Review: Terratec Preamp iVinyl peripheral

Copying music from old LPs is often more of a problem than copying from tapes as it is not possible to plug a record player directly into a computer.

The Terratec Preamp iVinyl takes away this problem by supplying the right audio connections and making sure the record player is properly grounded.

The iVinyl is designed for use with moving magnet (MM) record players but a button on the device enables it to be used with tape decks by switching to record at the line level at which tape decks output sound.

It works without needing any new drivers in Windows and there is software supplied in the form of Sound Rescue 2.1 (and Roxio CD Spin Doctor for Mac users).

Sound Rescue is used for recording the audio from the iVinyl and to remove clicks, crackle and noise. It is simple to use and a graph that shows the before and after levels is very useful for setting the correct amount of noise reduction.

There is also an option to listen to the noise being removed, which is a good way of making sure the actual music is not being deleted. Sadly, as is so often the case, the full manual is only supplied electronically as a PDF, but it is an excellent tutorial in using Sound Rescue to improve recordings.

Making recordings with the iVinyl is simple and as it appears as a standard audio device in Windows it can be used with any audio recording software, not just Sound Rescue.

There is a light to warn of distortion due to excessive volume but confusingly this is blue and the input light is red. There is also an annoying delay between the device receiving the signal and it playing on the computer. This is a problem when positioning the needle on the record.

Sound Rescue can be used with Nero, Roxio and WinonCD to make audio CDs from its recordings. In practice, we found that Sound Rescue was excellent for improving the quality of music tracks but that the free Audacity had the edge for splitting the recording into different tracks.

The quality of the recorded audio was very good, and one of the advantages of using this kind of USB interface is that the quality is consistent no matter how bad the sound card on the computer.

Also consider:
Ion USB Turntable
M-Audio Mobilepre USB
Roxio Easy Media Creator 9 Deluxe

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