Home > Consumer Reviews > Griffin Technology iMic USB Audio Interface

I bought this to use with a G4 800 imac and it's simply excellent. I have been combining it with Griffin's own freeware Final Vinyl to import old LPs into iTunes on the mac. If you want a more professional method use it with Sound Studio which is a far superior product for about £30.
The instructions are fairly idiot-proof though with my amp i needed to buy some extra phono leads to get the right connections: Phono leads in the back of the amp, leads into the imic, imic into the mac and away I went.
The resulting quality of imported LPs is excellent; while this is dependent on the quality of the stylus, the imic in itself shows no sign of degrading the quality of the sound in the conversion.
Once the LP had been imported, I used sound studio to simply cut each side up into its respective number of tracks (a process you can effectively automate), imported them into iTunes and manually tapped into track names etc. I've since knocked off a few of these albums to cd to play in the car - complete with subtle crackle between tracks (for which I have a strange romantic attachment) it's just like having a turntable in the boot! Basically, I am very pleased.

Having bought my Toshiba laptop 6 months ago I have become increasingly frustrated that the only audio input was the mono microphone socket. This meant that despite being of fairly high specifications, there was no way I could archive my old vinyl records to digital files (unless I sacrificed one of the stereo channels).

I had asked in several computer shops if a device existed to allow stereo audio input through either the USB or PCMCIA interfaces, but received nothing but blank expressions from the sales-staff. I was beginning to think that no such (affordable) device existed, until I stumbled upon the iMic during a web search.

There's no doubt that this unit is marketed towards the Mac community, but if you carefully read the small print, it is fully compatible with PCs running Windows xp.

So, I decided to take a chance (as I hadn't found any consumer reviews from PC users) and ordered the iMic from the Amazon marketplace.

It arrived the following day by courier, & upon unpacking it I was initially concerned to find that the packaging & enclosed instructions mentioned only Mac compatibility (nothing about Windows). But, I plugged it into my laptop & thankfully it was immediately recognised by xp. After a little bit of tweaking, I managed to get the stereo signal from my phono into the computer via the iMic. At last, a solution to my dilemma! The quality seems to be pretty good, certainly adequate for domestic use.

The reason that I don’t give it 5 stars is that I found it difficult to get the volume level low enough! That sounds paradoxical, but when I plugged the line-out from an amplifier, I found that even with the iMic volume set to minimum through the Windows control panel, the sound was too loud for the computer, causing distortion of the signal due to saturation. I got round this by using the headphone socket from the amp, but this is less satisfactory (difficult to monitor the music) & perhaps of lower quality.

Overall, I’m impressed with this piece of equipment. It’s compact, easy to use & delivers exactly what it claims.

Intrigued by the promise of the iMic I took the plunge and ordered. Excellent service from the vendor (it was delivered before the promised ship date!), plugged the device into the USB - and that was it! No problems with Windows 2000 at all. Downloaded "Audacity" freeware and within a few minutes I was recording my LP's! There's something heartwarming in a geeky way about loading your LP tracks into iTunes and listening to them on an iPod! Even weirder, burning the tracks to a CD - pops and crackles just don't go with the technology! I can't emphasise how simple it is. And the results - fantastic. iMic also provides a high quality output to your hi-fi, better to my ears that via the sound card.

Well done to Griffin - a piece of kit that works and adds value.

In common with other Mac PowerBook G3 users, I have had a problem for ages with sound on this otherwise sturdy workhorse. In my case, the line-in input was not working. Until now, I have not needed it particularly, but I have started using internet telephony and the built-in microphone was not that great for this.
The Griffin iMic, which arrived promptly solved the problem instantly, prompting me to wonder why I hadn't bought one before. The sound, both through the headset and my amp/speakers is even better than the already good quality provided by the laptop.
This is a great product for the price. My only small niggle is the short length of the USB Cable (about 40cms).
Delivery was swift - Stormfront, the supplier, being very efficient.

This item will not provide 2 channel (stereo) input with Windows Vista. It provides satisfactory 2 channel output, but any attempt to select 2 channel input in Control Panel results in an error message while trying to capture audio using Audacity.

Griffin's website says it's not compatible with Vista, I'm surprised Amazon haven't made that point clear.