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 June 1, 2008
I bought my first real turntable when I was in college. It was a Technics -- nothing fancy, just a manual unit with a curved "S" tonearm. I didn’t know much about cartridges, and research tools, even in the form of high-end audio magazines, weren’t at hand. So I went to my local hi-fi dealer (which, I now realize, was mid-fi at best) and asked for recommendations. I bought an inexpensive Audio-Technica cartridge (I was in college, after all) that sounded good and tracked light. Over the next few years I owned a few more AT cartridges, and they were solid and reliable. Audio-Technica still makes cartridges, along with microphones, wireless systems, headphones, and a few other electronics products. The company also markets three turntables: the AT-PL50, an inexpensive belt-drive for the average consumer; the AT-PL120, a "professional" direct-drive for DJs; and the one I’ll be looking at here -- the AT-LP2D-USB ($229.99 USD), for people who want to transfer their LPs to CDs or MP3s. I was eager to compare the AT-LP2D-USB’s performance with that of the Teac GF-350 I wrote about in October 2005. The Teac was self-contained: turntable and CD player/burner in a single enclosure, along with an AM/FM receiver. The AT-LP2D-USB is a standalone turntable designed for use with a Mac or PC. Another major difference with the AT-LP2D-USB is its cartridge, which is magnetic, in contrast to the ceramic cartridge used in the Teac. In theory, the CD-Rs you burn from vinyl with the Audio-Technica should sound better than those burned with the Teac, because you’re using a better cartridge. The stock cartridge on the AT-LP2D-USB is comparable to Audio-Technica’s AT3600, an entry-level cartridge that costs around $30 retail. It’s still not an audiophile cartridge, and the tonearm’s headshell doesn’t permit the substitution of another cartridge. Some retailers are claiming that you can get better performance from a stylus upgrade, but that stylus is not an AT product. The AT-LP2D-USB can be connected directly to your computer through a USB port. A similar Audio-Technica product, the AT-LP2Da, lacks the USB interface, using instead an audio cable that connects to a computer’s 1/8" audio jack. Both turntable packages include two recording-software programs, Cakewalk PYRO and Audacity, and each can play at 45rpm and 33rpm. A quick check on the Web revealed that either turntable can be picked up for as little as $100. Setting up the AT-LP2D-USB turntable is relatively easy. The lightweight platter fits over the spindle, and a red ribbon tucked behind the belt lets you pull the belt, accessible through one of the small rectangular holes cut into the platter, onto the motor. A rubber mat fits over the spindle and covers the platter. The tonearm, virtually identical to the one in the Teac GF-350, is a thin aluminum tube 8.25" long and fitted into a swiveling rectangular base of plastic. The cartridge clips into the plastic headshell, which is affixed to the end of the armtube and cannot be removed. There’s no counterweight on the tonearm, and no antiskating mechanism. I measured the tracking force with my Shure stylus-force gauge: a whopping 3.9gm. Next is to integrate the AT-LP2D-USB with your computer. I cleared some space on a shelf and placed the turntable and my Dell laptop next to each other so I could switch between them easily. I plugged the USB cable into the turntable and the computer, and noticed that the computer didn’t detect new hardware or open a new drive. (The AT’s user’s manual notes that the AT-LP2D-USB does not load any drivers to your computer.) Adjustments to your computer’s Sounds and Audio Devices settings, which you make after you install the recording software, enable it to capture the incoming signal from the USB port. The ’table has a Phono/Line switch on the back. If you’re playing through an amplifier or receiver, you set this to Phono; for use through the computer, set it to Line. Audio-Technica includes a software guide with the AT-LP2D-USB that recommends Cakewalk PYRO. While Audacity is included for use with Macs, it can also be used with PCs. I loaded the Cakewalk software, and set the Sound and Audio Devices properties as instructed by the software guide. When the installation and settings were finished, I opened Cakewalk and followed the instructions for recording an LP. The software guide and Cakewalk’s menu page were easy enough to figure out. I placed on the turntable Bill Holman’s Great Big Band and began to record. I noticed some movement on the Check Volume meter in the Record panel of Cakewalk’s "Make Audio CD" screen, but could hear nothing through my computer speakers. A quick review of the software guide revealed that "you will be unable to listen to your album through your computer while recording." Audacity does allow you to monitor your recording, so my initial impression was that it would be preferable to Cakewalk. The same steps, more or less, are followed