Vinyl and mix-tapes direct to your phone
You don’t need a PC or laptop to convert those soulful analog sounds into digital convenience. Darren Yates explains how to do it right on your Android phone.
Analog audio is back, people! Those sterile bland sounds of digital are out and glorious electro-mechanical tones of old-school analog tech are playing to a new generation. New-issue vinyl records are back in music stores and thanks to Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy movie franchise, even audio cassettes are making a comeback (of-sorts). Still, we’re willing to concede this new-fangled digital audio has some merit, particularly when you’re stuck on public transport. So whether you’re discovering ‘sounds that spin’ for the first time, or you’re long from the old-school, this month, we’re looking at how to copy that analog goodness straight to your Android phone – no PC or laptop required.
PART 1 – VINYL TO ANDROID
Rather than make this some sort of ‘vinyl buyers’ guide’, we’ll assume you’re already kitted out with your vinyl setup and we’ll stick to our knitting: getting that analog signal into your Android phone with the highest possible quality. Given I remember analog the first time around, I’ll use a mix of old-school and new-school tech, so apart from a couple of items, you should be able to substitute and still have success.
The old-school tech is my vinyl collection and a Marantz TT2200 direct-drive turntable. The new-school gear is my 2019 Samsung Galaxy A30 smartphone and a Behringer UFO202 Phono/Line USB audio interface.
WHICH TURNTABLE GROUP?
Vinyl records consist of one long spiral-cut ‘microgroove’ that replicates stereo sound when you drag a special needle or ‘stylus’ through it. The vibrations of the stylus in that groove are converted into tiny electrical signals of roughly five millivolts (5mV). By contrast, CD players pump out up to two volts (2000mV) of signal. That ‘5mV’ level is way too low to digitise, so this audio signal has to be made larger or ‘amplified’. Not only that, the frequency response of audio recorded onto vinyl is altered or ‘filtered’ in a manner set by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to achieve longer recording times. That means we also have to ‘invert’ that frequency response to restore the original audio as it was meant to be heard.
The TT2200, like many turntables, provides nothing more than the signal output direct from the stylus and that’s it. But don’t consider that a bad thing – it means you get to choose the ‘preamplifier’ (or ‘preamp’ for short) the stylus output is connected to. However, many turntables (including new-gen models) offer both options – the raw stylus output or an amplified output, thanks to a switchable built-in RIAA preamp.
So to boil it down, if your turntable has a built-in RIAA preamp, you don’t need to supply one, but if it doesn’t, you do.
ANALOG-TO-DIGITAL INTERFACE
Android phones aren’t set up for recording high-quality audio – at best, you might get built-in stereo microphones, but that’s not the ideal
way to capture this kind of audio. What we need is an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) that takes in and converts analog audio into a digital data stream your typical Android phone will have more luck with.
For this, we’re using Behringer’s UFO202 USB Audio Interface. It’s low cost (about $50 online), comes with stereo RCA inputs and outputs, plus a Type-A connector on the end of its USB cable. Now the UFO202 would normally plug into your PC or laptop, but we’ll show you how to get it talking to your Android phone. The key reason for choosing the UFO202, however, is that it has a switchable RIAA preamp built-in, so regardless of the type of turntable you have, you’ll have a way of capturing that analog sound.
WHAT YOU NEED
So let’s bring together the gear you’ll need:
Android phone with USB-OTG support - if you’re not sure yours does, grab the free USB-OTG Checker app from Google Play (tip: any decent phone over $150 should support OTG. Sub$150 phones? We’re less confident).
USB-OTG adapter cable – this has a micro-USB or USB-C connector on one end (appropriate to your phone) and a Type-A USB port on the other.
Behringer UFO202 USB audio interface – as low as $49 online from local retailers.
‘USB Audio Recorder PRO’ app from Google Play – this $10 app remains the best option for turning an OTG phone into a high-performance digital audio recorder. It comes with USB Audio Class device driver support for a decent array of USB audio devices – including the UFO202. You can check the full support list at www.extreamsd.com/ USBAudioRecorderPRO.
Turntable with analog outputs – just about any turntable will work, but some will sound better than others. Don’t forget some vinyl to play!
Suitable analog audio cables – whatever you need to connect your analog player to your USB audio device.
HOW TO SETUP
Install USB Audio Recorder PRO onto your phone, but don’t launch it yet. Beyond that, the physical setup is pretty easy – first, plug the OTG