ION Quick Play LP Compact Vinyl to USB Turntable

ION's USB turntables have come a long way since the earliest models. No more painstaking set-up and calibration of the stylus and tone-arm, no more £150 price-tag for even the basic version without a protective lid. Now, everything is quite literally "plug'n'play" straight out of the box.

The Quick Play LP Compact Vinyl to USB Turntable is never going to win any audiophile awards, but that is not its purpose. By nature, it's meant to get those vinyl LPs and Singles digitised as easily as possible. They've even come up with a purely USB-powered design, so no more power adaptors and leads. It's truly compact and lightweight, yet all the major components are protected when not in use.

Sounds great? Well, yes. It's not without problems, however.

The supplied software is configured to automatically convert the recordings into 192kps MP3 files, which go directly into your iTunes library. This assumes that no further editing of the recording is needed or desired, or that a better quality is preferred. Altering iTunes import settings to 320kps gets around the first issue, but using an alternative piece of freeware (such as Audacity) is really the only way around the problem of sprucing up the vinyl rips. The quality of the direct-to-iTunes recordings (at 320kps) is suprisingly good from a clean source, punchy and as good as any digital file you'd find for sale.

Unfortunately, a major flaw in the supplied software means that many recordings stop if the music itself enters a quiet phase or breaks for a split-second. No amount of retries will make it continue recording the full song. For this reason alone, an alternative (such as Audacity) is absolutely necessary, so ensure familiarity with another piece of digitising software beforehand!

By default, plugging in the USB turntable will cut the sound from your speakers. Again, this can be solved (and many of the troubleshooting issues are featured in the FAQ provided with the booklet), so that listening to the recording in real-time is possible.

So, in conclusion the upsides to this product are:

- Instant "plug'n'play" ability, with no need for an AC power source.
- Price
- Decent quality recordings
- Compatible with Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 as well as Mac OS.
- Size and weight, with the portability that ensues.

But the downsides include:

- Useless software that requires a more reliable alternative.
- Changes to PC's sound settings needed while using the product.
- 192kps rips directly to iTunes are not everyone's ideal, even if there is the option to override the defaults and make WAV files in Audacity.
- Questions remain over the long-term quality of the stylus and plate.

With all this in mind, it's a mini USB record player that can create very acceptable digital copies of your vinyl collection - if you have the time and the know-how to tweak all the settings and use a better piece of software than that provided.

There may be more sophisticated systems of getting your vinyl collection transferred to digital. But this piece of kit does the job just fine. Once transferred to a computer (I use an iMac but it will work with Windows machines of course) it can go straight to iTunes at the touch of a button. From there all transferability options are available as normal (iPod; iPad; CD etc).

The only mild frustration is that even though you are invited to type in title, artist and album details I can't get that information to transfer to iTunes automatically. But everything can be typed up once the tracks are in iTunes. So best to wait until the tracks are there and then do the typing, otherwise you end up doing it twice.

For the price, this does the job well enough and there is the potential for also transferring tapes, but you have to plug in a tape player first.

Recommended for ease and speed, but probably not for HiFi buffs who want to fiddle with the quality by removing groovy "ticks" and other fine tuning!

Bought this in John Lewis yesterday on the spur of the moment. Great device, simple set up, takes up no space and is a great thing to have - ok not fit for an audiophile but does the job. THEN we read a review on here about damaged albums ... we looked at one we had played and indeed, 3 round rings almost 'melted' onto the vinyl. Some of the records were ok, one or two were damaged. It must be dependant on exactly what the LP is made from...
It wasn't a removable sticky residue either, but literally more like it had melted into the grooves :o(

Will have to try and put something over the 3 pads to stop this from happening... EDITED - have placed a piece of paper over the offending pads - just cut out a 7" single sized sheet of ordinary paper and popped it on the deck and this has stopped the problem. Would have given it 5 stars were it not for what it did to Larks Tongues in Aspic! One star (my original grading) seemed a bit mean though, but DO NOT play your fave LPS without covering the pads, just incase!!!!