Faults re: TEAC LPR550USB CD Recorder + Cassette & Turntable

ChrisJBrady

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Please can someone advise me re: the following TEAC LPR550USB CD Recorder with Cassette Turntable faults. The turntable runs fast. I digitised a BBC Transcription Disc of folk music that was clearly marked 21 mins. I captured the output from the USB socket with Audacity on my laptop. This registered as 19.5 mins. The sound was somewhat higher pitched than expected. There is no way to adjust the turntable speed. I then checked with a strobe disc and indeed the turntable was fast. The only way to adjust the pitch of such a recording is with s/w such as Audacity - something I didn't expect to have to do. Not good.
 

ChrisJBrady

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Also I have been trying to digitise some stereo cassettes and LPs via the USB port. I used Audacity with 'Stereo Mix' to capture the digital output from the Teac onto my laptop. However I am finding that the recordings are all in mono - despite the cassettes and LPs being in stereo. In Audacity it is possible to monitor the signals and there are two green bars - one for each channel - but they move in unison - actually they both reflect the left channel. That is it is the left channel of the cassettes and LPs that gets transferred to both the left and right channels of Audacity and thus the digital recording. When I play back the recordings on the laptop using Audacity and also VLC the left channel of the original recording is prominent with the right channel just in the background. It appears that the USB port on the Teac does not support stereo - or rather it may do but it only really outputs the left channel. Audacity captures that left channel but saves the recording on both channels effectively in mono. The USB cables I use are those as supplied, and also others I have (for data transfer to/from external hard drives). Yet they do work with digital stereo because I can use the same to connect extension speakers to my laptop.
 

ifor

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ChrisJBrady said:
Please can someone advise me re: the following TEAC LPR550USB CD Recorder with Cassette Turntable faults. The turntable runs fast. I digitised a BBC Transcription Disc of folk music that was clearly marked 21 mins. I captured the output from the USB socket with Audacity on my laptop. This registered as 19.5 mins. The sound was somewhat higher pitched than expected. There is no way to adjust the turntable speed. I then checked with a strobe disc and indeed the turntable was fast. The only way to adjust the pitch of such a recording is with s/w such as Audacity - something I didn't expect to have to do. Not good.

... that you've bought something cheap and nasty and that's as good as it gets. At the price the engineering isn't going to be great.
 

Gray

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ChrisJBrady said:
Please can someone advise me re: the following TEAC LPR550USB CD Recorder with Cassette Turntable faults. The turntable runs fast. I digitised a BBC Transcription Disc of folk music that was clearly marked 21 mins. I captured the output from the USB socket with Audacity on my laptop. This registered as 19.5 mins. The sound was somewhat higher pitched than expected. There is no way to adjust the turntable speed. I then checked with a strobe disc and indeed the turntable was fast. The only way to adjust the pitch of such a recording is with s/w such as Audacity - something I didn't expect to have to do. Not good.

I see that you've tested with a strobe disc which should have put it beyond doubt, but does the turntable actually sound too fast to you when played live (using music you know well)?

Have you looked inside the turntable? If it's a low cost unit it might even have the type of DC motor that incorporates a speed adjust pot (like casstte decks had) - then you could set the speed with the strobe.

If not and short of getting a new turntable you could just experiment with Audacity record sample rates, start by going up one notch - each one has a fixed percentage effect on speed (depending how it compares with the incoming sample rate) So crude and inprecise, but you never know it could compensate exactly for the percentage of turntable error. (Unlikely!)

I suggest experimentation because I recorded some TV sound from my Freesat box via optical digital to a USB converter then into Audacity - when played back on Audacity the sound was slightly fast. The remedy was to adjust the Audacity record sample rate to be in sync with the (48kHz) that I was recording. So even though you (probably?) haven't got a digital mismatch, it's a way of adjusting the (perceived) Audacity playback speed.

With regard to your mono rec. problem: If you haven't already, try recording some other stereo USB source. Is the Audacity metering / playback then OK? If so, you've ruled out any possible Audacity settings problem.

The fact that both vinyl and tapes are affected means no problem with turntable cartridge / dirty (one channel) tape head but somehow with the

way the TEAC unit encodes the channels onto USB. (Two of the four wires in a USB lead, which you confirmed OK, are used for data and anyway a faulty lead would not cause the symptom with channel balance that you've described)
 

brownz

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Apr 9, 2015
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The enumerated USB recording device needs to be set to "2 CHANNEL, 16BIT, 48000Hz (DVD Quality)" in your Audio Recording Properties. Right click the speaker icon in your system tray (assuming windoze) find the USB Recording Device (normally enumerates as a USB Mic 2, double click and find the advanced tab and select this in the drop down box. For some reason they default to mono most of the time.
 

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