Customer Reviews

Acoustica Spin It Again

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My goal: to convert vinyl records into CDs.

For hardware, I bought the ART Phono Plus 2 USB phono preamp (see my review of it under that product listing) and used my old turntable.

The Phono Plus comes with Audacity software, a freeware package. Since I am in the Windows PC world, the choice was either that, or Spin-It-Again.

Spin-It-Again is rather expensive. I bought it through Amazon, which means I got a CD-ROM. It cost me $44 including shipping. I'm not sure I see the advantage to owning the CD. The program can be downloaded from Acoustica for $35, or from Kelly Music for $30.

There are many people talking about each product, but unfortunately I was not able to find a single review comparing the two. And I won't be able to provide one either, because I ended up buying Spin-It-Again, and have never tried Audacity.

Everyone talks about how difficult Audacity is to use, and how easy Spin-It-Again is. I can vouch for the ease of Spin-It-Again. The main interface has 3 buttons: record a vinyl LP, record a cassette tape, and load a sound file. The only other thing is a Settings button.

I am fairly computer-savvy, so I thought I'd be able to figure out how to work with Audacity, even if it is difficult to use. But what clinched it for me was that several people said Audacity's click and pop removal introduced strange sounds into the music, whereas everyone raved about Spin-It-Again's click and pop removal.

Once again, I can vouch for this. The "Vinyl declick and decrackle" setting is absolutely magical! I tried it with one of the worst albums I own, one I bought at Goodwill. Applying the decrackle post-processing virtually removed every single flaw without otherwise affecting the music at all!

This is the primary reason to buy Spin-It-Again, in my opinion. The quality of the recordings it makes is superb.

The software is fairly easy to use. It is also rather "foolproof." This is achieved at the expense of flexibility, of which Spin-It-Again contains very little. What there is is in the Settings, which are accessible from any page. There is no User's Manual. But the Help is pretty good.

I had to set it up to play what I'm recording out my computer speakers. This was in addition to what I had to do after I installed the Phono Plus.

Spin-It-Again has a hardware hookup wizard, which I found both confusing and useless for setup using the Phono Plus. The Phono Plus is so easy to hook up, however, that I eventually just quit out of the Wizard, because I was certain I had everything hooked up correctly (which proved to be the case).

The first step in digitizing a record is optional, but I don't see how it's possible to get a quality recording without doing it. That is running Spin-It-Again's Level Setting Wizard. This samples input from the turntable for 30 seconds, at the end of which, it tells you to turn up or down the preamp (at which point it samples another 30 seconds), or that the recording level has been set. This must be done for each album that is being digitized. The loudest part of the loudest song on the album must be used for this, which may be a problem if you can't remember the exact content of the records you haven't played for ten or twenty years.

Once the level has been set, the next step is to digitize the album. This is a 2-step process: put a record on the turntable and click the Record button in Spin-It-Again. That's all there is to it! One thing I really like is that you can hit Pause in Spin-It-Again at the end of a side, flip the album over, and then continue recording to the same sound file, ending up with a single .wav file for the entire album.

The next step is to let Spin-It-Again find the gaps between tracks. Again, here, the software performs well. For albums that have clear spaces between tracks, it usually finds them perfectly.

Anything else, such as tracks that fade into one another or have slight silent pauses in them, must be marked manually. That is the next page of the process. On the Preview page, Spin-It-Again plays the beginning and ending of each track for you, so you can see if you like it. This is one place I find it helpful to have Spin-It-Again's Voice Assistant turned on. An entire track can also be played by moving the "play" cursor through the waveform.

The number of tracks should be counted. If there are more tracks than are actually on the album, there is an Analyze button where you can set a minimum track length, gap between tracks length, etc.

If you still don't like where the track begins or ends, it must be adjusted manually. This is done with sliders in the waveform, with the aid of a Zoom button, if necessary. The sliders are easy to move, but I wouldn't say they are easy to control. I especially found it difficult to recover from a mistake. Another "fool-proof" feature that I'm not sure I like is that the master sound file is modified with each movement, without asking you whether or not you want to Save.

The waveform must be searched visually. Any areas which are gray but contain a waveform are probably actual music that Spin-It-Again has placed in a no-man's land. The sliders must be used to include this area in the proper track (usually the one before it).

Once you are satisfied with the track distribution, the next page lets you type in the titles of the tracks. Spin-It-Again enters the time of each track for you. There is a database search button which will find actual album information, but this has not been of use to me so far -- none of the albums I have digitized are in the database. In that case, you have to type in the name of each track manually. This has two annoying "features." First, if you discover after typing in the track names that there are too many tracks, and go back to the Preview page to fix that, all the info you typed for the tracks gets erased. Second, if you quit out of the page, without hitting the Next or Previous buttons first, all the info you typed for the tracks gets erased. So you have to type it all in again.

