Comments about ION Audio LP 2 FLASH - Turntable with Direct-to-SD Card Recording:

I am a "Baby Boomer" who saved ALL of his vinyl albums. I have just started digitizing my music library and I must say that this turntable is easy to use right out of the box.

I first had to re-format my 4 GB thumb drive to MS-DOS FAT 32 format. Then I plugged it into the turntable; and after doing one test recording (just a minute of one song) to adjust the recording level, it was a snap to record the first side of the album. I flipped it over and recorded the other side.

I like the fact that I don't have to co-locate the turntable close to my Mac. I just keep the turntable as part of my living room stereo system. (It sounds great when played through my stereo, by the way. And there's no need to by a separate preamp!)

Minor quirks that I noticed:
1) When moving the tone arm manually into position to drop at the beginning of the album, it jumps over the album further in than it should.
2) It is a little tedious separating out the tracks, naming them, and assign metadata to each track (for referencing in iTunes). I used Audacity 1.3.8 Beta (rather than the 1.2.5 that Ion recommends). It would be nice if Ion offered software that would at least separate out the tracks for you automatically once you've brought your thumbdrive to a computer.
3) I got my turntable with the CD that is supposed to have the the EZ Vinyl Converter2 (Windows), EZ Audio Converter (Mac), and Audacity 1.2.5 on it. My CD, when loaded onto my Mac's desktop had a name that was in Chinese or Japanese. AND it only had the Windows software. I had to call Ion, but they sent me an e-mail with a link to download the Mac software if I wanted. A slight inconvenience.
4) The documentation is very light, but if you're familiar with working with computers and turntables, you shouldn't have a problem.

Overall, I am happy with this turntable, and I now look forward to a year of joyfully converting my vinyl albums to mp3's so that I can carry them on my iPod.