Instant Music great for converting vinyl albums

Posted by Don Foy Nov 28, 2005 at 12:31am

You’ve got about 200 old vinyl albums lying around the house, and you just can’t bring yourself to throw them away, noting that some of them are not available anywhere on CD. For example, my wife and I have a bunch of Styx stuff, but would rather listen to the original LP version of Lady. I haven’t been able to find it on CD. I may not have looked hard enough, but that’s not the point.

Another example: my Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band LP picture disc. No idea how much it’s worth, but the picture would be too small on a CD.

Some highfalutin audiophiles will tell you music sounds better on vinyl. It sounds scratchy to me, but hey, that’s just me. Don’t mean to start WW III over vinyl vs. CD. I like the clarity in CD, but there’s just something warm and fuzzy about vinyl.
But vinyl scratches, and its hard to take your albums with you on vacation. So I’d like to digitize some of them, burn them on CD for safekeeping and listen to them in iTunes and in the car. My wife wants some of them on her iPod mini.

So when ADS Tech asked if I wanted to review Instant Music, I jumped at the chance. Box said “Just plug it into a source and USB port on your Mac and you’re ready to go.” I installed the software that came with it, Roxio’s CD SpinDoctor 2, and was ready to record.

I keep my cassette deck on the table by my usual seat on the couch for just such an occasion and popped in a cassette to see if everything worked as advertised. It does. As always, read and follow label instructions.

I’ve used other similar devices, but this one was the easiest to set up and get working.

So next, I hooked it up to my home sound system so I could digitize an LP.

Here’s where I found my only glitch, and it’s pretty picky. On the very top of the instruction sheet, it says “Record your old LPs and Cassettes to Audio CD and MP3.”

I knew there would be a gotcha, and I found it at the bottom of the third page (the pages were small) where it said, “If using a turntable, make sure you also use a preamplifier unless the turntable has a preamplifier built in.”

Most turntables don’t have this, at least that I could find, and a preamp at the Radio Shack was going to cost nearly $100. So I just hooked it up to my big system. No problem. CD Spin Doctor recorded the music and I was able to enhance it a little and clean up some pops and cracks a little.

The good

The device works as advertised. It came with all the analog cables you need, and with ports, but no cables, for digital (Toslink) sound input and output as well. Bonus. You shouldn’t expect the Toslink cables at this price. The software was easy to use if you read the instructions and follow them. The instructions were complete and easy to understand.

The bad

You need an amplifier to record records. But at the price point, you can’t really complain about that too much, especially since you can just hook it up to your home AV receiver and go right about your business.

The ugly

Nothing. I tried, but I couldn’t find anything.

Instant Music goes for a suggested retail price of $50, but I found it on Amazon for $41. For more information, go to the ADS web site.

System requirements: A Mac with G4 processor or better, Mac OS X and an available USB port

Macsimum rating: 9 out of 10.

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