After you have finished typing in the tracks titles, the next page again has few choices. You can burn a CD or make .wav, .mp3, .ogg or .wma files. You can back up the .wav file of the full recording. (This makes a copy, which is time-consuming. I find it easier just to rename the original file and its companion .sia file.) You can make a new recording, which you would think would be no different than closing and then re-invoking Spin-It-Again. However, it has the additional, completely unwarned-of "benefit" that it unrecoverably wipes out all your track adjustments and erases all the track info you typed in!!!

The CD burner is anything but general purpose. It will only work on the loaded sound file. And there is no way to load more than one sound file at a time! Spin-It-Again finalizes every CD it burns, so you can't go back and make a second pass.

This means that you can't burn more than one album onto a CD, unless you record the albums into a single original file, by using pause. This is a ridiculous limitation. I want to have my digitized albums stored one album per .wav file on my computer, but 80-minute CD's will easily hold two of most record albums. Maybe Acoustica makes some other product that they're trying to extract some more money out of me for that would allow me to do this.

Making multiple copies of the CD isn't easy either. You can make multiple copies by setting a counter, the first time you burn. If you want to go back later, you have to load the original sound file, hit the Next button enough times to get to the burning screen (hoping you don't accidentally change something in the process), and re-burn a new CD. You can't just copy an existing CD.

Finally, you get to the part of the software that I found quite disappointing. You can print an insert for the CD you just burned. This is where you discover that, in order to avoid typing in all track information manually, a second time, for every CD you burn, you have to shell out another $15 to purchase the CD Label Maker upgrade!

I was quite outraged at this, and tried for several days to find a reasonable work-around. Spin-It-Again is designed to make this virtually impossible, as it will not allow you to copy and paste the track lengths from the editing page. I finally ended up paying them the $15.

Once you do that, it is very easy to import the tracks info from Spin-It-Again into CD Label Maker. You just hit a button. At that point, it is very difficult to change the way it lists them, and the defaults it uses are unpleasant to me. See my review under Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker 3 to get further details on the shortcomings of that product.

You can also import cover art. I photograph the cover of the album and import the .jpeg file into CD Label Maker.

S U M M A R Y (in order of importance):
Spin-It-Again ...
. has incredible click-and-pop removal post-processing that makes extremely high quality recordings
. can burn a CD and/or create .wav, .mp3, .ogg or .wma files
. is missing extremely important functionality, namely the ability to print track information on a CD label. (To get that functionality, you have to fork over an additional $15!)
. divides recordings into tracks automatically
. has a CD burner which will only allow burning of one single original file onto a CD
. has a recording Level Setting Wizard
. can look up track information in a database
. allows manual adjustment of track begin and end markers
. is relatively easy to use
. automatically populates track length information in tracks listing
. lacks flexibility, and contains some "features" that are so user-unfriendly that I'm tempted to call them "bugs"

I've tried other declicking products and most were too complicated to set up, with too many filters and too many options to adjust.

All I wanted was to get the noise off my LPs so they would sound the way they did when they were first played.

Spin It Again did the job with ease--including removing that annoyong "crackle" that is on some LPs.

Buy this. It is a no-brainer. It works.

Unbelievable. I got a USB turntable for Christmas, packaged with 2 LP-to-MP3 software packages. One was simply too basic, even though I'm not very technical. The other seemed like it would work fine for audiophiles, but it was just too complicated. So I bought Cakewalk Pyro 5. Not bad, but I was still working too hard. I came across these reviews on Amazon and downloaded the free trial from Acoustica. Fantastic, right off the bat. Blew the other 3 products away for ease of use and great results. Incredibly intuitive with very good help online instructions. I can't say enough good things about this product.

(Update: We have been using this software for over a year now and we are still amazed at how well it works. It seems like we are always coming up with new LP's or tapes to record. Great product.)

We have been using Spin It Again for about two months now and it is absolutely fantastic! No hardware to install or configure. Just install the program, run a cable from the headphone jack on your stereo to the line-in or mic-in jack on your PC, and you are off and running. The clean-up filters work great and remove all the little pops and clicks common to LP's and removes the hiss from cassette tapes. Once you record a song, you can choose to burn it to CD or save it as MP3. Or both! The program is very easy to use. If it is available, you can download information on your album, or manually type it in. This is one of the few programs that I can truly say is worth the money! I highly recommend this product!

