The Ion USB Turntable has got to be one of the funnest toys I’ve gotten in a while. Picked it up at Costco for $119…snoozed and should have grabbed it with the online coupon and saved $20 a few weeks ago but that’s just a side bar. With a couple of large tubs of old vinyl that I never purchased the CD replacement for I can finally back them up and enjoy them on the trusty MP3 Player or convert to CD for the car. Such a deal in the recording capital of the world.
What you get is a turntable that plugs into your USB port. Load in the Audacity sound studio software that is included and pick up a lame.dll (or similar for mac) on their website and you can convert it all effortlessly into MP3. This is the first affordable way to do it I have found…and its almost in one package. The added boner to it all is that there are RCA in jacks so even the older 8track player and 8tracks I have out there can also be converted into MP3 through this whole process…but do I have the energy to dig through all that stuff? At least its fun having the original old music on while I get my other work done.
That’s weird and kinda cool that they would package it with the open source Audacity software, it’s a good simple program for editing audio files, and it works on Linux as well.
Nice price. I don’t know if it’s the same manufacturer but I saw a similar set up in either a Sharper Image or Hammacher Shlemmer catalog for $189. I was tempted at that but now I’m much more so.
I have a similar tub of vinyl. My biggest gripe is the time it takes. Having switched to digital, I’m so used to everything taking such a short time now. :)
Numark also makes a nice USB Turntable.
My favorite computer audio toy is the Plusdeck. It’s expensive, the manual is in Hong Kong made-up english, but it rips tapes right to MP3.
yup…its not instant on and rip like we’re used to, but its actually kind of fun sorting through the old albums. Oddly…they have a sound that somehow is different. I like it. Ask me next week when I’ve gone through 50 or more albums if I think the time taken still has its charm or not.
Seems to me like you’re better off with a nice, high end turntable (technics 1200) and a choice audio card / interface. As long as you’re ripping @ 24 bit, 96khz you’ll get every peak and valley in that vinyl.
If you don’t have a nice turntable and sound card, this is certainly the way to go.
Ah…eecue you hit it, and lest you forget I’m a cheap mofo on somethings and this is the best I’ve found so I can save my money for other indulgences.
I just started to convert my cassett tapes to CD
using this software called “Golden Records”
tape to CD program, it works great, my only compliant is that CD’s only hold a lously 80min
of music so I have to split some of the songs
on two CD’s but I like it.