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Copy old classics to your computer
Copying music from old LPs is often more of a problem than copying from tapes as it is not possible to plug a record player directly into a computer.
The Terratec Preamp iVinyl takes away this problem by supplying the right audio connections and making sure the record player is properly grounded.
The iVinyl is designed for use with moving magnet (MM) record players but a button on the device enables it to be used with tape decks by switching to record at the line level at which tape decks output sound.
It works without needing any new drivers in Windows and there is software supplied in the form of Sound Rescue 2.1 (and Roxio CD Spin Doctor for Mac users).
Sound Rescue is used for recording the audio from the iVinyl and to remove clicks, crackle and noise. It is simple to use and a graph that shows the before and after levels is very useful for setting the correct amount of noise reduction.
There is also an option to listen to the noise being removed, which is a good way of making sure the actual music is not being deleted. Sadly, as is so often the case, the full manual is only supplied electronically as a PDF, but it is an excellent tutorial in using Sound Rescue to improve recordings.
Making recordings with the iVinyl is simple and as it appears as a standard audio device in Windows it can be used with any audio recording software, not just Sound Rescue.
There is a light to warn of distortion due to excessive volume but confusingly this is blue and the input light is red. There is also an annoying delay between the device receiving the signal and it playing on the computer. This is a problem when positioning the needle on the record.
Sound Rescue can be used with Nero, Roxio and WinonCD to make audio CDs from its recordings. In practice, we found that Sound Rescue was excellent for improving the quality of music tracks but that the free Audacity had the edge for splitting the recording into different tracks.
The quality of the recorded audio was very good, and one of the advantages of using this kind of USB interface is that the quality is consistent no matter how bad the sound card on the computer.
Also consider:
Ion USB Turntable
M-Audio Mobilepre USB
Roxio Easy Media Creator 9 Deluxe
Read more reviews
Good points:
Easy to set up
Good software supplied
Noise reduction feature works well
Bad points:
Confusing light system
Delay in recording
No printed manual
Overall: Good quality recording and editing software are only marred by the
high price tag
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iVinyl
Although I agree that this is a good product I have a number of reservations regarding instruction provided in the bundled software. In fact there are two manuals; one ?detailed? and one ?short-form?. They both deal extensively with theory but offer very little in the way of ?step-by step? guidance for the inexperienced (and we are so many?) The job of transferring your vinyl recordings onto CD is full of guesswork and ?hit or miss? events. I had hoped to read what each button is for, when passing the cursor over it but I was unpleasantly surprised. I happened to make a few recordings by sheer luck and after much effort. I am still not sure my recordings have been processed for click and noise removal! Some of the instructions are totally misleading; e.g. when I clicked on the "mixer" button the volume control box pops up but the volume slider refuses to move no matter what! One more example: No clear instructions are provided for creating tracks. All you learn from the manual is that you can delete the material left of the cursor! You are not told how to create the familiar track pattern on a CD! I could go on for hours with regard to instructions; they are actually not there! Perhaps the fact that the software publisher is German accounts for the poor English text (not poor English but poor help). To top it all, the "support" e-mail address the publishers provide is not valid and "help" messages bounce. The local distributor to whom I e-mailed my problems simply ignored me!
Posted by Vasilis Caravitis, 15 Jun 2008