Monday, March 9, 2020

Kindly asking for your audiophile technical knowledge!









I have recently bought a new turntable as my old one broke down and the other one I have is hundreds of miles away at my parents' house. I decided to buy this AKAI ATT-E10 portable player with an internal preamp (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B001KXAERU/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8), both because it was relatively cheap and because it is small, doesn't take up too much space and supposedly records lps through a usb port.

At first I was positive about as the sound is quite good even through its small built-in speakers. But I was quickly disappointed as it records at 64 kbps (yes you will tell me "dude you have posted about how great shit quality MP3s are" but I'll reply that "not everyone is Godflesh") without that being mentioned in the specifications or even in any reviews I read! So, I connected it to my laptop with a dual RCA red-white cable only to discover that it makes incredibly much clipping, even if I turn the mic level to zero.

So, my odyssey starts. I tried another RCA cable, nothing. I tried a better soundcard, nothing. I had my father sent me my other player's adaptor connected to my hi-fi to bypass it, nothing. I was told at an electronics shop to do the grounding, nothing as I can't really see any grounding cable in the player's interior. A reader of the blog asked an uncle of his to provide his advice, which was that nothing can be done An electronics engineer friend of me spent hours tried to find a solution, still nothing, which leaves me with the only option still not employed, which is to try an external pre-amp. I can find cheap ones, but I'm afraid it will be even bigger loss of money, so I'm tentative about it.

That's why I turn to you dear readers, asking you to please give me your own advice. If I can finally manage to make it work, I promise to share some really amazing lps that I have never seen posted anywhere.

2 comments:

  1. I've got to admit, a turntable in a briefcase is a new one on me!

    You can spend any amount of money on DACs and pre-amps but I wouldn't bother with that turntable as the base unit. The bit that confuses me is it records at 64 and the clipping. I'm no expert but to me that would depend on the recording software ... whilst the recording levels / sound quality might be a bit rubbish you can output the source file to any format and bitrate and adjust the amplification to reduce / remove the clipping. Unless I'm missing something?

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  2. make sure the line out bypasses the turntable software and connect the turntable to your PC with a usb cable. Use Audacity to record the output and control the bitrate/quality with Audacity. You should be able to do this without a pre-amp or separate amplifier

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