USB turntable help

February 20, 2008 3:42 AM

USB Turntable- Why did it record my conversation but not the album?

I have a brand new Ion TTUSB05 turntable, and I'm using a Mac (iMac running OS X, if that matters). I'm using the "EZ Vinyl Converter" software by MixMeister that came with the turntable. Last night I thought I spent a painstaking hour transferring an album, but what I had to show for it at the end was a lot of background noise and a conversation I had while transferring. No music at all.

Everything seemed to work fine, the record was playing, I could hear it through the speakers on the computer, and I was hitting "record" and "next track" according to the instructions. It appears to have been recording from the computer's mic and not the usb input. The turntable is definitely plugged into a usb port, and there are no settings that I can find in the software to fiddle with. Any ideas?

posted by banjo_and_the_pork to computers & internet (6 comments total)

My husband recently started having the same problem with EZ Vinyl Converter, although he'd used it in the past with no problems whatsoever. He thinks it might have to do with recently updating iTunes, but didn't want to bother with checking.

He now uses Amadeus II although that costs $30 (he's using the free trial now) and he has used Audacity in the past but has had it crash on him a few times.
posted by Lucinda at 4:36 AM on February 20

Oh, wait. Mr. Lucinda's problem was different. (He was getting no recordings at all, as opposed to your conversations and background noise.) He says you have to go to the "Sound" setting in your system preferences and see that it's set to "line in" and not "microphone".
posted by Lucinda at 4:39 AM on February 20

lucinda is right, you need to change the mixer settings in the OS. Assuming the OS has such a thing.
posted by gjc at 6:22 AM on February 20

Your default for sound input is set to the Mic, if you don't override that setting in your recording app or change the default, it'll dutifully record from the Mic. Check the application settings for sound input device and select your USB turntable. If it doesn't appear, and you also can't see it in the System Preferences, your Mac is not recognizing the USB device.
posted by tommasz at 6:29 AM on February 20

What you want isn't in System Preferences, it's in Applications -> Utilities -> Audio MIDI Setup.app. You need to make sure, as everyone else has stated, that you're recording from the correct input; that is the utility that lets you do that.
posted by ikkyu2 at 7:14 AM on February 20

Thanks so much everyone, I'm glad it's an easy fix!
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 9:16 AM on February 20