gen 3 vinyl, 45 rpm, and "skipping"

[mellowd]

I have the Ms. Pinky gen 3 vinyl. I finally got it to work with the U46DJ under OS X. Initial configuration was as easy as following the guide; the U46DJ behaves all right. It's just that it sounds bad. Very bass heavy and kind of distorted. Actually made my ears hurt at low-moderate volumes.

Anyways, for the longest time, I couldn't figure out why i was reading about .75 velocity on Side B, whereas Side A would get around 1. I got a velocity of ~1 using gen 2 vinyl, but my error metric went way up to 2. Wasn't the needle. Wanted to blame the U46DJ, even bought an AC adapter, but that was too easy. And then I figured it out, you have to set the turntable to play at 45 RPM. So then, does anyone else experience this? Because I don't know of anyone who scratches at 45 RPM. Did I get a bad piece of vinyl?

And then, I couldn't figure out why I would experience random jumps in the track, often times to the end of the track. Rebalanced the needle. Thought about blaming the U46DJ again, but I eventually figured this out. There is no difference between "relative" mode and "absolute" mode. Repositioning the needle will jump to that respective point in time for that track. Has anyone else experienced this?

By the way, I am dumping the U46DJ. Not because it doesn't work in Mac OS X; it does and quite well. But because it really does sound awful.