Lotsa noise, unpredictable spot, USB turntable

[steve]

The fact that I could buy an ION turntable, complete with tone arm, sylus, cartridge, A/D converter and USB connector, for less than I paid for my last cartrdge, suggests that perhaps they skimp a little on some of the less important details such as build quality, customer support and quality control.

I bought a new ultra cheap DVD player about a year and a half ago - unpacked it from the box and it didn't work. So I took it back and got it replaced. The replacement lasted just over a year. Personally, I was reasonable satisfied. While it was working, it worked well, and there is no guarantee that if I spent 6 times the price I would have got one that would last 6 times longer.

For many people that buy these cheap USB turntables, they are not looking for a masterpiece of enginering, but rather something that will do an acceptable job in getting a few old vinyls onto CD, and there are probably many thousands of satisfied customers. On this forum, we mostly hear from the people that have problems.

I think that it would be most interesting to try out some of these turntables that have intermittent or oddball problems on a computer that is know to work with a USB turntable, just to see how many times the problem lies with the turntable. Certainly if I had as many difficulties as some folk on this forum, I would send it back and get a replacement. Retail outlets for these products do not have the facilities for fault finding. They are not interested in trouble shooting, they are just interested in shifting boxes, and if they need to exchange a unit for the sake of a happy customer, then I think they should be willing to do so. (possibly a good reason to buy from a local outlet rather than the cheapest price on the internet).

I've never been a great fan of USB as they are prone to all sorts of strange problems, but having said that, I have a Behringer UCA202 which I've used with Audacity and it's always worked like a dream.

[kozikowski]

Pretty much.

It's the worst of all possible digital situations. It's conditionally stable. That old digital saw that it's "either on or off" isn't entirely true. There is an ambiguous zone and if you manage to live in that zone, you get things that work only on Thursday and as long as you don't try to transfer Glenn Miller. Artie Shaw works perfectly, not Glenn Miller. This gives you pages and pages of nonsense symptoms. "If I stand on my left foot..."

The client invariably only wants it to work perfectly right now, but I've found that I can get a long way to a solution by forcing it to break---or make it worse on cue. I can get a lot of mileage out of knowing that a gaussian blur calculation in Photoshop will make a turntable capture fail--perfectly--every time (that's an example).

I once wrote a thing for the video forums about "forbidden things." Your computer will not instantly melt down into a steaming pile of rubble if you try to do live video from a FireWire drive. Your computer will, however, become a little less stable. If you insist on doing a lot of those little things at the same time, your computer will stop being useful (see: steaming pile).

It would appear that the moons and stars have to almost all line up for these turntables to make it through your entire vinyl collection. This kills the Mac people because they don't have a lot of optimization to do.

But they have the analog option.

http://audacityteam.org/forum/viewtopic ... 8840#p8840

Koz

[steve]

Since you've been around this forum so long koz, you may be interested in posting your opinion in this topic:
http://audacityteam.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=2462

[silverface]

Well, I hate to rain on the ION-bashing parade, but I recently got a USBTT 05 - and it works great. Sometimes. If I use Audacity 1.2.x under Leopard by about the third song the distortion starts. I thought it was dust or something, but no.

I quite Audacity, restarted - immediate distortion.

I rebooted, restarted audacity - problems solved, but only for 3 songs or so again. Every time a reboot is required.

However -

With EZ Audio Converter I have zero problems. I prefer Audacity because of the extensive features I can use to "fix" my old vinyl - but the problem is software, not hardware guys. Rebooting doesn't fix funky USB connections - it cleans up lousy code that's clogging memory.

I read the post where developers feel it's time to "give up" on 1.2.x with USB systems. What? IMO that's a pretty lame attitude. The problem is with Audacity - so fix it.

[waxcylinder]

I read the post where developers feel it's time to "give up" on 1.2.x with USB systems. What? IMO that's a pretty lame attitude. The problem is with Audacity - so fix it.

Silverface,

no it's not really a "lame attitude" - I would guess that it's a pragmatic decision made by the software developers. All software development shops face similar issues when thay have bugs in older versions of software. The choice is usually fix it in the latest version - or provide patches to lash-up the older software. If they choosethe latter , they then also have to do the former - which means thay are supporting two different variants. The choice that the Audacity vounteers will have made that it was impractical to patch 1.2 (too much effort, too hard to do, attempted fix did not work, any number of reasons ....).

It certainly seems to be fine in the beta versions of Audacity 1.3.x - and despite the "unstable" label that this releases has - the latest versions of 1.3 are in fact pretty stable. 1.4 is currently being worked on (based on 1.3.5) and should be released soonish.

WC

[steve]

If the problem is with the software, then how is it that some people use ION TTUSB with Audacity and don't have problems?

I'm not laying any blame here, I just want to understand why we have this erratic performance with USB turntables and Audacity 1.2.

BTW silverface, Audacity is an open source project, so if you or anyone else knows how to fix these problems, you are welcome to do so. How about someone from ION coming up with a fix? Considering they package Audacity software with their product, it would certainly improve their reputation if they did.

[kozikowski]

<<<that's a pretty lame attitude.>>>

You probably downloaded the wrong one. Everybody does that. Make sure you know which version of Audacity you have and which processor then read this:

http://audacityteam.org/help/faq?s=inst ... m=lame-mp3

Koz

[mikelake1]

I just bought an ION USB turntable, with Audacity software. I've been trying it with 1.2.5, and also downloaded the new 1.3.3 Beta, with a brand new MacBook 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X 10.5.1.

Using either version (completely independently of each other) I'm finding that sometimes the vinyl records fine but often a whole load of interference kicks in ruining the recording. It happens using either software, and seemingly completely randomly. Sometimes a track records properly, and sometimes it doesn't. I've managed to get a whole 20 minute LP side to record properly, and tied again and it DOESN'T work; sometimes the interference kicks in somewhere on the side, sometimes it doesn't; same thing on a 7" single side too. All other programs are quit. I can find no correlation between a side working and recording properly or not recording properly. What's going on? Very annoying and unacceptable.

Reading through the various posts it seems that I should try and use the phono outputs from the turntable and use the Radio Shack connector that is mentioned and plug it into the appropriate hole in the side of the MAc? Yes?

[kozikowski]

You understand you posted a question clear at the bottom of a three-part stack of postings and dialog. The only people who are going to see it are the couple of us who come down here by accident. I would totally start a new thread with the question and give everybody a shot at it.

Koz

[yoyodoesvegas]

Currently running a mac pentium and i am and trying to use a STANTON T90 USB turntable the software provided is a windows platform so i have downloaded version 1.2.5. How do i get the deck to play through the mac it only works when i start recording and it would seem i have the same problem as you guys as regards intermitent distortion.I will soon be running 'Parrallels" which allows the running of windows on mac has anyone switched to this format and used the windows version of Audacity to greater effect ?