Just the usual thank you from an enthusiastic new user!

[Stoopy]

Holiday greetings from an overjoyed new user who would like to take a minute and thank you for your successfull efforts in creating a very useful and powerful piece of software!

This may be a familiar story but bears telling again:

I received as a christmas gift from my wife an ION USB turntable for the purpose of enjoying and recording some of my old records.  I do not have a huge vinyl collection, but what I do have I consider - probably like most others - to be very unique and irreplaceable.  What remains in my possession over the years is both very much treasured and very obscure, and simply cannot be sourced in modern MP3/ WAV or iTunes (yucchhh) formats. Which these days means, no enjoying it in the car or on my MP3 player in the garage or airline flight etc. etc.

And as cool and nifty as the thought of a USB turntable may be, those of us who have been around the block a few times know that even the best hardware isn't worth much of anything without good software to make use of it.  As was the case with this turntable...decent but not audiophile quality, but even so what do we have for software?  The box mentioned that it "comes with software to record albums and save MP3's" and the manual mentions the installation of "EZTunes"...which turns out to require the installation of iTunes to even launch (no thank you!) or "Audacity"...which turns out to not actually be provided on any installation media included in the box as the instruction manual seems to indicate, but is freeweare that must be downloaded (this being learned only after spending much time researching the turntable online).  This left a bad taste in my mouth since it's a stretch to say that it's something the turntable "comes with for free".  It's equivalent to saying that it comes with air you can breathe for free too.

And although there is undeniably some great freeware out there for certain tasks, unfortunately much of the time freeware is worth only what you pay for it...and considering the value of my own time and the albums themselves, I didn't really want to send my time evaluating multiple free tools only to be dissapointed....so the hunt was on for a decent supporting app with a "sweet spot' of features versus price that could handle the big job of cleaning up albums that had been vigorously and thoroughly enjoyed during their full and active lives at wild parties and dorm rooms and various other hazy venues, with the scars to prove it.  My LPs aren't a mess but some of them have been played excessively during their lives.  That happens when good music is on 'em!

To make a long story short I tried your product as well as another that allowed a free trial period to record a few albums for the purposes of familiarization with the app.  The easily-understood and helpful approach of your application really stood out but even more importantly, digging just a bit deeper under the surface it became clear there were some very well-thought-out capabilities and powerful algorithms for audio repair, all of which could easily be accessed and controlled without being at the mercy of excess wizards and limited-function menus.  There was no comparison to the other, "simple but obviously meant to stay that way" product. Your Vinyl Studio is obviously a very flexible (and friendly!) application that serves the purpose of the novice user quite well but goes the extra mile(s) by expanding into more powerful areas at the users own pace.  

In the course of two or three short evenings (about an hour each night after work) I have become adept at manually repairing what little audio damage the built-in filters did not already correct with the default settings (with excellent results by the way), and dealing with some tricky track breaks using the track fading controls. Even WHILE listening to my wife talk to me about other stuff.  And by the way, the equalizer tool and how it can be combined with your various filter settings to create an entire saved preset is a godsend for gently tweaking the sound and overall "presence" of the original tracks as needed.  GNARLY!!

I'd tried with limited success a few years ago to digitally record some of my LP's, and had connected my high-quality turntable to the sound card in my PC through my preamp. That worked OK, but unfortunately the state of the art for (affordable) audio processing software wasn't where it needed to be and I was left with the choice of the recordings as-is (with the native snap crackle and pops) OR lots of strange-wavy-sounding audio "artifacts" where any pop or click corrections were made, and I gave up the process since neither option ended up beign enjoyable to listen to when mixed with modern "native" CD or MP3 recordings.

Now, it is FANTASTIC - not to mention MIND-BLOWINGLY EASY - to be able to dig into it again with such a well thought-out and complete tool for the job!  KUDOS and many happy rewards to you!!!!!

Thanks Again!

E.J.
Gainesville VA, USA

[Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft)]

Well that's great, thank you.  It's true that the software supplied with units like the Ion is of limited usefulness.  Anyway, pleased you like the product and happy digitising.