Ableton Forum

Okay so I have zero experience with sampling off of a turntable, in fact I've only really used one once, and my girlfriend set it up.

I found an old Pioneer PL-570 in my basement, and I'm interested in starting to dig thru crates of records to find some ghetto shit to sample from .. Basically I have two questions..

First, the cartridge is there, but it has no needle, it's just a square piece of metal (Shure), so how do I go about finding the right replacement (cant find a serial number and I'm positive this isn't the original)? can I just go into Guitar Center or something like that and grab any old needle? I remember reading that it was kinda a bitch to find a needle that would work for a specific turntable..

Really not looking to spend more than like $40 or else I'll just go on craigslist and buy a working turntable with needle and everything for like $60, or maybe one of those Vinyl-to-USB deals which leads me to my next question..

How can I plug the RCA (thats what the red and white cables are called, right?) into my audio interface (Fast Track Ultra).. Can I just get some adapters and plug them into the 1/4" jacks and record stuff directly into Live? I've been reading and it seems you need some sort of phono box or something or else it "won't work"..

If that's the case, what am I going to spend, and what's the easiest way to get the sample from the turntable into a recorded audio clip in Live?

Thanks ahead of time, normally I have some sort of direction with what I ask for advice over here, but in this case I'm completely lost.. and my father has no idea what I'm talking about when I say "i want to start sampling from vinyl" so he wont be able to help.

Take the cartridge into the audio shop and ask them if they have a needle that will fit. That's probably the cheapest option. Otherwise you can replace the whole needle/cartridge combo for pretty cheap - $25 for a real shitty one I'd say.

To get audio into your FTU, get an RCA to Stereo cable and you should be good to go. You may need a preamp if you don't have a mixer in the signal path, but the preamps on the FTU might do the job - don't know.

gaijin1717 wrote:Take the cartridge into the audio shop and ask them if they have a needle that will fit. That's probably the cheapest option. Otherwise you can replace the whole needle/cartridge combo for pretty cheap - $25 for a real shitty one I'd say.

To get audio into your FTU, get an RCA to Stereo cable and you should be good to go. You may need a preamp if you don't have a mixer in the signal path, but the preamps on the FTU might do the job - don't know.

Thanks bro, that was fast.. I have the cartridge and I'll probably look into it on friday when I get $$$, and we have a mixer layin around with RCA inputs and then we could plug the 1/4" cables into the interface so that would save us from needing the adapters and a pre-amp, IF that ends up working.. Thanks again.

But still, if people have more insight feel free to chime in.

Ya, you'll be needing to pre-amp the output from your turntable.
More to the point, you'll be wanting a pre-amp that's intended for use with turntables because of the RIAA equalization curve

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization


I've read a couple people post online about recording turntables without a pre-amp, and recreating the RIAA curve themselves. Never looked too much into it, my soundcard has pre-amps with the RIAA curve.

dum wrote:Ya, you'll be needing to pre-amp the output from your turntable.
More to the point, you'll be wanting a pre-amp that's intended for use with turntables because of the RIAA equalization curve

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization


I've read a couple people post online about recording turntables without a pre-amp, and recreating the RIAA curve themselves. Never looked too much into it, my soundcard has pre-amps with the RIAA curve.

What card is that? i only have access to a Fast Track Pro and Fast Track Ultra.. and then a couple different mixers..

and what is it going to sound like without hte RIAA EQ?

outershpongolia wrote:

dum wrote:Ya, you'll be needing to pre-amp the output from your turntable.
More to the point, you'll be wanting a pre-amp that's intended for use with turntables because of the RIAA equalization curve

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization


I've read a couple people post online about recording turntables without a pre-amp, and recreating the RIAA curve themselves. Never looked too much into it, my soundcard has pre-amps with the RIAA curve.

What card is that? i only have access to a Fast Track Pro and Fast Track Ultra.. and then a couple different mixers..

and what is it going to sound like without hte RIAA EQ?

The RIAA EQ curve is meant to allow more play time to fit in a vinyl by lowering the lows and boosting the highs, then a phono preamp makes up for it by applying a reverse EQ curve.

If you record your samples without applying the curve, you'll get thin and bass lacking audio.

I made this RIAA curve EQ8 preset. I'm not sure it's 100% correct, but it does the job.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2497376/RIAA_curvish.zip

Connect your turntable to your soundcard, route it to a Live track, add the EQ and adjust your levels so the signal doesn't go in the red either before or after the EQ.

Also, http://www.vacuumsound.de/ has a RIAA EQ plug in, but right now I can't load their site. Maybe you'll have better luck.

I am also looking into doing this.

Will the preamps on the audio interface not do the job?

Check out Turntable lab http://www.turntablelab.com/
They will probably have everything you need.
BBE makes an affordable RIAA pre-amp and I bought mine at guitar center.

outershpongolia wrote: What card is that?

metric halo 2882 baby.
accept no substitutes!