Turntable that converts vinyl to MP3 /CDs

[43Today]

Hi has anyone bought a turntable that does the above? Am thinking of getting one for DP for Christmas.

I've seen a couple ranging in price from £80 - £125. THen I made the mistake of going on a hi-fi experts site, only to read that they give crap sound quality and you need to spend at least £250 on lots of separate bits of kit to do the job properly...

Please share your thoughts!

[MrVibrating]

It is true that these turntables do not give as good a quality as a 'proper' Hi-Fi turntable, it all depends how high your expectations are.

If he has a turntable already, hooked up to a Hi-Fi system with a tape output, all you need is a lead like this. Connect the lead to the line input on your computer (the blue one), and use Windows Sound Recorder (or Audacity which will enable you to remove hisses and pops if you want) to record to WAV files. Then use your favourite encoder (the one you use to rip CDs) to convert to mp3.

Even if you are looking for the best quality results from your turntable you don't need to spend that much - this will give you as good as you can get IMHO.

[43Today]

Thanks Mr Vibrating that's just the sort of info I was after. Could you check the link again cos it's not quite working? Wondering if I could give him just a cable for Christmas..

[MrVibrating]

Strange, must be something in a cookie. What you want is a 3.5mm Stereo Plug to 2 Phono Leads so google it and pick one that looks good.

Note you can use the same lead for plugging an mp3 player into a Hi-Fi 'aux' input, so it is useful to have a good one.

[RustyBear]

I'd like to be able to tell you all about DH coying all his vinyl on the USB turntable I bought him for last Christmas.

Maybe I will be able to later - if he ever actually gets round to using it.....

[lurkingdad]

Copying the vinyl / tape to the computer is the easy bit. It gets really painful when you have to break the 30 minutes file up into the tracks, then add all the tag data. It seems to take me about an hour per tape to get them compressed. Although the newest version of audacity seems to speed things up a bit.
I just checked earlier and my audio to digital converter that I got for Christmas has copied a total of 5 albums so far. Only about 50 to go. Must do one now to get it up to an average of one every two months.

Check that your sound card has a line in. Mine didn't so I bought a USB soundcard to do the job. Connect it to the phono out on the amp and you are away.