Ion Audio LP2CD Turntable
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Ion's LP2CD turntable ($399) pulls double duty by playing your records and CDs, and is one of the easiest solutions we've seen for making digital copies of your old LPs. Over the past few years, Ion has made quite a few turntable models designed to take the sting out of converting your records to CDs and MP3s, but the LP2CD's unique integrated CD burner and computer-free operation make it exceptionally user-friendly.
Design
Before getting to the digital technology of the LP2CD, let's first take a look at the turntable itself. Up top you've got a belt drive system with three playback speeds (33, 45, 78), a metal platter, and a standard tone arm with a replaceable, off the shelf cartridge. The package also includes a hinged dust cover, a slip mat, a 45 record adapter, and USB, RCA, and power cables.
On the back of the deck you'll find stereo RCA input and output, a USB jack, and a standard three-prong power connection. All the real action is on the front, though, where you'll find a tray-loading recordable CD drive, a multi-button control strip, and a 2.5-inch LCD. Operating the CD drive is a fairly straightforward process, with buttons for play/pause, stop, skip, record, burn, and eject, located right above the tray.
To the left of the CD deck controls you'll find smaller buttons for navigating the LP2CD's onscreen menus. These buttons, and the menus they control, are intuitive to use and easy to understand.
In spite of its technological novelty, the LP2CD isn't a particularly high-quality turntable, given its price. The construction is mostly plastic, with the same generic feel as Ion's budget-price iTTUSB deck. It's also a bit of a beast, measuring a relatively bulky 6 inches tall (with cover), 17.5 inches wide, and 15.5 inches deep. Which is not to say that the LP2CD isn't a fine turntable from a practical and sonic perspective, but there are some sexier and sturdier decks in the same $400 range.
Features
The Ion LP2CD plays records and CDs, and can also route audio from any device plugged into the stereo line input located on the back. The turntable's killer feature, however, is its ability to record from any of those same audio sources and burn the results to a recordable CD.
To accomplish this, the LP2CD includes 700MB of built-in flash memory (the same capacity as an average blank CD), allowing you to temporarily store recordings before burning them to CD. If you want to make a copy of a CD, you can rip the whole disc or just the songs you want to the internal memory and then burn it back to a blank disc. To capture vinyl, just put the needle to the groove and hit the record button, and the LP2CD will suck the recording into its memory. Hit the Burn Disc button when you're done and presto! You've turned one antique format into a somewhat less antique format.
To make recordings directly to your computer over USB, Ion includes software for capturing, editing, and exporting your recordings directly to programs like iTunes. If you're going to go this route, however, you may as well save some money and buy a USB turntable without the CD recording capability. Besides, recording to the turntable's internal memory is just as fast, sounds just as good, and automatically detects the silence between songs and split tracks accordingly (manual edits are also possible).
Performance
Making digital recordings from analog sources such as vinyl is an inherently noisy and imperfect process. The LP2CD can't make your records sound better, but the results are accurate and detailed--dust, scratches, hiss, and all.
For the money, you're paying mostly for convenience. If you're only thinking about digitally transferring a handful of records, you'd do just as well to save some money and grab a strictly computer-connected turntable like the Ion iTTUSB, or the iPTUSB. It's the people who are staring down a library of hundreds of records or other analog recordings who will really appreciate the CD ripping and automatic track splitting features of the LP2CD system and get their money's worth from the purchase.