USB turntable

[bemahler1]

Have a usb turntable I can download onto the computer (Acer m1610) using Audacity but will only play back in mono, have spoken to the tecno guys at Acer who inform me that that the way it is, can't believe that so can anybody help.

 

[John Duncan]

Neither can I. What table have you got so I can get a bit more informed?

 

[Anonymous]

Can I jump in here too?

What is the best USB turntable to get?

I have so much rare 12" stuff I'd love to put on digital but I want it to be good quality.

Thanks in advance

 

[bemahler1]

Hi JD. It's a Jammgear, nothing expensive, thought it would do the job, as I have over 500albums but not much good in mono, although the Audacity does get rid of a lot of the surface clicks and chip shop noise, still if I can't get it to do the job that I bought it for, I will have something to play my LPs on.

 

[Anonymous]

Well the turntable is certainly stereo.

Can you check whether you have set up Audacity correctly? I believe its default setting is mono, so you have to change it stereo before you start. See here:

http://www.audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Transferring_tapes_and_records_to_computer_or_CD

Specifically this bit:

Setting up Audacity

1) Go to the Audio I/O tab of Preferences and set both the playback and recording devices explicitly to your inbuilt sound or to the computer sound device your cable is plugged into. Do NOT select "Microsoft SoundMapper" on Windows machines.

2) If you want to record in stereo, change the recording channels on the same Audio I/O tab to "2 (stereo)".

 

[The_Lhc]

Sounds like cobblers to me, the turntable is stereo so there's no reason why it should be mono, unless you've got an option within Audacity set to record in mono. I don't know why the Acer people are saying anything to be honest, it's not their software and it's not their turntable, the PC is virtually irrelevant in this instance.

I'm using a Pro-ject Debut II turntable into Pro-ject's USB Phono stage and recording with DBPowerAmp's auxiliary input convertor. It doesn't do any kind of clean-up operation, so you'll need to make sure the vinyl is clean but it works pretty well and encodes into FLAC.

It has an auto-detect function for starting and finishing tracks but this obviously doesn't work with continuous recordings like Queen's A Night at the Opera and it can have trouble with badly recorded albums, such as Eli "Paperboy" Reed's debut, which is such a poor quality recording the noise level never drops low enough for it to detect the gaps, which is bluddy irritating. There's no technical problem, I recorded another album straight after giving up on that one and it was fine, so it's just the recording.

 

[The_Lhc]

tractorboy:Well the turntable is certainly stereo.Can you check whether you have set up Audacity correctly? I believe its default setting is mono, so you have to change it stereo before you start.

That's pretty dumb, surely the default should be stereo, vinyl's been stereo for longer than it was mono!ÿ

 

[Anonymous]

Capitan:Can I jump in here too?

What is the best USB turntable to get?

I have so much rare 12" stuff I'd love to put on digital but I want it to be good quality.

Thanks in advance

 

[John Duncan]

Yup, just opened audacity and it defaults to mono!

 

[bemahler1]

As they say, been there done it and still no luck, maybe I should give up, I think my brain has given up till tomorrow.