Recording Studio Equipment

This turntable made a great replacement for the 20 year old one I had been using. The turntable itself was very easy to set up; the included manual outlined the entire process. I did have an issue with the attached RCA cable being very short, only about 3 feet in length. I had to extend it using another RCA cable. The power cord is much longer though, and should reach the nearest outlet easily. The sound is very clear, even on my age-old system. I was, however unaware that the turntable has a pre-amp installed in it, so I was unable to hook it up to the Phono Input in my home theater system; I had to use one of the Aux/CD/Video imports.

I used Audacity to digitally record my albums on a Dell Inspiron running Windows 7, and the device was recognized and configured instantly. PLEASE NOTE that some of the settings may need to be altered, depending on what system you are running (the set-up guide explains this in detail). Other than a couple nuisances, this device was an excellent buy.

This record player sounds great, works great, but I was pissed about two things. First of all, while you can play the record player through your computer, it cannot actually record the songs if you have a mac. It acts like it is, but then the files don’t play and I had to research online to find out that the software is not mac compatible. Second, if you’re running it through a stereo system you have to plug it into the audio input, NOT the phono input. I could have saved a lot of time and hassle if they had just explained those two things in their instructions. Hopefully this will help other people!

After my 40-year-old Dual died, I selected this unit as its replacement. The sound quality is quite good – comparable with the Dual. The USB output is also a bonus. At $199 it really couldn’t be beat. I see now that the (Amazon) price has been raised to nearly $300. I probably wouldn’t buy it at that price.

The good:
* includes a decent cartridge and stylus (about a $40 value right there)
* Plenty of mass on the turntable platter
* Counterweight and anti-skating controls all work as they should.
* USB output works like it should
* Built in preamp can be turned on or off. Nice feature if your pre-amp or receiver does or doesn’t have a phono input.
* Pitch control and strobe all seem to work like they should
* three speed (lots of turntables only have two)
* Fairly easy set-up – especially if you have experience with turntables.
* Nice layout on the controls
* Quiet
* Very good sound quality
* Beautiful industrial look to the whole unit

Not so good:
* No leveling controls – a minor annoyance
* The cloth dust cover is sort of useful – I’d like at least an option to buy a hard acrylic cover or something similar. Stanton doesn’t make one – perhaps a 3rd-party vendor will offer one soon.
* The included software isn’t too good – but I really didn’t expect it to be.
* If you download the owner’s manual from Stanton’s web site, you’ll notice that one illustration shows that the unit has a tone-arm lifting lever. That’s a mistake, this unit does not have one. (not a huge deal for me – but a bit misleading)
* The included USB cable is pretty short – I would think most folks would need would need something at least a couple of feet longer.

If you can find one of these still for $200 – it’s probably the best in that price range. If you’re willing to pay $300 or more, there are better options.

Overall, I am fairly satisfied with the turntable. It has been at least 15 years since my Technics spun records so I don’t have fresh memories of how things sounded that long ago. I will say that my 30 year old high school varsity band album sounds as good as I remember it sounding many years ago. I have noticed a slight imbalance in the platter but at this price point, it is probably expected.

The Good
- Build quality seems good overall
- Needle and cartridge come with turntable
- Setup was easy

Not So Good
- Platter isn’t flat(or balanced)
- Software supplied is poor (not user friendly and after completing my first album and saving, it crashes trying to open saved project…get Audacity
- Had some trouble with USB connection

I would have given 4.5 stars if it weren’t for the platter and stinky software.

I originally thought this would work with a set of powered speakers, but it does not. It only has the old phono output plugs, so it needs to go through an amplifier. That worked fine right away, but playing through a computer USB port took days to get working. One problem I found was that I had to unplug my webcam (which has audio input) to capture the turntable output on my PC. No settings on my PC worked until I unplugged the camera. Recording then worked fine. Integration with iTunes is great when recording.

Next problem was playing the iPod through the amplifier. ION help eventually explained that you have to set the turntable to LINE output instead of PHONO output (switch on the back) and then plug into the CD input of the amp instead of the Phono input. Then the turntable and the iPod both work. No mention of that in the manual though.

Would be 5 stars if manual explained configuration better.

I’m a retired teacher, with lots of time and vinyl but not much money, so I bought this turntable to digitize my collection because it was the lowest price I could find. I really can’t complain, because it does the one thing I wanted, sending the signal into my computer. There was a promise from the maker that the software would automatically divide the tracks and take me online to get info about each track, but the “EZ Vinyl Tape Converter” shipped with the unit just isn’t capable of such things. It takes you online to a site that claims to have information one can have for a price (see above, “not much money”), and it never, ever got the tracks sorted out correctly. I have to do that myself pretty well by hand, using Audacity. Do I care? Not really, because I have lots of time. If your time is precious, maybe you should buy something more upscale; but if you’re like me and just want your old vinyl digitized for minimum cost, this is what you need.

First of all, the $279 Price Tag can’t be right. I bought this at Guitar Center for $60.

It’s pretty decent for a portable turntable if you want to take something small and light out to the record store to sample some music before you buy. It has a decent built in speaker/headphone jack/and RCA outputs. This is nice for when you want to listen to records somewhere other than where your main stereo set up is.

As far as archiving, this is a piece of junk. If you really don’t care about preserving all the great quality from your vinyl then you won’t mind but this thing can’t really handle most music. Also, the program it comes with kind of sucks.

I would recommend spending a decent amount of money on a heavier turn table and upgrading the sound card on your computer if you care about quality. Even if you decide to buy this, don’t pay more than $75.