Customer Reviews

TEAC LP-R400 Turntable CD Recorder and Radio (Black)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

At last !!! All my great lp's and cassette tapes will be available on CD!!!! I have used this recorder thus far to transfer a couple tapes recorded in the 80's from live radio broadcasts, and transferred a couple of LP's that are not available to purchase. Great results, and easy to use

After having seen this fabulous product in the USA, we had to wait for ages until TEAC produces it for European electrical standards. Very easy to use, very good audio quality of recordings and excellent value for money (especially for an high end Hi-Fi manifacturer like TEAC). Three recomendations ; 1- Be very carefull while handling the tone arm lever in order not to scratch the vinyls (there is no hydraulic damping), 2- During recording, don't be reluctant to increase the recording volume so as to go through peak level occasionally, if not you loose the dynamic range. 3- better to use manual track numbering.

Ears that are used to listen digital recordings with deeper bass and crispier treble sound (but, unfortunately not natural) may be disappointed to have a sound without enough impact and a background hiss of stylus tip friction but, when you make an a/b comparison of the original and the recorded sound, you must be a superman to feel any audible difference.

I recommend a listening experience with any classical or pop music, preferably with apropriate speakers or headphones where you can clearly distinguish all the instruments. (For ex.high end Grado headphones or Reference Series British TDL speakers having 4 drivers; Kef, Celestion and Goldring respectively).

Add on 21 months later : Although the device is used mainly for listening purposes, the laser reader has broken down and will be replaced. For such a high end Hi-Fi company like Teac, the use of lower grade material is an important point to consider prior any decision. We own a Meridian (British) digital audio system and CD player works nearly since 1994 without any repair.

The TEAC LP-R400 Turntable CD Recorder was fine and we were able to create a CDR from a 1960 LP Record with ease. The Recorder and CDR quality was very good. The LP-R400 Radio did not work. There was a TEAC Approved Repair Service about 12 miles from my home and Radio was repaired quickly and at no cost since it was under warranty. I was told that a circuit board was cracked. It was unclear if this occurred in shipment or was a factory defect. The AM/FM radio works fine now.

My Teac LP R400 arrived and I was anxious to try it, so I read the Quick Start Booklet and got to work. I followed all the instructions but never got the red light to come on on the Record button, so, I started reading the Full Booklet. There I found that one must use Digital Audio Quality
CD's to record with this product, which I found strange as I was using a CD which Amazon BUNDLED WITH THIS PRODUCT! OK, so since I don't have a Digital Audio Quality CD, I next try a blank Sony Music CD. I am overjoyed. This time the red light comes on and the unit seems to be recording my LP on the CD. It is recording the entire record on one track, but that is fine with me as I want my CDs to be just like the LPs.
Side A of the LP completes, and press Pause, turn the record over, put the needle on the record, and press Play. The unit starts recording side B as Track 2. Side B completes and the recording stops. I press stop, then press Open to take the CD out. Why do I not FINALIZE it? Because the Quick Start Booklet does not mentionONE WORD about Finalizing!

I then take the CD out and put in in one of my CD ROM Drives on one of my computers, one that runs Vista Ultimate 64 bit. I use my favorite file manager, Power Desk Explorer Pro 7, to look a what I have on the CD. It shows NOTHING. Yet, when I go to Properties the disk shows as full, but with 0 Bytes, which is what a blank disk is going to show. Needless to say, the disk does not play with Windows Media Center. So, I take the disk out of the computer and see what happens when I put in back in the Teac and try to play it. Nothing.

Next, I take a new blank Sony Music CD and go throught the recording processs again. It seems to be working. When the recording has been completed, this time, having read the instructions about Finalizing, I push the Stop butoon, as the Finalizing instructions state that Finalizing is done in the Stop mode. I press the CD selection button and CD appears in the window. I press the FINALIZE buttion and FINALIZE appears. I wait three minutes, I wait five minute, I wait thirty minutes, I wait for THREE HOURS, and the Readout is still the same. I figure that if the CD has not been Finalized in three hours, it is never going to be, so I take it out. I put it in the computer and again look at the files on the CD. Again, there is NOTHING. The CD again shows up as blank. I put it back tin the Teac and try to play it. IT PLAYS! So, there is something on there, but not something I can get to with my computer CD ROM. I have not tried playing the CD on another of my CD players yet, but will try that next. I hope that my entire problem is that I have not yet used a Digital Audio Quality CD. If that is the case, I will come back here and, if the Digital Audio CDs work, write a much more favorable review.

