Record/play LPs on Mac G5?

robertsaunders

A friend of mine has some old Django records stored in his basement! He wants to listen them so I invited him to come over and see if I could get my Yamaha turntable to play them through my Mac G5. I want to both listen and record. Is this hard to accomplish? There's a Radio Shack down the street for any hardware I need to adapt the turntable's cables to Mac plugs, but I also need software. I read that Final Vinyl does this type of conversion. Is this good software? Are the connection cables going to be a problem? Advice appreciated. Thanks in advance,

~Rob

Adelaarvaren

For the software, download Audacity - it is free.

For the cabling, you'll probably need a preamp or amp. Do you have a hi-fi receiver somewhere that has a "phono" input and a tape out? This would be an easy solution. Otherwise you'll need a preamp to boost the signal. Then the output of the receiver or preamp can go into the line in of your computer, usually with a RCA to 1/8" plug.

Good luck

djangology

Also, for under $100 you can buy a USB turntable, you'd probably get a better recording that way. By the way, with Audacity you probably want to record at 44.1KHz rather than 48KHz. 48 is for DVD audio. Also, 16-bit stereo is all you need for this kind of audio.

robertsaunders

Alas, I have no old hi-fi amp lying around...maybe I'll canvas my friends to see if anybody is throwing one out. Otherwise it's spend $ for a pre-amp, no way around it. Audacity is the program I hear recommended the most so I'll go with that.

Thanks!

Rob