Hasta La Gadget!

I’m probably dating myself, but I still have a massive collection of old vinyl records gathering dust in bins in my closet. I actually no longer have a turntable, so other than the few records I purchased as CDs or in digital formats, I haven’t listened to them in a dog’s age. So when Crosley was nice enough to let me take their Spinnerette Turntable for a spin, I was happy to oblige.

I love the retro design of the Spinnerette, which has a carrying handle and a flip-down turntable surface for playing your old 33s, 45s and 78s. To the right of the turntable is a monophonic speaker, along with volume and tone controls, while underneath the turntable are connectors for USB, headphones, and even auxiliary audio in. Since it’s built from plastic, you’re not going to want to throw it around, but records themselves are delicate things too.

The Spinnerette isn’t just any old turntable. It can both play records and convert them to digital files. Just connect the turntable to your PC or Mac via the included USB cable, install the software, and you can copy records to digital audio files – assuming you have the patience to listen to your entire record collection as you rip them into your computer.

The bundled software is actually the open-source Audacity, which is available for both PC and Mac and can record audio via the turntable’s USB connector. I first tested the software on my Mac (running OSX 10.8.3). You’ll definitely want to read the software installation guide provided on the installation DVD, as there are a number of steps to setting up Audacity to record the best quality sound from the turntable. I spent a good 30 minutes trying to get audio that wasn’t distorted and clipped, and I also had to hunt around for something called LAME in order to get MP3s to output from Audacity. Having no success getting undistorted audio on the Mac, I switched to my Windows 7 PC and had much better luck there. It took only a couple of minutes to get up and running on my PC without the clipped audio I experienced on the Mac.

Once you get the Audacity software set up, you hit the record button, put the needle on the turntable, and let the record play all the way through. When finished with one side of your record, you can use Audacity’s “Silence Finder” to automatically detect the beginning and end of tracks. This process is a bit fiddly, and doesn’t work on 100% of recordings, but on most records with definitive breaks between tracks it does the trick. That said, you can manually tag tracks as well. Once the tracks are divvied up, you can bulk-save them as individual MP3, WAV or OGG files.

Overall audio quality of digitized recordings is indistinguishable from the original records – at least to my untrained ear. Here’s an example recording I grabbed from an old Rolling Stones’ recording of Not Fade Away:

Not too shabby, I say. Audacity also provides the ability to normalize volume levels, and clean up pops and scratches if you so choose – though I kind of like the charm of the old scratchy LPs. Speaking of which, part of the fun of the Spinnerette is the fact that it’s a complete, portable turntable, amplifier and speaker, so you can listen to your old records they way they were meant to be heard – on a small, monophonic speaker. I’m not a turntable snob, but there’s definitely something very special about listening to vinyl records this way, versus digital files. I’m not saying it’s something I’d do every day, but it’s a welcome treat. Of course, I’ll have digital versions of my records once I’m done ripping them anyhow.

Overall, I’ve had fun with the Spinnerette. At its core, it does what Crosley says it will – play vinyl records and convert them to digital files. I have to say that while I’ve enjoyed dusting off my old records and listening to them on the Spinnerette, the process of ripping records to digital files is time-consuming and requires a bit of trial and error. And for Mac users, it appears to be flat-out broken. It would be much better if Crosley would develop their own simplified software just for performing the task instead of trying to use Audacity, since the target audience for turntables is probably a bit older and less tech savvy anyhow. Bottom line – if you’ve got numerous records to rip, it could take quite some time and effort to get them converted. On the plus side, you’ll only have to do it one time, and then your vinyl memories will be forever preserved in digital form.

You can get the Spinnerette turntable over at Crosley Radio for $149.95(USD), in either blue or red.

Disclosure: Crosley Radio provided the turntable for review in this article. However, all reviews are the unbiased views of our editorial staff.

I am not quite sure just how many of you out there still carry your music around – no, let me rephrase, have a collection of music in cassette form since the humble cassette-based Sony Walkmans have all but died for a long, long time already (in technology’s timeframe, time is relatively short). Well, assuming you have some old classics that have yet to make their way to the digital format even after you have spent years scouring the Internet for it (without any CDs available, either), there is some hope left.

You need not depend on Obi Wan Kenobi, but you can surely check out the $79.95 Cassette To iPod Converter which will be able to convert audio tape cassettes into MP3 files directly. Of course, this digitized format from an analog source would mean you will also get all the hisses and pops, but that is part of the package, and if you have a remote interest in cleaning up digital audio files, then you would not mind converting your entire cassette collection. All converted audio will be stashed away on the docked iPhone or iPod touch, as long as there is adequate storage space, that is. A couple of AA batteries power the Cassette To iPod Converter.

[ Cassette To iPod Converter copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Adapters to fit Canon’s EF lenses on Micro Four Thirds and NEX camera bodies most definitely aren’t new. Without any electronic link, though, that Lumix GX1 or NEX-F3 owner has had to focus by hand, sometimes without any aperture control — what year is it, 1930? Kipon wants to make sure you’ll never have to stoop to that level again through a pair of new adapters that keep the electronic controls working. As always with these parts, there’s likely to be catches: we don’t know the prices and ship dates, for one, and lens conversion can still hurt the autofocus speed. Even so, anyone who’s been hoarding (or simply envious of) Canon glass now doesn’t have to eye an EOS-M just to get a mirrorless camera with the lens adapter they crave.

Filed under: Digital Cameras, Peripherals

Kipon preps Canon EF lens adapters for Micro Four Thirds, NEX cameras with electronic control originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Jul 2012 01:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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