Here's what I've been using with much success: http://www.amazon.com/ART-USB-Phono-Plus-Preamp/dp/B000BBGCCI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1248621758&sr=8-1
I was originally looking for a good USB sound card to record using my laptop and stumbed upon this. What I like about it is that it has built in adjustable gain up to 10db +/- which is great for setting recording levels. The bonus was that it had a built in phono pre-amp. I use it with my JVC turntable newly fitted with a Grado cartridge. This is certainly not as high end as other equipment discussed in this thread, but it works well enough for my purposes. Regarding the amount of time required for the process - I've recently discovered something that eliminates the need for manually tagging. Using Media Monkey, you can select the files and specify the artist/album name and the auto-tagger will do the rest, even download artwork. File splitting can be tedious, but a program like Audition (formerly Cool Edit) can ease the pain here too. I record both sides into a single file. I trim the beginning and end of each side and fade in/out. Then I use F8 to create track divisions. You can then combine these divisions to create "tracks" which can then be dumped into individual files automatically. Sound Forge will do it too. Unfortunately, the cheap versions of these programs don't provide the batch file creation functionality. I got Audition for $99 through the academic software program, which is a good deal. -- maggior Rich --------- Setup: 2 SB3s, 3 Booms, 1 duet, 1 receiver. SuSE 11.0 Server running SqueezeCenter 7.3.3, MusicIP, and SqueezeSlave. Current library stats: 27,462 songs, 2,276 albums, 434 artists. http://www.last.fm/user/maggior ------------------------------------------------------------------------ maggior's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9080 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=65876 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