I was a bit disappointed when I opened the box and did not find an instruction manual. That was the end of my disappointment. The software loads with ease and has a simple step-by-step tutorial that makes connecting equipment a breeze. Click the record button, play your albums or 45s, choose the filter to clean or de-crackle the music, and save the file. The results: some recordings turn out better than the originals! If you have LPs and a turntable, you need Spin It Again!

Does what it says! only problem is you have to move your computer to where your record player is and it takes awhile to record a whole album as you have to listen to the entire song while it records. otherwise, it's great! Took all day but i now have 3 new cd's to listen to in my car of my old favorites!

I found Spin it Again by a web search several months ago and it's now indispensable software for me. At the time I was looking for a way to convert an oral history interview from cassette tape to CD, and Spin it Again was the perfect solution for that. After that, I started a new project with Spin it Again: converting my collection of audiobooks from cassette tape to digital audio.

Spin it Again is user-friendly. I appreciate that because I'm not interested in advanced digital audio editing; I just want to produce decent-sounding audio files from my books on tape. I'm sure I'm only using a fraction of the software's capabilities, but that fraction is all I need. The tape noise removal options have all worked well. The "level wizard" is great for setting recording levels each time I start with a set of tapes.

This software is so indispensable to me by now that when I ditched my desktop PC for an iMac this spring, I moved Spin it Again (wish they did have a Mac version) to my notebook PC so that I can continue to use it. I've tried a few highly-rated recording applications on the Mac (including Audacity). I'm sure they are fine, but they had learning curves I just don't have the time for. I really like Spin it Again much better for my purposes.

The only problem I encountered using Spin it Again on my notebook PC was the notebook's lack of a line-in jack (it only has a microphone jack - and Acoustica warns against using that as a line-in from audio equipment as the sound load can damage the mic jack). I tried using the mic input for a couple of tape conversions but the sound was distorted. I have just purchased and starting using the Behringer U-Control which connects my tape player via USB instead of the microphone input, and am pleased with the results.

If you want to convert your old cassette tapes or LPs to digital audio without having to master complicated software, Spin it Again is a good choice.

I just had to write this review because I think some reviewers on here are totally missing the point. This is not supposed to be a full on program for taking audio files and tweaking them with all sorts of filters. For that you can find really expensive programs by Sony and Adobe and some other companies. This program only claims to take your LP or cassette collection that is probably in your garage or closet collecting dust and convert them to either MP3 or wave format files that can be transferred to a blank CD. That is it. Not only does it do this, but it does it very well. I have converted many of my albums and have been able to completely remove the minor clicks and pops that are sometimes present. My collection of albums are in pretty mint condition, but I understand if your album is in less then perfect shape, it will still do a great job of removing the very obtrusive clicks, pops and surface noises. The Acoutica.com website has some samples to listen to. This program is so good at automatically detecting the tracks of the albums, that when I insert the recorded CD into my PC, I tunes immediately recognizes the recorded CD as a factory CD! I can then transfer it to my Ipod. Very impressive. So, if you are looking for a great program that will help you turn your record or tape collection into CDs, without having to have a degree in sound engineering, this program is for you.

I wasn't sure what to expect with this application so I tried the free trial first. This is one great program!!! It makes turning your old LPs into beautiful sounding MP3s about as painless as you'll find anywhere. Even better, the automated "crackle & pop" algorithms are superb! I've been A/B'ing the digitally cleaned copies against the original analog playing LPs and have found little to complain about after the digital automatic cleaning process. It effectively removes most of the "bad stuff" but does little harm to the original music.

You'll probably want to stick with the "Light Vinyl Cleaning" option for most album restorations, as this does the least damage to the the original sound. Any stubborn left-over "pops" and "clicks" after using this option can then be removed by using the free program, Audacity. Carefully select the specific stubborn click in question and then apply the Audacity "De-click" effect to remove it. Since "Spin-It-Again" gets rid of most of the crud with the "Light Vinyl Cleaning" option, you'll have very little manual de-clicking work to do in Audacity.

"Spin-It-Again" is the app you want for LP conversions -- buy it! You won't be disappointed.

I have a massive audiocassette collection that I began in 1976, and have been looking for a way to preserve it - especially those recordings that are taken from vinyl that's now out of print or whose sources are no longer retrievable. I now have CD copies of obscure, original and one-off recordings, music and spoken-word. Acoustica Spin It Again is user-friendly and has an amazing variety of methods for acoustically cleaning old media. Only its automatic level adjustment feature disappoints; it consistently records far too hot. After a few trials, though, it's easy to determine where the levels should be set manually. An excellent product at a fair price.