daniel robert chapman wrote:I just wonder about the cost; I bet you could get a better quality second hand turntable for less than this will hit you for. I think they're around £125 in the UK - so that's heading towards $250 over your way? It's a lot of money, to me, especially if it comes with what is basically free software.

Currently $150 US at Amazon, and most other places where I've seen it.

Braden wrote:http://www.hagtech.com/ripper.html

I hear you, Braden. But that's too much dough at this time.

Mike Greenlees wrote:Thanks for the responses. All are helpful.

My existing turntable is a 15 year-old, bottom-of-the-barrel Technics. I doubt this UBS one is worse. NuMark sells the same exact piece with their brand on it...aren't they somewhat reputable?

Ion/Alesis/Numark/AKAI are all part of the same company.

I have received one of these turntables for Christmas, from our roommate. I haven't opened the box yet but I'm planning on recording the raw wavs to my HD and editing them slightly in Soundforge. I have no existing turntable and I'm smart enough not to use Audacity.

Hopefully, this will result in some quality recordings. We shall see.

I also got one of these for Christmas and am looking to messing around with it a bit when I get the chance. It looks very cheap though and am not expecting much.

I also received one of these, and I have this to say:

It seems as if they intentionally went out of their way to make this somewhat of a PAIN IN THE ASS if you just want to LISTEN to a record play over the computer's speakers, using the USB connection for the turntable.

I have a slightly better turntable and associated gadgets at home that I intend to use when I want to "rip vinyl to CD"... What really appealed to me about this Ion iTTUSB Turntable was that I wanted to have an additional "cheap" turntable that I could just plug straight in to my laptop via USB, because the laptop soundcard(?) OF COURSE only has a 1/8" 'mic' input...

(I'm envisioning the possibility of using this in my cubicle at work, y'see!)

I plugged in this Ion iTTUSB Turntable... it was automagically detected by XP... I even read the bit in the manual about making sure to go into the Windows control panel to appropriately select my recording and playback devices.

I could not get the sounds from the turntable to play straight through to the laptop speakers.

I did notice though that using GoldWave, I could record from the turntable and then play back what I had just recorded... so I knew signal was getting from the turntable to the laptop - but I could not get it routed directly to the damn speakers for some reason...

I hesitated to install the Audacity software, because I already was used to GoldWave, and I thought it would just be redundant...

BUT - as I got to reading around on the Internets... a few other people were having the same problem I was having...

Well... I haven't given up on this yet - there has to be a better way... but for now I offer this workaround, to possibly save a few of you the aggravation:

1) Install Audacity, then go into its Edit->Preferences menu and within the 'Audio I/O' tab, check the box labeled 'Software Playthrough'

2) When you want to *JUST LISTEN* to a record, fire up Audacity and hit record, then just hit pause.

I think this sucks, but it was the only way I could get this to make noise straight through the speakers.

(If you have a computer with a real soundcard and a "line in" jack, then you shouldn't have to worry about this - just make sure you are set to "line in" on the switch underneath the turntable and use the RCA outputs with adapter/cord that goes to 1/8" stereo)

That brings me to the one problem I've had so far - upon opening the box, there are no RCA outputs on this thing. I have contacted Ion, and hopefully they will tell me what's what.-

ironyengine wrote:That brings me to the one problem I've had so far - upon opening the box, there are no RCA outputs on this thing. I have contacted Ion, and hopefully they will tell me what's what.-

Mine came w/ RCA outputs.

I got this as a gift and I like it, just using to make digital copies of records for cds/ipod, the sound quality is surprisingly decent, plan on getting a better cartridge for it. I didn't have any expectations for it other then as a simple means for making copies of records, certainly I wouldn't use it as my primary turntable.

I think this will serve me well for making decent copies of my perfectly fine vinyl records to listen to in the car or on the ipod.

Arson Smith wrote:It seems as if they intentionally went out of their way to make this somewhat of a PAIN IN THE ASS if you just want to LISTEN to a record play over the computer's speakers, using the USB connection for the turntable.

..


I did notice though that using GoldWave, I could record from the turntable and then play back what I had just recorded... so I knew signal was getting from the turntable to the laptop - but I could not get it routed directly to the damn speakers for some reason...

Forgive me, I'm away from the windoze right now, and I'm not directly familiar with this piece of equipment... But, usually with audio interfaces, you just go to control panel -> sound and then there should be an advanced tab or something, that activates a crappy mixer type thing. You can mute/unmute different inputs like mic, line, cd. If you want the turntable input channel to always be unmuted you should be able to do it there. Could be wrong since I've never used your equipment..