Question on stereo equipment.

I've been thinking about buying a turn-table, as I have an extensive album collection that has collected dust for 16 years. (My ex-wife got the house and stereo; I got the boys!) This weekend, my oldest son showed me a cheap "record player" at K-Mart, which I bought. Now I want to get something real.

I have over 120 Beatle/post-Beatle albums; over 50 Hendrix albums (not including the trash that isn't Jimi, but claims to be him playing back-up in the early days); and all types of old bootlegged stuff with Jim Morrison, etc.

My boys normally spend my money on equipment from "Musician's Friend." They tell me that they have deals on stereo equipment. I'm in rural, upstate New York, with few stores close by.

What is the best advice for getting quality stereo equipment? Can albums translate onto CDs? I appreciate any and all advice.

and Panasonic amp. Connect Auxiliary Out to your computer's sound input port, fire up your audio recording app and record your album to an AIFF file. You can then use Toast, iTunes or maybe your recording app to burn an audio CD.
So much vinyl, so little time.

All fine turntables. You can get a Stanton belt-drive turntable for around $100. Try www.musiciansfriend.com or www.americanmusical.com or www.samash.com

I've ordered several things from musicians friend and sam ash. They still make belt driven turntable units for DJ's and Stanton is a good brand to go with if you can't find another brand that meets up with stereo equipment you may or may not already own.

The normal stereo package these days does not include a turntable. As far as transferring some of your old records over to CD, you should be able to do that with any modern computer system and some sound recording software such as Adobe Audition, Soundforge, etc.

What you'll need to do is run the RCA stereo output plugs on your turntable to an RCA to 1/8" stereo "y" adaptor (any radio shack) and then plug the 1/8" end of the Y adaptor into your sound card's line input jack on your PC.

Then, you should be able to record each song on any record individually into the computer. Save them as .WAV files or .MP3 files and use your computer to burn the audio files onto a CD. The entire process isn't difficult, but it is time consuming.

Adobe Audition and Sound Forge also have anti-hiss and click/pop removal tools built into them for just such an occasion. So, if you have a bad scratch or record hiss, they can help to remove it and restore the original audio fidelity.

Even if they're an old table, if it is in good working order, get one of these.

And yes, it is possible to transfer vinyl onto CD, in fact I'm doing this right now with my collection. If you have a Mac, all you need to do is hook up your receiver to your computer. Run a couple of lines out of your Sound Out(not speaker)ports, get a Y adapter that runs to a single 1/8" mini jack to plug into your Mic port.

Software needed for a Mac is Sound Studio, from felt tip software<http://www.felttip.com/products/soundstudio/>

If you're working on a Windows box, I haven't a clue, but I'm sure there are people around here that do.

Good luck, I've been doing this in my spare time:eyes: for a year now, have about forty albumns done, another six hundred to go.

Years ago I had Pioneer equipment, which I thought was good. But I'm in a position to buy something better. It's amazing to listen, even on a crappy little turn-table, to a lot of the music I haven't heard in years.