Review on Teac LP-R550USBB CD Recorder With Cassette Turntable Black LPR550USBB by Ghostnote Azevedo

The sound isn't the greatest, but for it's size and for internal speakers, it is "good for it's class". I just wanted a small portable record player for the bedroom. yet, I wanted it to have a dust cover, I wanted to be able to close the dust cover over a playing record, and also to be able to leave a record covered so I wouldn't have to put it back in the jacket cover right away. I wanted a decent bass sound out of the speakers, and a radio as well. I also wanted a name brand. This Teac player hit the bill. The cassette player and cd player/recorder/usb port were just bonuses.So, there are several ways to record your albums or cassettes to mp3, wav, or cds. First and most obvious is to record directly to the cd. The issue then is, how to divide up the songs on the cd and have the titles show on your cd player? When you record onto the cd you can set the "silence" db cut. in other words, when there is silence, the recorder will automatically pause to start another track, therefore dividing the tracks for you. Alternatively, you can manually divide the tracks by pressing a button when a track ends. This is especially handy when there is no pause (silence) in between tracks. However, this does not remedy the ability to label the tracks. And we come to another way to do this, which is to either record via the cd, or directly to your computer using the usb port. Either way, you can record with Audacity software (which is a free download). There, you can label and separate the tracks, export as mp3s, wav files, and or burn onto a cd. A nice feature on this unit that wasn't available on a previous unit that I purchased, is recording level adjustment. I'm sure there are other little features that I will discover along the way as I've barely started using this unit to record. ( I suggest that if you are going to record onto cd and then upload to audacity and re-burn to cd with song breaks and labels, to use CD-RW cds, sort of a given).Another little bonus feature that never even occurred to me until I was reading the manual, was that you can record straight off of the AM/FM radio. You can set it to record for a period of time or you can use an additional timer (unit is plugged into the timer and you set the timer itself), to set the stop and start time.NOTE: After just a few months of usage, the auto return feature of the arm just stopped functioning. About the same time, the turntable started making a "bumpy" sound with every revolution and the tracking is off. There is no way to adjust it. so. that's pretty much it. I lowered rating to 4* - hoping that maybe I just got a bad unit. :/ LATER NOTE: I got the bumping sound to stop, I forget what the problem was, but the turntable itself is VERY noisy and records onto the cd. Also, plan on changing out the cheap "sapphire" stylus for a diamond one. The reported expectancy of the standard mounted sapphire stylus is only 50 hours. I planned on replacing the stylus right away, but never got around to it. Now I am hearing just how bad it gets, and hoping I haven't damaged my records. It's nice to be able to use this right out of the box, but change it out as soon as you can!