to load Audacity on your computer as for Cakewalk. Audacity is a bit easier to use because its playback meters are bigger and easier to read, as is the waveform window that lets you monitor and edit your recording later. Audacity also offers more editing and audio "cleanup" tools, but most of these will be of little interest to the average user. The AT-LP2D-USB’s manual includes instructions for using the turntable’s RCA cables so you can hook it up directly to computer speakers, headphones (adapters are included for both), or a stereo system. If you use Cakewalk, you’ll have to take that extra time if you want to hear what you’re working with. For this reason, I used Audacity. I was eager to compare the results of the AT-LP2D-USB and the Teac, so I recorded side one of the Holman LP on both and burned the two files to a disc. The difference was not subtle. The Teac, to begin with, ran a bit faster than the AT. The Teac’s cartridge also produced a lot of groove noise, which made its way onto the .cda file. Instruments seemed crammed together in the soundstage, and subtle details were lost in groove noise and flat reproduction. I wasn’t surprised -- I’d always found the Teac’s sound poor, and used it strictly for transferring tapes to CD-R. The cartridge in the AT-LP2D-USB gave markedly better results, producing more subtle musical details, a much lower noise floor, and sound that was more musical and pleasing. I then did a side-by-side comparison with the LP using my Denon DP59L turntable, which is fitted with an Ortofon OM 20 cartridge, and the CD-R track I’d made with the AT-LP2D-USB. The Denon-Ortofon, not surprisingly, had even less groove noise and a much cleaner background. Switching to the AT track, I noticed some rumble and other vibrations coming through the cartridge. The AT-LP2D-USB’s tonearm and plinth have not been designed to damp vibrations in the ways that even entry-level audiophile turntables are. The results, though not unpleasant, were far from even mid-fi -- if a lot closer to it than with the Teac. After you’ve finished recording your LP, the real work begins. Audacity and Cakewalk save their results as files with extensions unique to each software, which limits you to one or the other when you want to edit or burn a CD-R. Fortunately, both programs give you the options of saving or exporting these files as .wav or MP3 files, which gives you much more flexibility when editing the recording and burning a CD-R. You can, of course, copy each side of the LP as a single track, but you’ll probably want to use the editing capabilities of both programs to assign each song an individual track. Good luck figuring out how -- the Help guides are, well, unhelpful. I ended up searching Google and finding much clearer guidance in user forums. That, and a little experimentation, yielded enough information for me to assign tracks and crop lead-in and deadwax groove noise with both programs. As soon as I knew my way around the waveform screens, I was able to accurately tell where a track ended, even on an LP with surface noise, and break one long .wav or MP3 file down into the number of tracks that corresponded to the LP. It took me a couple of tries to save the final results. First time around, I exported the files after breaking them down into separate tracks, and was disappointed to find that the CD I’d burned still contained only one track per LP side. After more poking around on the Web, I discovered my error: I had to export each track as a separate file -- easy enough to do with the programs’ Export Multiple File functions. As noted earlier, Audacity has more editing and cleanup tools than Cakewalk, but I doubt I would ever use any of them. Both programs let you reduce clicks and other noises, but doing so takes away some of the impact of the music. Audacity’s other options let you speed up or slow down tracks -- something no music purist, audiophile or not, will abide. Audacity has other capabilities -- such as the ability to fade in, fade out, or compress a track -- that experienced users may want to use. But Audacity lacks Cakewalk’s CD-R burning capability. However, when I tried to burn a CD-R with Cakewalk, I got an error. By that time, I’d already logged in enough research time with Cakewalk, so I used Nero to burn my final results. I’ve been using the Teac GF-350 to copy LPs for my some of my friends who long ago got rid of their turntables. These folks never had audiophile gear, but after years of listening to CDs and cassettes, they were used to hearing relatively quiet backgrounds; they found the surface noise on the CD-Rs I gave them to be distracting. The AT-LP2D-USB significantly reduces the noise level on CD-Rs made from LPs, to the point that I think most people who aren’t audiophiles will find the results enjoyable, even when they’ve transferred them to an iPod. ...Joseph Taylor
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Analog to
Digital: Using the Audio-Technica AT-LP2D-USB LP-to-Digital Recording System