No Recording Volume Adjustment for Ion TTUSB05 and AT USB Turntables, Two strikes: No pre-ADC gain, no software volume level Options

[Knowzy]

As we previously discussed, few USB turntables offer gain adjustment before the signal hits the A/D converter (see chart #2 in the USB Turntable guide for specific models).

Here's what I didn't expect: There's no way to adjust the recording volume in Windows Mixer or Audacity.

"USB Audio CODEC" Screenshots

A Regular Sound Card

Of course, you can always normalize after you're done recording. Nonetheless, I expected to find a slider in Windows Mixer, just like any other sound card.

This could just be a limitation of the Microsoft's USB Audio CODEC driver (USBAudio.sys). I'm curious if Mac and Linux users have the same limitation.

Then again, I tried Ploytec's USB ASIO driver and got the same results, so maybe it's the nature of the hardware.

In the end, I guess you can always spin it in marketing terms: It's a feature- you never need to set your levels!



A Sample Clip
With that, I present my first USB turntable sample from the Audio-Technica AT-LP2D-USB. It is the first track from the Ultimate Analogue Test LP.

This 1kHz test tone is used for, among other things, setting the recording volume to read 0VU. Obviously, I cannot do this without post-processing.

BTW, the first 10 seconds are the sounds of the tonearm automatically placing itself on the record.

Many more samples are coming this weekend.