However, as of now, I can only give this product 1 star, and would like to give th Instruction Booklets 0 stars, as they are the worst I have ever encountered, be the product a recorder, vacuum cleaner, or anvil.

I am back with a far more favorabel review of this product. The recorder gets 5 stars. The booklets tht came with it get 0 stars.

FINALIZING is not even mentioned int he Quick Start Recording Booklet, so
it gets a well-deserved 0 stars. And the Main Booklet fails to mention that one must press ENTER when, after pressing the FINALIZE button, the word FINAL appears in the Window. Once this is understood, no thinks to
the Booklet, the unit works like a dream.

This product was sent very quickly to Alaska by Fed Ex..nice!I have boxes of old LPs I wanted to save.This is working just as promoted. Bass sound isn't good but CDs record fine and play better on other machines.It is pretty simple to use. You do have to stay close while recording records,to keep tracking right. It's easy to miss tracks but it is a joy to finally have a decent way to preserve valued old records.

I purchased this for my husband's 50th birthday. He had many old albums just sitting around but no turntable to play them on or a way to record them on to CD. Since his birthday in April, he's been recording like mad and it's going great. It is easy to use and the sound quality is very good. I gave it 4 stars only because you do have to sit and manually push a button to make tracks on the CD. Supposedly it will do it automatically but in his attempts to do so it has worked sometimes and not others so you end up with 2 songs on a track instead of just 1. Overall though, we are really enjoying it! I had some old 78s that my parents had recorded in college around 1948 or 49 (my mom singing beautifully!) and was able to play and record those to CD. That was a real treasure to find and be able to share with our family since my dad passed away and my mom has alzheimers. This is a great buy!

Exactly what I wanted to record old records to cd. Has feature that senses silence to ceate breaks or tracks on cd. Played my great grandfathers 78 LPs. Only thing missing is a speed adjustment. Otherwise this is a great product, exactly what I wanted and the seller was great. Shipped in original package, great price and fast shipment. No delays. Thank You

This was great for my husband's large LP collection, and I thought I'd buy the CD-Rs linked with the device by Amazon (or JR, that makes the CDs). He took it upstairs, hooked it up, put on an album and recorded it perfectly onto the CD from JR.

Then we tried to play the CD on the stereo downstairs--no dice. Wouldn't play in his computer either--it showed up as a blank CD. Turns out that you can use only CD digital audio, not the CD audio/music things that I bought BECAUSE they were linked with the TEAC.

Dirty pool, if you ask me. I'm stuck with a bunch of CDs that don't do anything--my computer can't even "find" them. I'm hoping to return them, but more important: buy digital audio CDRs (not even CD-RWs, since the instruction manual warns against them, as they are not playable on all equipment). And to whoever was responsible for linking these two items together: thanks for nothing--it's no fun to have someone disappointed with a Christmas gift! Next time, be more careful, willya?
JC

I purchased this to convert some 78s and LPs to CDs for my mother. It has good sound (I am not an audiophile), tracks well. It is cheaply made (most everything is these days), but does what it is advertised to do. Do not bother with the automatic tracking. I used manual track advancement as most LPs have plenty of background noise or no break between songs. The included remote proved very handy. Many people don't like these as they record all the "pops" etc. I found if I clean the records well, even an 80 year old 78 sounds fine. Buy the extra needles (stl 103), and plenty of AUDIO CDs. I only ruined one (not following instructions) by turning off the machine before finalizing the disc. It has inputs but no outputs, built in radio, but no tape player. Required little set-up preparation.

6 month follow up: no problems. I hooked up a cheap tape player and recorded several cassettes. I have recorded over 80 hours of 78s-LPs-cassettes without any errors. My biggest complaint is that the remote has to be almost facing the machine to operate.

This is an excellent product. It is so easy to use I only needed to read the "Quick Start" manual, and away I went. Almost no settings are really needed. Works intuitively. One thing it cannot do easily is to distinguish between successive record tracks. Most records are not quiet enough in the spaces between the tracks for the sutomatic track making system to work well, but all that means is that the CD recorder treats each side of the record as a single track. Unless you want to spot individual tracks of the record separately then it is not a problem. You can always watch the recording and manually insert the tracks as they happen, but that seems a waste of time this device saves you. Software prodcues a nice digital sound.