I will look online, I guess.
Start here:
http://www.needledoctor.com/
If you get sticker shock go to turntables/usbturntables.
That page contains an assortment of pretty much everything
that's out there that will plug into a USB port.
The cost/benefit numbers are not something you should
overlook here.
Also, if you are dealing with 78s you'll need a separate
cartridge/stylus to track them correctly and of course a
turntable that supports that speed.
I went through this exercise a little while back and here's
what I learned...
I had a decent turntable and cartridge all ready, an AR XA
with a Shure V15 mk. V. I wasn't going to improve on that
much so I replaced the belt on the turntable, checked the
arm geometry and the tracking force. Luckily I still had all
the gauges. I all ready had a spare turntable mat which I
threw on. I had my bubble level from back in the eighties.
I was ready to roll, I jacked it in to my '80s NAD receiver,
pulled out my Sennheisers and fired it up. It sounded great,
the only vinyl I had on hand was a secondhand shop copy
of "Dry Dreams" (1982, Jim Carroll Band).
This has never to my knowledge been released on CD, it
is available on MP3...but I admit I'm an audiophile.
So on to the digitization. I used Audacity and connected the
line outs on the NAD to my sound board. After some assing
around it worked. Far too much fooling around, though, I
have a rather extensive LP collection as well as a few tapes
that I wanted to digitize.
I wanted a simpler solution, what I really wanted was a device
that would make a Red Book CD out of an LP or tape in one
shot so I could simply rip the CD to my hard drive in 44 kHz
format and save the CD as the archival backup.
I also needed to introduce a dbx compander into the audio
path on the tape digitizations since most of the tapes were dbx
compressed (I had the dbx device).
I needed a tape deck, but my last Nak died in 1990.
So I got one of these:
http://www.tascam.com/products/cc-222mkiii;9,34,11,14.html
This was well before the recession, ha ha. But it works as
advertised and does exactly what I wanted. Track detection is
excellent on LPs and fair to good on tapes, threshold adjustable.
Once it's set up properly (and it takes a while to master, it is
not a simple machine) it will crank out Red Book CD copies
of whatever you put on the turntable or in the cassette slot.
However...it's a nice machine. But you can only digitize in
real time, not a problem if you only have a few items. But then
why spend the money (unless you just like cool things).
When I realized that most of the stuff (not all) that I was
digitizing was all ready available on (mostly) remastered CDs
at $10.00 a pop that sounded (mostly) better and often included
bonus tracks it was an easy decision. I can rip a CD in lossless
format in about 2 minutes And I can put the CD back in its
box and store it as backup. The break even point is about 100
CDs, but it's really more because of the time factor.
Just some variables to consider.
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