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Teac GF350 Turntable/CD Burner For those people who don’t want to bother with a separate turntable, a computer and software, Teac has produced a single box solution for the chore of dubbing vinyl records to CDs. By BARRIE SMITH T EAC CALLS ITS NEW system a “Multi Music Player/CD Record­ er”, which I guess is par for the course in the 21st century. After all, who among the young set would know a turntable as anything but a rotating platter thing in a Chinese restaurant? But this Teac does have a record turntable that plays 331/3, 45 and 78 RPM records albeit unfortunately all with the one stylus! It also has a fairly decent AM/FM radio and an internal CD burner that accepts CD-R/RW blanks as well as replaying pre-recorded CDs. The whole shebang is attractively packaged into a desktop cabinet made of real wood … well, MDF actually. The styling is retro black, including the car radio-like front control panel, which has an attractively lit fascia with knobs! It displays the radio station frequency setting, current status (Phono, AM, FM, etc) and recording level. Unfortunately, the all-black colour has flowed into the top mounted turntable/pickup arm section, so re40  Silicon Chip cord playing is quite an effort in low light. A small lamp would have been a nice touch here. If you have become immersed, as I have recently, in dubbing those old records onto CD, this could well be your saviour, liberating you from the PC as well as the tangles with software, letting you shift the task over to a more user-friendly domestic appliance that would look at home in the average living room. In use The GF350 has been well thought out and its functions easily understood. If you want to dub an LP, you turn on the power, place a disc on the turntable, then load a blank CD into the tray. You then select Phono, lower the stylus onto the record, press the Record button and a display of the audio level appears. You set the recording level via the bargraph display. Next, reset the stylus onto the leadin grooves of the LP and let her go, then tap the Forward button and the recording to CD task begins. But an LP may last only 20-25 minutes per side, while a CD can run to 80 minutes. The Teac GF350 copes with this with the Pause button, allowing you to halt the CD burning while you flip the record over or replace it with another disc, allowing you to completely fill a CD. It’s even possible to separate and identify the tracks on the final CD. These you can insert manually while the dubbing is in progress or you can set up an auto task, allowing the unit to insert a track division when the replay level drops below -20dB, -30dB or -40dB for more than two seconds. However I believe that few of us will baby-sit an LP to CD dub just to drop in place markers and for the record, I had little luck with the auto ID mode either. I sometimes ended up with 18 tracks from a 7-track LP! I think the dynamic range of LP recordings is such that an auto identifying routine will never work. I have found that this is siliconchip.com.au also the case with otherwise “clever” software that handles the same task on a computer. Dubbing finished, you have to finalise the CD with a Table of Contents on the disc, otherwise it will not play on a domestic CD player. I had success with my very first LP-to-CD copying effort, using a CD-R blank but had no luck with any of my CD-RW blanks. Teac recommends the use of “Digital Audio” blanks: I found that CD-Rs could be used but it may be the reason why the CD-RWs would not work. There is an auxiliary input at the unit’s rear, so you can dub from an outboard CD player, cassette deck or even from a VCR. Oddly, there is no provision for you to make a CD copy of a radio broadcast, even though the quality of the unit’s AM/FM section is quite acceptable. Comment The Teac GF350 is a unique product and for what it attempts to do, it succeeds. In terms of audio reproduction, you can’t expect too much from a pair of 70mm speakers in a lightlyconstructed wooden cabinet. There is virtually no bass and the physical speaker separation is only 35cm, so the stereo listening sweet spot is an unrealistic 20cm from the front of the unit! The turntable is lightweight, as is the pickup arm, so my advice is to place it on a sturdy cabinet, isolated from footsteps in the room. There is no adjustable counterweight for the tonearm, so there is no provision for the stylus tracking weight to be adjusted, nor is there an adjustment for the anti-skating setting be fine-tuned. Worse, the cartridge is a ceramic unit, so reproduction is far from 21st century standard. And given that it is ceramic cartridge, you would think that Teac might have fitted it with a turnover stylus so that you could play 78 RPM records correctly. (Editor’s note: this is a throwback to the old portable record players of the 1960s. These units always had a restricted bass response to avoid the acoustic feedback from speakers to turntable that would otherwise result. The turntable and ceramic cartridge will also give poor reproduction compared to a good quality turntable, balanced tonearm and magnetic cartridge with the correct stylus.) Aside from the mode which idensiliconchip.com.au The Teac GF350’s smart looking, car radio-like control panel has an attractively lit fascia – and knobs! Among other things, it displays radio station frequency setting, the current status (Phono, AM, FM, etc) and recording level. tifies tracks for burning a CD from a record, there is little else to please the audiophile: no method to de-click noisy records; no way to precisely cue in the start of a track when dubbing. It is also highly probable that dubbing to CD from a quality external turntable and magnetic cartridge with preamplifier pickup arm would give a superior result than using the unit’s own player. It’s a pity the unit has no stereo output so you could hook it into your hifi to replay the golden oldies on a decent set of speakers. In spite of these cautions, let’s hope Teac takes the idea further and introduces some features in a future model to make the LP/78 copying task an easier and more elegant one: a better quality turntable and cartridge as well as a de-clicker built into the firmware would be a good start. Vinyl records, it seems, just won’t die! In spite of the above criticisms, the Teac GF350 is presently the only turntable/CD burner available. For many people it will no doubt give an acceptable result, allowing them to play 33s, 45s and 78s and make CD SC copies as well. Specifications: Teac GF350 • • • • • • • • • • Amplifier: 2 x 3.5 watts. Frequency response: 60Hz to 20kHz. Amplifier/tuner section: AM/FM stereo tuner. Record turntable/pickup: 33-1/3, 45, 78 RPM. DC servo motor, belt drive with ceramic cartridge. CD recorder: drawer type. CD-R/CD-RW. Speakers: 2 x 70mm, 4 ohms. In/outputs: headphone output, stereo RCA inputs. Accessories: manual, remote control and 2AA batteries, stereo RCA leads, 45 RPM adaptor. Price: $599 including GST. Distributor: Teac Australia 03 8336 650 or www.teac.com.au February 2007  41