Published on 12, July, 2020
On Wednesday night, I ordered a record player on Curry's PC World. It came this afternoon, and I played the LP I bought yesterday in Belfast.
The bad news is that the 'Vinyl to Digital' function doesn't work, due to iTunes being obsolete. However, I can still play the album. Also, I discovered a hack in the player where if you turn the auto-stop function on and off again, it will skip any scratches.
I'm happy with the outcome.
Just to let you know that the latest version of EZ Vinyl/Tape Converter is available for download here, and works WITHOUT giving you the damned Itunes runaround. Funnily enough, the site still mentions Itunes, but I imagine that is because Apple is sensitive about widespread use of USB turntables to create shareable files instead of buying their product. But I don't really know anything about Itunes other than the fact that i had it on my PC for a while and they never sold me anything.
https://www.ionaudio.com/ez-converter
It comes as a ZIP file, but most modern PCs seem to have automated their extraction. There's also 'support' on that page Anyway, I got it to fully work, and it is really quite a lot less hassle than other programs. It produces WAV files of a reasonable size, but they work fine on most systems and can be converted to other formats with Audacity, i'm sure. Remember to plug the USB lead in and turn everything on before you run EZ. The USB cable seems to create a very stable connection. In fact, if you want to play the converted file on your PC, the first thing you need to do is remove the USB plug at the PC end; otherwise it won't play. But the software seems to be fairly forgiving of doing things in the wrong order. Have the record titles and track titles available so you can fill in the file details quickly.
I also tried out the tape deck plug in. I don't actually have a functioning tape machine right now, but I do have some functioning 'good' tapes. But you can really plug in any audio machine that has jack sockets or phono to jack leads. But you need to set the BOOST knob to get a good signal that is just clipping marginally into the red before you do the actual recording. It really is quite a good incentive to buy some used & cheap charity shop media, and with the portable machine I've got you can even test records and tapes at the point of sale. Very good thing to do if you but records on market stalls!
ION also sell a basic pocket-sized cassette player to plug into your turntable & PC for conversion, but just dig out an old Walkman and clean the heads with some isopropanyl alcohol and a cotton bud.
Senior Moment;
Thanks for the link. However, it only goes as far as 10.14 - I'm now on 10.15.1. Therefore, it will have the same issue.
Again, it's not the end of the world. I would prefer just listening to records without worrying about digital conversion. There is YouTube, after all. ;)
If you delete all of the current (newer) install, you should find the earlier site download won't require any Itunes malarkey. That is worth a try at the expense of 0.1.1 newer versions that don't work. :-) It was actually much easier than I thought it would be.
I'm also interested in running a voluntary digitisation service here, as older people here probably still have a lot of records, but no longer have the means to play them. No one sells turntables here anymore. But digital devices are common enough. And it will widen my own musical interests. I could do with something less current to listen to. ;-) i also want to digitise my old tapes before they succumb completely to the climate
I like a good concert video on Youtube myself. And there are plenty of them.