Roll out the barrel

I bought myself a new record player on the weekend.  My old one, whilst it still works, is completely 100% incompatible with anything involving a printed circuit board, and the amp I used to use it with (which had a special plug for record players that, when I pulled the cover off it once, turned out to involve a simple piece of wire, instead of the printed circuit boards that every other plug used) had long since reached the point where it was going to be cheaper to buy a new record player than it was to keep the obsolete amp in good repair.

So, I wandered into JB Hi Fi and came out with a Numark record player.  On my way back to the car with the thing tucked under my arm (it weighs about nothing), I got accosted and raved at by a man who had seen the brand and wanted to know if it was really as wonderful as he'd heard.  Well, after that I pretty much had to post a review of the thing.

My personal verdict?  No, it's not that wonderful.

Okay.  Just to explain a bit more.  Numark have included, in their machine, a USB port (and even included the cable in the package, which gives them brownie points - not even computer printers do that anymore!) and software, so that you can plug the record player directly into your computer and copy your precious vinyl onto CD.

Now, achieving this isn't all that difficult.  If the record player is connected to an amp with an earphones plug, all you need to do is collect some audio cables and adaptors (which I purchased quite easily from Dick Smith Electronics ages ago), the line-in plug on your computer, and some not-terribly-expensive specialist software which lets you dick about in an amateuristic fashion with audio files.  I'd done it a few times using my old pre-digital setup. 

I should also tell you here that I haven't actually bothered to install the software that they gave me yet, or actually tried copying anything over onto CD, mostly because (as I said above), I've already got a setup which lets me do it.  So I can't tell you about that.  I may do so at some stage in the future, when I get around to trying it.

Setting the record player up was simple enough, if a little time consuming - I had to balance the arm of the player myself, which was a tedious operation requiring plenty of patience, especially given that I thought I knew better than the manufacturers did.  If I'd been less delicate about it, I would have done it successfully much more quickly than I did.  But that isn't my main problem with the machine.

It plays records nicely.  I'm happy about that.  But there are two features missing from it that existed on my old pre-digital record player, that have existed on record players for decades:  One of them is that little lever which lets you move the arm into position without fear of dropping it.  The other is an automatic return which, when it reaches the end of the record, returns the arm to the carrier.

Okay, it means that I can get the full effect of John Lennon's fairly silly (IMHO) repeating gag at the end of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (assuming that I buy the record on vinyl, which I shall have to do now Just Because).  But it's still a little irritating that I have to stop the record and return the arm to the carrier myself, instead of just turning the record over and playing the other side.

Knitting in the round for the first time is something probably best not done with fringe yarn, even though the project is otherwise ridiculously simply (wrist cuffs - cast on the right number of stitches, and knit until you've finished.).

I'm ekeing out my workload again.  Why?  Because after three days of frantically running around like a headless chicken, trying to get all that "should have been finished yesterday" stuff done on time (surely impossible without a Tardis or deLorean - and I really wish my superiors would work that out), I'm back to twiddling my thumbs again.  Honestly, the workload around here is ridiculously uneven.

I'm seriously on the verge of going and wasting my day over on Facebook.