Product Review: The IConvert USB Turntable

Many people still have record collections that go un-listened to because there are not many devices left on which to play them anymore. Record players are hard, if not impossible, to find and purchase in stores, so once the one you currently own fails to work you may not be able to listen to them at all anymore. The iConvert USB Turntable can digitize your album collection so that you can listen to them anywhere and anytime in a more convenient manner. The product can be purchased for $100 from Brookstone. Since you have already made an investment in the music, you might as well convert it to a format in which you are able to enjoy it.

The iConvery USB Turntable is simple to use. It looks just like a record player with a USB cable attached. All you need to do is plug the cable into your computer's USB port and play your records. The songs will record themselves onto your computer and save themselves as .WAV files. The software that comes with it is easy to use and allows you to fix up your music. Once you're done, you can burn it to CDs or put it on your MP3 player so that you can listen to it anywhere you want. You will need Windows XP or later or Mac OS X 10.4 or later. If you have Windows 7, you will need to download a software update for free from the Brookstone website.

The product also has a line out port so that you can listen to your records through your home stereo system. This is great if your old record player isn't performing as well as it used to or you want to listen to your music through better speakers.

The iConvert is easy to use even for people who are not great with computers since it comes with a good instruction booklet. The sound quality is surprisingly good. If you find that the quality is not great, try adjusting the volume level of the turntable and trying again. It is easy to label the tracks so that you will be able to tell what each song is. You can set it so the songs are imported directly into iTunes and into the format that they will need to be to place them on an iPod.

Sometimes the product is not very good at distinguishing one track from the next, but this is easy to fix if you are willing to sit near it and do it manually while it records.