Customer Reviews

ION Audio U Record USB Music Archive System

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I used this for about a week. Combined with Audacity software it works perfectly- I've done noise reduction, set up the tracks automatically, normalize, all withing 30 minutes of install. I have not used the proprietary EZ Vinyl Converter, so I cannot comment. If using Audacity is "advanced", than EZ must me idiot proof.
The USB turntables are all over $100 and seem kind of cheap- all plastic, so if you already have and old turntable, save some money and get this for $50. I have a very nice old school Technics turntable that is 10 times better sounding than ones with the USB built in. I also bought a really old turntable that plays 78, and have been ripping some old opera recordings. No issues with that turntable.

This device does exactly what indicates and for the money its a slam dunk. However I would have paid more if it could transfer entire album without me being there to segregate the songs. If you record an entire album you have two choices: 1) Have the album appear on your Itunes as one song, even though it may be 10 songs. 2) Sit at the computer and listen to every song and hit new song when the previous song is over. Other than that this device is great and I strongly recommend it if you have music on tape or record.

The EZ vinyl software is easy to use and works great for Converting records or tapes to CDs. The only drawback in this software is the constant monitoring in order to split tracks. I have not used the more intricate software that comes with the U-record archiver, it may allow you to record a whole album side and then mark the end of each track before copying it to Itunes. Also for those who use Itunes exclusivly there should be no issues but, those who want to save the files without Itunes may be out of luck as Itunes is the default save option, and I have not found a way to change this. Overall this is an inexpensive way to get those old albums or tapes onto CD or on your Ipod.

Use of this product is based mostly on the software selected; this review is specifically when using the Audacity software, which was so easy it's hard to believe they also included something that is apparently even easier (EZ Vinyl Converter).

I love this product! I have converted over 50 complete albums so far. Once you've recorded you can easily assign labels to each track. Then you can export in wave format, Ogg Vorbis (?), or MP3. I always use MP3 at 192 Kbps; it's a good compromise between quality and a useful compression ratio. The `Export Multiple' function allows you to submit the additional metadata (artist, album title, genre, year) once; it then exports each song, with the pre-assigned label as the song name, and all the metadata is automatically included. Thus, later, if you are in the Windows file system and you hover your mouse over a song you can see the artist, album title etc. without having to first access it via music software.

There are some definite oversights and flaws in the software. Here are some tips that can make things much easier:
1. Use legal file names for your labels. Audacity will accept several characters that Windows (& I'm guessing Mac too) will not, but when you go to export it the export will fail. You don't get an explanation for the failure either, so it took me some time to figure this out, but I haven't had a single failure since I started conforming.
2. Volume make a huge difference; always record as loudly as you can short of pinning it at zero! I try to have the higher levels go to about -3 on the record-meter, and if an occasional spike hits the zero mark it's OK. In the beginning I was too worried about distortion from recording too loudly, and I ended up having to go back and re-record my first few albums.
3. Audacity will not accept a lower case `z' when assigning labels! I have no clue why, but just use a capital `Z' instead and it works fine.
4. If you expect to do a lot of editing it's a good idea to save a `raw' version of the project, and edit a separate copy. That way you can back up and start over easily if you're not sure how to undo something, without having to record it all again first.
5. The projects are HUGE. It takes about a half-gigabyte for a project (an album), so once I have exported several albums I copy those MP3 files to a CD and delete the project files, leaving only the MP3 versions still on the computer. I get about 12 albums to a CD.
6. Occasionally the album is severely scratched and I need noise reduction. It's very easy; the main caveat is to not clean up all the dead space first, because Audacity needs a `noise profile' to figure out what to remove, and the dead space at the front or back of the recording is the best place to get it. If you do remove noise be sure and preview it and adjust the level of removal desired. It will flatten the sound somewhat, but it's still better than something so noisy it's unusable. In one case removing the noise also removed half of the song because the software could not distinguish between ocean waves and distortion ("Love From Room 109 at the Islander" by Tim Buckley).

The software has many powerful options that I have yet to explore. You can add special effects, combine different music sources into a single output, and much more. I give this product five stars even though it has flaws. Between the very low price, the trivial setup, and the power of the software, this is a top candidate for the best $50 I ever spent.

