TerraTec iVinyl: plastic fantastic

Vinyl: food of the luddite. We are a nation of bespectacled maniacs with stores of vinyl stashed away in our attics and cellars, and no idea how to convert it into a iPod-compatible format. Early attempts at conversion involved smashing the vinyl original into hundreds of tiny pieces and posting these through the headphone jack of the iPod. Most of the time this resulted in choppy playback.

TerraTec's proposition is more effective. The PhonoPreAmp iVinyl is an integrated preamp (what your old hi-fi would use to amp up the sound from your record player) and analogue to digital convertor (ADC) that takes the output from your vinyl deck and spits it out in digital form over a USB connection to your computer.

Both vinyl and cassettes can be converted into MP3s at up to 24bit/96khz (that's theoretically higher quality than CD, but clearly your source is inferior, so don't expect miracles). There's also some bundled software to help clean up your recordings: Sound Rescue and Roxio CD Spin Doctor. Both cassette and vinyl have a fairly high noise floor, which means there's a fair bit of white noise, or hiss, on the recordings. The filters in this software can help to remove it.

If you've invested a lot of time in amassing your record collection, this looks like it could be an easy means of converting it into a post-Neanderthal format. The iVinyl is available now for around £70. Expect a more thorough review imminently. -CS

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Comments (3)

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Comments

SnarklefussWed 25 October, 2006 2:33pm

Woah! This is ace. Exactly what I need to convert my vinyl dungeon into MP3 format. When's the wax cylinder edition coming out?

Millicent Moogie's Rotating FaceWed 25 October, 2006 3:56pm

Once all the vinyl is converted to MP3, what do we do with our old records? Well, they make handy retro place-mats for trendy dinner parties. Wooohoo!

AnonymousSun 15 June, 2008 8:24pm

Although I agree that this is a good product I have a number of reservations regarding instruction provided in the bundled software. In fact there are two manuals; one “detailed” and one “short-form”. They both deal extensively with theory but offer very little in the way of “step-by step” guidance for the inexperienced (and we are so many…)
The job of transferring your vinyl recordings onto CD is full of guesswork and “hit or miss” events. I had hoped to read what each button is for, when passing the cursor over it but I was unpleasantly surprised. I happened to make a few recordings by sheer luck and after much effort. I am still not sure my recordings have been processed for click and noise removal!
Some of the instructions are totally misleading; e.g. when I clicked on the "mixer" button the volume control box pops up but the volume slider refuses to move no matter what! One more example: No clear instructions are provided for creating tracks. All you learn from the manual is that you can delete the material left of the cursor! You are not told how to create the familiar track pattern on a CD!
I could go on for hours with regard to instructions; they are actually not there! Perhaps the fact that the software publisher is German accounts for the poor English text (not poor English but poor help).
To top it all, the "support" e-mail address the publishers provide is not valid and "help" messages bounce. The local distributor to whom I e-mailed my problems simply ignored me!

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