My brother-in-law has a large collection of vinyl LPs, and my sister was considering buying him this, which, according to the description, plays and converts vinyl recordings to MP 3 files.
The B-I-L, however, while not a technophobe exactly, is certainly a non-geek and would not use the thing if it’s not pretty simple and straightforward.
Do any Dopers have experience with one of these critters? How easy are they to use? Having dabbled a little with vinyl conversion, I imagine the really time-consuming and/or complicated part is cleaning up the recording.
I can recommend it as a decent turntable, although I know nothing about the software that comes with it. There really isn’t one software solution for vinyl restoration that doesn’t cost several hundred dollars and requires fairly extensive knowledge of recording and restoration techniques. That takes you into geek territory. I imagine it would do an alright job, if you go easy on the settings. It’s easy to go overboard with the noise reduction, which leaves ithe recording sounding unnatural and the NR has audible artifacts the more you use. If the BIL is not picky, it’s probably an OK solution to get from one format to the other. The software has most likely been made accessible by even novices. It’ll require some experimentation to find the right settings, and each record will be different. If BIL is a patient guy, he’ll get some usable results. I say go for it.
(Vinyl restoration is my hobby, and sometimes my business.)
David Pogue, a technology columnist for the New York Times, mentioned another similar product in his column of November 1. It’s the Ion iTTUSB Turntable with USB Record, which is $138 at Amazon.com.
My SO’s mother has the LP to CD burner that is showing up on side bar of your link. It’s a stand alone unit that plays the LP and burns it to a CD. She is also a non-geek, and the instructions were good enough for her to figure out on her own.
If your BIL doesn’t necessarily need MP3s, but wants to transfer LPs to CDs, you might want to look at that one.
Would there be any problem with converting the CDs to MP3s later?
I’m vaguely looking for a similar solution for cassette tapes. The computer Q&A columnist in the Times had an item a while back on something you plugged the audio out of a stereo into and which converted it to a USB output for ripping MP3s from. (I don’t have the saved column handy.) Anyone have experience with this? I have a few LPs that might be nice to record, but not enough to buy a new turntable for.
If you have a LP turntable or cassette player, you can plug the output into a sound card which is standard issue for any computer these days. (A turntable would have to go thru a preamp for EQ.)