Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Reviving Your Vinyl: A review of Instant Music from ADS Tech
Posted by Don Tolson in "Digital Home Hardware & Accessories" @ 08:00 AM
Product Category: Audio Transfer Hardware/Software
Manufacturer: ADS Tech
Where to Buy: ADS Tech
Price: $49.99 USD (I couldn't find a price for the SpinItAgain software separately)
System Requirements: Windows 98SE, WinME, Win2000, WinXP (Home or Professional), (No mention of Vista), CPU - Intel Pentium 3 500 MHz or faster, USB port, CD ROM (for software installation)
Specifications: Audio IN/Out: RCA Stereo (Left and Right); SPDIF (Toslink); Power: USB bus power (no external supply needed); USB: USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 compatible as a Full Speed Device; Audio Specs: Capture: 16 bit; Sampling Rate: 8, 11, 16, 22.05, 32 44.1 or 48 kHz; THD+N = 0.01%; SNR= 89dB; Playback: 16 bit; Sampling Rate: 32, 44.1, 48 kHz; THD+N = 0.005%; SNR = 96dB.
Pros:
- very easy to hookup
- lots of presets to assist with noise reduction for specific situations
- pop-up hints and tips available to help with recording from analog media
- no output to MP3 format (WAV, WMA and OGG only)
- no way to get the SpinItAgain software alone
Got a closet/storage rack/crawl space full of vinyl records, 8 tracks or cassette tapes? Well, maybe you'd like to preserve some of those old memories in digital form, but don't have the hookups and editing capability to do it on your own. ADS Tech's Instant Music may be just the answer for you. It's easy to set up and fairly straightforward to record and transfer those old formats to digital. It can't do it all automatically for you, but it does handle most of the more technical aspects. Read on for the full review!
Being amongst the end of the 'Baby Boomer' generation, I have a considerable collection (approximately 700 albums) of vinyl records gathering dust in bookshelves in my library. It's a very eclectic collection – ranging from hard rock to folk to independent, new wave – and there are a lot of memories tied up in those disks. Unfortunately, vinyl is not a permanent storage media, and as they get older, the chances of transferring them to a digital format in usable form becomes more and more tenuous. (I've given up completely on the cassette tapes, as most of those have stretched beyond playability.) I have an older, still serviceable Sony turntable and a computer with audio inputs but the problem with that was a) control of the audio recording volumes and b) editing the two 'sides' of the record into separate music tracks and putting them into standard album folder format.
I looked at a couple of commercially available music ripping products from MusicTracks and Nero, but neither seemed to have the complete package. After posting a question on the Digital Home Thoughts, Jason and some others suggested I take a look at Instant Music from ADS Tech. They're the same folks who provide the most widely used video transfer hardware/software – the Pyro/AV series. So you'd expect them to have a pretty complete package.
What You Get
InstantMusic hardware and software comes in the now ubiquitous bubble-wrap package and includes everything you see here:
Figure 1: The contents of the Instant Music Package.
This includes:
- the Instant Music Interface hardware;
- Play It Again software;
- cables for connecting between the audio source, the Instant Music interface and your computer;
- a Quick Start Guide to connecting everything together and getting started.
Everything you need for 99% of the recording/transfer situations you will encounter is there, including the cables, which is a nice touch. Too often, I see vendors providing audio hardware, but leaving all the connecting cables up to you, as they figure there are too many different options.
