I would discourage buying this, these cheap turntables use a plastic platter that is rarely level/flat. When the record spins, the needle will dig into the record destroying the vinyl.
Most of these things will function over Audacity.
Not that I’d let this touch any of my LPs with a 10-foot pole.
I don’t, and I was listening critically. It’s good enough - really - for quick copies of scratchy records. I still have my old direct drive 1.5-gram tracking pretty good for its time turntable, so I can be critical. But I don’t move that system around. That old turntable better be better than this.
But with this, I can bring thrift shop finds or my old scratchy records into the garage (and leave them there) and play them and record to laptop right there on this, and I am not disappointed. Sure, a transfer can be done in much better ways but this is OK enough.
What I did hear is if it is USBed into my laptop and its speakers are turned up as loud as it can go, the turntable speed gets slow. Not too surprising. So for transferring to laptop, the volume has to be kept low. I never tried with the desktop computer USB power. With the AC phone charger USB port, to just play through its speakers, the speed does not get slow.
This is usable, it is even fun. If it was junk I would say so here!
Speakers BUILT INTO a turntable?
LOL
Tinfoils
Oh wow, Nobody ever has clickable pictures. Sorry for being presumptuous.
This piece of junk is an insult. Woot should refund the $21 to each fool that falls for this destroyer of vinyl. Ceramic cartridges were designed 80 years ago for 78rpm shellac records.
I’m sure the Chinese manufacturer used a ceramic cartridge not only because it’s cheap, but it also doesn’t require the pre-amp that a magnetic cartridge requires. Either way, I value my vinyl collection more than saving a few bucks on this, so I’m out!
There are some that feel that newer is never better than old.
So they put up with listening to all the flaws of vinyl, some going so far as to only using 1920’s technology vacuum tube amplifiers to do so. The funny thing is, they claim that vinyl sounds BETTER. (Laughable and measurably not so.) Guess they just love that rumble and hiss of the needle following the vinyl track, and popping every time it collides with yet another piece of dust. (Plus the skipping, warped records, etc. etc.)
Some folks also prefer to use a kick starter on their motorcycles, a pull rope on their boat motors, and probably still have a rotary dial phone. And will insist that each is more reliable because there’s “less to go wrong”.
Whatever.
The funny thing is, the same “analogue purists” don’t prefer to watch VHS tapes over DVD & Blu-Ray. They don’t prefer the snow and “ghosting” of (now defunct) analogue Television either. So why they hold on to the belief that vinyl is better is beyond me. But I suppose as with so many other things… blind faith often trumps facts.
To be quite frank with you, you are correct that using some older equipment is folly due to the fact that the outdated equipment has very little benefit to it, or many detriments, but as far as vinyl goes, you have to understand that everything is compressed, not matter what the format. People might argue that vinyl is not compressed because it is pressed from a master taken directly off of the original tapes, but there is physical compression. 1920’s tube class A technology has been outstripped by Class AB amplification technology where the AB amplifiers are are operating in Class A all the time at a much greater power efficiency than tubes. But, you cannot say that MP3 is better than vinyl. Oh sure, if you didn’t take care of your records and are using crappy equipment, your records will have surface noise, pop, and hiss. Correctly preserved records DO NOT pop, or hiss. And to say that vinyl is not MEASURABLY better than MP3’s, I have no clue what measuring equipment you are using. I will admit that high resolution .flac files and the sound files found on blu-ray now outstrip the quality of sound producible through Vinyl, but even CD’s at their finest were missing data compared to Vinyl. Vinyl is still around because it is a CHEAP method of producing decent sounding recordings. It might not be portable. It might not be pretty, but it does a damn good job relative to most formats. Rumble and hiss are inaudible with a good enough stylus, isolation, and pressing.
Last thing, we can never forget that what truly determines the limit of the sound which we hear is the ORIGINAL STUDIO MASTERING. The quality of the format CANNOT outstrip the quality of the original mastering. Sure you can have a greater sampling rate, but that doesn’t mean it will improve an already crappy master. It will sound just as crappy as it was originally.
From what I have read in other reviews this player does NOT play 78 rpm records.
The other points made included the statements by some that contrary to what it says on the box it does not include “(2) Spare Cartridge / Needle“ and that the drivers come on a mini-cd.
