ION LP2 Flash Turntable Adds Direct to Thumbdrive Support

USB turntables are a great way to digitize those boxes of LPs you've got taking up space, alone and unloved, in your closet, but they all suffer from one flaw: unless you've got a lot more desk space than we do, plugging the turntable into an available USB port requires moving it from your stereo and balancing it precariously on whatever flat surface you've got available while you do your recording. ION, in their market-expanding goodness, has a clever solution: they put a thumbdrive & secure digital (SD) slot into a USB turntable and called it the LP 2 Flash for PC-less vinyl ripping. In addition to the direct disk support, the new turntable has silence-sensing technology that automatically breaks up tracks, an LCD display for changing recording quality, and an analog input for other audio sources, like tape decks.

Overall, we think it's a pretty smart package, but after our USB turntable rundown determined that ION's TTUSB10 had inferior sound to the competing Stanton T.90, we have to ask: does the LP 2 Flash sound better than its predecessor.