When my wife’s aunt asked me to covert a couple of old LPs to Cd, I was stumped. I haven’t owned a turntable for years, so had no way to capture the old analogue sounds of yesteryear. Both LPs had never been reissued as Cds, so that was a nogo. I scanned the web for conversion services, but they seemed to be asking at least £15 an LP.
With at least two dozen old Vinyl albums in our family, that would be great to listen to again, I took the geek’s way out.
I purchased a gadget!
I settled on the ION Contour USB turntable at £49.99 from Maplins. knew that Ion had been doing these for years now, and this was the cheapest!
In the box there was the turntable, a software Cd, a very flimsy i page instruction leaflet and a USB lead.
I set up the turntable using both Mac and Windows. The hardware was very easy to set up, its all about the tools that you will use with it. The included software was worse than useless, but when matched with CD Spin Doctor on the Mac, and Spin it Again on the PC, the output was more than satisfactory.
Labelling the tracks was laborious as neither album on found using both programs in built search function. Crackles and pops were “ironed out” with in built filters.
All in all a worthwhile exercise, but factor in the cost of reasonable software (about £20) to get even reasonable results without too much hassle.
Hi,
although I do own a decent quality turntable, I was given an Ion Contour for Christmas, and the idea seems sound so gave it a whirl. However….the needle simply skates across all my (good condition) vinyl. Did you have any similar problems?
Regards,
Tom.
Hi Tom,
No I haven’t that issue, have you tried a penny stuck on the head?
I do feel the sound quality is a little tinny on this unit, and has been used where there absolutely no CD or MP3 equivalent to the lp!
Hello,
I was also bought one of these for Christmas and I’m having exactly the same skating problem as Tom. The few seconds’ worth of music before the needle shoots towards the centre of the record is also incredibly scratchy and very tinny, as you say. I’ve tried it with several excellent quality pieces of vinyl but to no avail! Back to Maplins with it – hope they’ll do a refund.
Cheers,
Matt
Hi Tom
I am in the same situation as you. Had the unit for Christmas and tried recording a couple of LPs. After a while the needle just skips tracks. I put a 5p on but this made little difference. I then put a £1 coin on and this caused the needle to strip vinyl from the track! I wondered if their was any adjustment on the arm but I can’t find any. Has anyone got any solutions?
Cheers
John
Am thinking of buying an Ion contour turntable for a birthday presant – but after reading the comments am having second thoughts…has anyone out there had any good results?
i had this brought me for xmas only just tried it today completley usless just skips across the lp’s
Hi my mum was bought one of these for Xmas and I have been converting all her old albums onto disk. It has only skipped across one LP but I found it was just because of the amount of dust that had built up on the LP. After a quick clean it was fine. The sound quality isn’t great but didn’t really expect it to be anything like CD quality. I have had some problems transfering from the “ez vinyl/tape converter” programme to iTunes and labelling each album/track is very boring! Overall its not too bad.