, with the turntable of your choice. For $60. - Cronus6, on 10/12/2007, -22/+22@ mikeyaj86: No it's not that iTunes is the only player, it's just that there had been a story with 5 comments and no one had mentioned an Apple product yet. This is Apple.com errrr I mean Digg.com and you just can't have that.
-
Show 51 - 86 of 86 discussions
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is