Bought a USB Turntable (1 Viewer)

[Mark Riley]

I just picked the Ion ITTUSB Turntable and tried it out on my friend's computer. Seems to work fine but I'd like to know what better cartridges would work with it. I saw one on Amazon called Shure M97xE High-Performance Magnetic Phono Cartridge. It got great reviews and it's not breaking my bank. I want high fidelity from my records and I know that my Player isn't the best so I was hoping to compensate with a good cartridge. I really liked the USB connectivity and the easy digitizing of my LPs, which is what led me to buy it rather than a beast of a hi-fi machine. Plus 150 was cheap compared to a $1K unit.

 

[Dan Driscoll]

Mark,

The Shure M97 is a good cartridge in that price range. You also might want to check out the Grado Green, Blue or Red cartridges. I'm sure there will be several other suggestions, also.

No offense, but unless you are doing it for recording, what's the purpose of digitizing the output from a turntable/cartridge? It kind of defeats the whole point of having a turntable, doesn't it?

 

[ChristopherDAC]

If your purpose is to get "audiophile analog" sound, maybe — although if the digitising table supports higher resolutions, say 16/96, it might be a good deal. [If it supports 96 kHz sampling, one could conceivably use a digital filter to decode CD-4 LPs into discrete 4.0 PCM!] On the other hand, there are quite a few digital tables out there with SP-DIF output which are intended as DJ gear. They interface better with digital mixers and so forth, and most of them digitise the signal in the first place in order to perform independent pitch and speed changes via DSP — not an audiophile application, but a very practical one for that market segment. With the dearth of phono inputs on modern recievers, they also make a decent item for the home setup. I think the main point of USB tables, though, is vinyl-to-PC recording.

 

[Mark Riley]

I am doing it for recording onto my computer and then CD burning. I have a lot of records that are not available or in print on CD and I'd like to put them in my car via CD. I also don't want to wear out my records too much. They're more for when I have visitors but rather than downloading mp3s, I want to transfer these records since I'm a sucker for the popping and hissing. I don't know a lot about turntables but I basically just want the best sound out of that particular turntable possible and that's where the cartridge recommendation comes in. Cost isn't exactly no object but I'm game for most possibilities.

 

[Dan Driscoll]

Ah, your OP didn't mention recording.

You might want to check out another cartridge, the Audio Technica 440ML (or newer 440MLa). It has a line contact stylus, which I prefer over elliptical or conical styli and in your price range this cart is the best tracker on the market, IMO. The sound quality is very good and the frequency response is surprisingly flat, as opposed to the mid-range bloom common in many low and mid-priced cartridges. I have this cart in my MMF-5 and have been very happy with it. Yes, there are a lot of better cartridges available, but I think you would need to spend at least $300 to do better. As always, IMO, YMMV, yada, yada, yada.

 

[Philip Hamm]

Whatever you get, make damn sure that it's tracking correctly.

 

[LanceJ]

This is pretty off-topic but had to share this :

The "Record Runner"

The little movie - the small 1" X 2" picture below the large still photo - showing this gizmo in action is actually a Quicktime window. Double clicking on it will run the movie. Funny!....but I wouldn't play anything valuable on it.