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Sony wants to make it easy for consumers to copy music.
February 26, 2008
Vinyl to MP3, Sony announces turntable with USB output
By Ken Mitchell
How is this for irony? Sony wants to make it easy for consumers to copy music. A new turntable announced by Sony will allow music to be transferred from vinyl to a PC over USB, allowing consumers to convert the music to digital storage.
Sony’s PS-LX300USB turntable will play 33-1/3 and 45 rpm records to A/V receivers or over USB to a PC for conversion to digital formats. The player comes packaged with Sound Forge Audio Studio software to allow professional quality editing and production from a PC.
Automatic playback should make converting (or rather backing up) your vinyl collection to digital format pretty simple. Sony designed the turntable with record-safety in mind:
It offers a belt drive system for reduced motor noise and rotational stability, in addition to a static balance tone arm with a bonded diamond stylus for precise tracking and low record wear. A supplied moving-magnet phonograph cartridge and built-in phonograph pre-amp allows for compatibility with A/V receivers without a phonograph input.
I suspect that consumers will still have to mark the end of one song and beginning of the next with the editing software.
The PS-LX300USB should be available next month for around $150. If you have a huge vinyl collection, this may be your chance to revive it.
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A lot of older hard to get songs should start appearing for download.
A good idea though.
The USB turntables have been around for quite a while (I listen to the TechGuy Podcast and its a common question there). I do see the irony for Sony with the copy protection one hand (and I guess their inital lack of support for MP3 too) and then making this equipment but I'm guessing they figured everyone else was doing it and making a bit out of it why not.
Ion and Stanton (Stanton might be a name people recongise) are companies there were making these before.
Very interesting stuff. Even i was surprised that the new PS3 from Sony lets you rip CD's to MP3's in any bit rate you want directly onto the HDD. It's bloody fast too. They even play avi's now....
The turntable won't be anything wonderful - belt drive machines are ok but not that great in terms of noise figures.
I wouldn't mind betting the platter will be plastic.
It's funny how people keep re-inventing the wheel. I've been transcribing vinyl to CD / digital formats for years in my studio on quality equipment that produces very good results.
What they don't tell you however is if you want a good clean copy there is a LOT of work involved - it can be hours just to edit one track if it's particularly noisy - and transcribing down to hard disk is done in real time.
Vinyl to digital IS a good thing - especially for old, out of print, rare and hard to find copy.
However, it needs to be balanced with the amount of work required.
Sure, you can rip an LP straight to hard drive then burn to disc - and you'll get all the noise, clicks and pops that are present on the album.
If you can live with that, great. To my way of thinking however, the whole point of transcribing is an attempt at recovering the original source material (which probably came from a tape master).
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Chances are the hole things Plastic, And at the end of the day all you need is a half descent amp, with a Phono stage, and sound forge, [free download] on the computer, and your away. but as an earlier poster said, be prepared to be sitting there for a good few hours, Transcribing the Vinyl to the hard drive is the easy bit. It can take bloody hours to remove all the clicks, and dings, of the thing, then you also need to add the spacing, or it will come out on the CD as one continual track, with a few scrapes between the tracks..
Good luck, and have plenty of Coffee, on the go, your gunna need it.
It's a bloody sight easer to chuck the Vinyl and the turntable out the window and down load the tracks via "limewire"
or borrow the CD from a neighbour, and run of a copy.
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