Don’t know what you mean by “atmospheric noise” — is it possible that this is surface noise from a particular disc? Have you tried other discs (newish & clean ones) with the same results? Have you tried both the USB and analog outputs to see if you get the same result?

A phonograph is a mechanical device; it will tend to pick up jars and bumps in its vicinity and transfer these to the output. Best to place the unit well away from any such pounding (e.g., typing on a keyboard), possibly on a very heavy base that will not respond readily to bumps and jars.

Placing the stylus on the disc with this unit can be tough because no cueing lever is provided. It’s best to start your recording software first, then place the stylus gently in the outgroove; later, you can use your editing software to remove any thumps that occur before the music starts.

– rick

I understand the stylus/cartridge is pretty basic and the laptop running on vista is obviously not a demon home hifi but the atmos sucks!!! It does seem to stop when the music begins to play but it cant be right.

Is it simply a gain issue?

Also, how can i best insulate the unit? Because the pressing of the pause/play buttons creates a booming bump sound which is picked up in the recording/rip to the itunes library. Hearing this in playback is so frustrating.

What is the basic problem? Unsolicited bulk email. Bulk email is used successfully by lots of people for communicating both commercial and organizational information. It is the ‘unsolicited’ bulk email that is the problem.

What is the best solution? Blocking email at the server level. Email that comes from non-email computers cannot be returned, but email from legitimate email servers is returned so that the *sender* knows there is a problem. Since the *sender* is the only one who can control unsolicited bulk email, if there is a problem with unsolicited bulk email being sent, now the *sender* knows and can fix the problem or stop using that email service.

The major problem with any kind of blocking at the server level is the non-technically fluent end user who doesn’t understand why he can’t get email from people he wants to get email from because the *sender* (also TNF) can’t understand that he has a responsibility to use competent email service.

That has led to ‘content’ filtering to try and determine from the content whether or not the recipient wants to receive the email or not. As you point out, this is costing the *receiver* money. It also makes legitimate email disappear for no known reason.

So the solution is to mark ‘bulk email’ with a special header (already in the RFC) and then block ALL bulk email unless whitelisted by the recipient. Again, the recipient of legitimate bulk email has to confirm that he wants the email and many times, already, has to whitelist it with whatever spam filtering system his email is filtered with. And all email, not marked bulk is accepted.

Of course, the spammers will not mark their bulk email in the headers as bulk. But there is already a precedent for DNSBLs. Any email service that does not make sure that any bulk email leaving its network is using a legitimate mailing list has its IP address blocked until no more UBE is reported (sound familiar?)

Instead of the receiver paying more so that his ISP can accept and filter email for him (90% of which is unwanted), the *sender* will pay more for the sending of bulk email (since it will cost more to educate and monitor bulk email customers). Even people like several of my correspondents who have 100s on their personal email list will have to pay extra to send their jokes and warnings.

It won’t stop the really lucrative spam like 419 scams and phishes because it is worth it to send email that would fall under the bulk email requirement to unknown addresses. Most of the filters and blocklists don’t stop them now consistently, for the same reason. Non-bulk email would still have to be filtered - once at the server level for IP addresses not complying with the bulk email header line and after acceptance for scams and phishes, but that email could be tagged and sent to the junk email folder. It wouldn’t be as hard to spot a false positive because there wouldn’t be as many spam.

The other side of the equation is that there would be two rates for recipients - one rate would be for no bulk email filter and would be higher - people who respond to the porn and cheap watches would have to pay more to get them and some spammers might pay for the bulk email to send to them (look at the infomercials on TV). The lower rate would be for people who are willing to take responsibility by using legitimate email lists and whitelisting them as part of the process of signing up.

That puts the financial responsibility where it should be, it allows spammers to send bulk email, but pay for it; it allows recipients the choice of receiving all email and then filtering it or using blocklists of known spammers and only accepting bulk email from wanted sources so that legitimate email is not caught by content filters and disappear. It puts the responsibility for sending email responsibly on the sender - the only place bulk email can be controlled.

It would require cooperation among legitimate ISPs to maintain a common blocklist supported by reports from their users to identify those email services that don’t require their customers to identify bulk email and any zombie IP addresses that send spam email. The cost of maintaining the blocklist could not be more than the existing cost of filtering.

I think that the elegance of my solution is that there is nothing ‘new’ about it - everything to make it work is in existence now - except the cooperation among ISPs to make it happen and the consumer education to demand it. Two things that are notoriously lacking on the internet today.

The Ion uses the standard 1/2″ cartridge mount found on most turntables. The other type of mount, the plug-in “P mount,” is not supported. So, probably most any DJ or audiophile cartridge with 1/2″ mount will work OK.