I really didn't want the other item this company makes, the turntable to put all my records on my computer. I don't have that many records, and I do have a turntable.

What I have is a ton of tapes. That would be very expensive to replace with CDs at this point. I wanted just a box that I could plug say into a boombox and then into the computer.

That's what this smart little powerless box does. It has one nob (recording level), one switch (for phono or line in), stereo jacks and a grounding terminal (for old staticky turntables).

That and a USB out is all it needs. Plug it into your PC or Mac, install the included software (which you need mostly for finesse) and you're ready to go. It's plug and play. I use the vinyl recorder with my cassettes (it doesn't know the difference), which I play off a Walkman into my computer. Unlike other recording programs, it doesn't skitter at every little sound level change. You tell it when the new track is, and when you're done recording it puts everything into ITunes. You have to title things yourself, but the sound quality is 128 Kbps, which is what everything else is on my PC.

The ultimate goal is to get the cassette music on my IPod, should be a breeze now.

I got this for my girlfriend who has a lot of vinyl she can rarely listen to. This thing is great. The converting quality is limited to the quality of the record as it records what it plays, but the software is very easy to use. I do not recommend the "EZ" software because if you want to separate each side into tracks, you have to sitting there the entire time and press the "new track" button everytime at just teh right moment. The more advanced software that it comes with allows you to do a lot more, most importantly is recording an entire side and then separating the tracks afterwards. Overall though, a great product and would recommend over the devices with the record player built in.

I was excited about purchasing this device, as I had 20 to 30 master tapes that needed to be converted to MP3 format. The device arrived promptly and I was pleased by the ease of the instruction telling me how to set it up. However, that's where things went to hell. Once set up, the device wasn't picking up sound. I checked and double checked all the connections; I even made a second trip to the music store to pick of a different set of stereo cables, as I feared my line outs may have been bad. Still no sound.
I rebooted my PC and reistalled the software and voila- everything was working properly. I converted two songs and went to listen to them, only now, I had no sound coming from iTunes or Media Player.
It had to be a sound driver issue, so I spent the next hour downloading every possible update. Upon reinstalling the Ion software yet again, I got a message telling me the unit was an unauthorized device.
I restored my system, re-reistalled the software and said a prayer.
Once again it was working! I recorded another song, went to listen to it, and my entire system crashed.
Now, I am not a disgruntled type of reviewer- check my other reviews and you'll see. And I'm not tech-challenged either. My system runs like a Ferrari, because of all the fine-tuning I've done.
Still, I've only managed to get this device working one out of maybe ten tries. It's got a lot of potential, but be warned- it might not work nearly as well as you hope.

all i can say is it is better than i hoped for--in fact i am listening to some of the results now--and still have a long way to go to complete my goal of transferring my 78s-33s and 45s to my i-pod--thx for the miracle of this product--by the way the added benefit of the u-record is you can put together the specific songs you prefer--which has been a life long goal of mine--(AMEN-AMEN)[...]

I had 300+ old cassette tapes and a lot of them contain music that can't be found on iTunes. I bought the I-on U-recorder and was somewhat skeptical of what I'd get. It's a simple gadget with only the one input variable but that's all you need. The software is easy to install and operate. The interface with iTunes is easy to use (I hate iTunes) and I can't complain. I'm very satisfied with this product and would recommend it to anyone. I haven't tried it with vinyl yet but I'm assuming that I'll get the same output.

I needed an interface to digitize my old records and tapes, and I had a working record player and cassette deck. The Ion U-record fit the bill. The only problem I had was the internal microphone on the computer needed to be turned off. At first the sound of the transfers was terrible, until I realized that the computer was recording its own speakers through the internal mic. Tech support emailed me back within a day with directions on how to do this on an IMac, and now we have total success!

I find that typing in track names on the EZ software is a waste of time-wait until the track is in iTunes before you enter information. If you consider another brand, make sure it has a variable level control. The phono level input needs a preamp and this device works well at controlling the level. It is just astounding to listen to records I haven't heard in 40 years coming out of my iPod. It is so nice to think my ENTIRE record collection is in there. Thanks for a great product!