If you are looking to convert vinyl to digital, then this is an inexpensive option
Some of my vinyl that I play is worth 10 times as much as this including shipping. Most of it 2-4 times as much as this costs. I don’t trust anything this cheap. Even if you just want to import your vinyl to your computer this will have such a cheap preamp built in and such poor components you will lose out on the fidelity gains of an uncompressed format like an LP. Not worth it, unless you aren’t an audiophile and in that case why are you buying or storing your LP’s now anyways instead of downloading average quality mp3’s or buying cd’s?
Any decent entry level turntable that will give you good sound will likely have the USB functionality. If you want to play records do it right, save up for a proper turn table with proper amplification and some decent speakers. It will cost more than 15-100 dollars but it is still obtainable, make it a delayed gratification purchase not an impulse buy.
I also am a child of the late 70’s, and I know quite a few people with vinyl. The reasoning is this: Vinyls were exact replicas of the original recordings (and still usually are), as they are both analog. The recordings recorded every moment in time, no lapse. They have a very distinctive sound quality to them. Cassette tapes came along, and they were more convenient, but were lacking in specific sound qualities, and the sound degraded greatly as the tape did. Then CD’s came about. This is a conversion of analog to digital, and in the conversion, the original intent of the artist is lost. Then came Mp3’s. They take and condense the long strands of musical data on a cd into shorter format. Basically, they can skip infinitesimal parts of the music and have nobody obviously notice, however a great deal of the original quality is lost. The benefits to digital is that the sound can be preserved forever, and the clarity is much improved. Many feel that this clarity comes at the cost of the soul of the music. In the end it is a personal decision. It is as much about preserving the art itself as it is making it perfectly presentable.
You are comparing a bad vinyl experience to the best or at least an average CD (or whatever your newest technology might be) experience. Vinyls can produce excellent sound under certain conditions, just like scratched CDs can produce annoying skips under some conditions.
Vinyls do use compression. Lower frequencies can not be “dug” into the vinyl due to the size and depth limitations of the grooves. So, their amplitude has to be reduced. A typical record player must amplify back the lower frequencies, so that an approximation of the original recording can be produced. Even though this amplification (referred to as RIAA emphasis) is pretty well defined, some cheap pickup amplifiers do not do a good job and give out crappy sound.
On the other hand, the new technology allows engineers to pull all sorts of tricks, which generally lead to artificial sounding tracks that lacks the depth and warmth of the original sound.
Different technologies have their pros and cons. So, yes, there will always be those people who prefer old vinyls and vacuum tube amplifiers because they offer a measurably different sound experience, which could be better or worse for your taste, but always different…
…yes…speakers built into a turntable, or what we used to call a “record player”.
Now get off my lawn you hooligans!
This makes sense! So another question, are vinyls still being made for current music? It seems as though recording in analog and transferring to analog would preserve the listening experience (as long as such equipment and media were well maintained). Is it possible to record digitally instead? It would seem with the digital audio technology that we have and the ability to enhance audio, digital would be the way to go, transferring digital to digital presents no quality loss and preservation being limitless.
It seems that MP3 has its flaws, as well as CD’s, however someone mentioned earlier audio files on Blu-Ray, might this be the future of digital recording?
Bingo! I’ve got some old 78’s that I’ve wanted to digitize and this may be the key.
I’ve got a Peachcrate FULL of vinyl LP’s that I last played when I was in college, which is coming on 30 years ago. I’ve replaced many of my old favorites with cd long ago, and there are probably more than a few gems that would be fun to convert. I’m personally hardly concerned about playing any of these records on even the cheapest ceramic needle given that I’d otherwise not be playing any of these records until the day I die. I’ll be ordering one of these if only for it’s cheap “utility” purpose.
For a turntable that is clearly described as “not for audiophiles, vinyl nerds or DJ’s” we are getting an abundance of comments from that group. Back down D.J. Spinsalot and Capt. Waxtrak.
I used to own one of these.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&ved=0CFgQtwIwBQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DAAKZ-O70wNg&ei=Gy8NUNrPF4XK2AXz1LUe&usg=AFQjCNGRYYgjAQBUzKlQ3MJo_qrOunZNOQ&sig2=u7RUpS2bHdQNk_QpNKyQLQ
Most, if not all, of the studio recording are in digital today. Making an exact copy of an analog recording is very difficult. An analog signal has infinite number of levels. So instead, we limit the number of analog levels, give each level a name, and call it digital. As a result, the analog signal becomes a series of numbers, which will be very easy to copy.
The reason we use lossy formats in our players is not because we don’t have a better one. We currently do have lossless digital formats but they take lots of storage space, and therefore not very popular. As digital storage becomes more affordable, the popular formats may naturally change to take advantage of that. So, the answer to your question is “who knows”?