[The8thst]

I am looking for ideas that I can use to help pick out a birthday present for my dad.

His trusty old Technics turn table died and he tossed it to Best Buy to recycle before asking me to look into fixing, so now he has a decent vinyl collection with no way to play them.

My step-mother want to get him a new turntable for his birthday and would also like to give him the option to transfer it to the computer so he can listen to it via USB drive in his car. Her budget is $400-500.

If it were me I would get a decent used table for $500 and use my pro-tools rig to bounce it into the digital world and compress in a separate step if space on the USB drive became an issue, but this is not for me. My dad is not very computer literate. He likes and appreciates good sound, but is not an audiophile (nor as picky as I am). The turntable will probably be used the majority of the time as a standard analog turntable, and does not require a phono preamp as there is a decent phono section in his integrated amp.

I have found these phono preamps with USB outputs that are another option::
Pro-Ject Phono Box II $249 (decent rep for budget tables)
NAD PP-3 $200 (I have always liked the NAD sound, but they had some issues with reliability and QA in the past)
ART USBPhonoPlus v2 (ART made some decent DIY level home recording stuff in the 90's that I thought was decent, but I haven't used any of their products since).

Do any of the above have decent software? If the software and sound quality is decent, what is a good $200-300 turntable to pair with the digital phono stage?

Are there any decent turntables with USB and fairly easy to use software?

I will have to be round the clock 24/7 tech support for this setup, so please help me find something that will let me sleep at night since my dad has a persistent case of insomnia.

Thank you.
Pete

 

[BattleBrat]

I have a Linear table, a Pioneer PLL50, I'll be honest, I'm currently paying off a tonearm for my VPI TNT MK 1 and I'm never going to use it again. My parents are from Minn (Mom from Bemidji, dad from Duluth) Heck I have an aunt in Etna. If you want the table it's yours, but YOU have to arrange shipping, PM me. 
It looks like this:

it is VERY easy to use, put record in, press power button (the button on the left) then press play (long button on right) to change the place on the record, you press the center button of the three buttons in a row, that raises the needle, then you move with the arrow buttons, and drop back down by pressing it again. If that isn't simple enough, you can see the little diagram explaining the three buttons right there in the picture.

 

[The8thst]

Thanks for the offer man.

I am not worried about the table being complicated for dad, he did grow up with vinyl after all.

I am worried about the software and USB interface. I want to make sure it is easy for him to choose a folder, look up or enter track names, maybe search and embed album art, and choose the compression type (if any).

He was used to a completely manual Technics table from the mid-70s until it speed holding it's speed steady.



Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk

 

[BattleBrat]

I have found no fun/easy way to transcribe vinyl, it is laborious any way you dice it, so I just listen to it straight, hence the new tonearm.

 

[The8thst]

After some more research I have decided that I will dig out one of my old firewire audio interfaces and let my Dad buy a $30 license of Vinyl Studio if he really wants to digitize his albums.

Now I just need to choose a nice $400 turntable for him. The first ones that come to mind are:
Denon DP300F w/ Ortofon 2M Red $419
MusicHall MMF-2.2 $450
Rega RP1 $450
Pro-Ject Debut III $400

I think the MusicHall and Pro-ject are basically the same (the MMF even has Pro-Ject tone arm). I really don't know anything about the Denon or Rega other than they are always recommended for entry level tables.

Damn there are a lot of choices in the $400-500 range. Too bad my dad is 100% dead against getting a used table, as it would open up a lot more options.

 

[BattleBrat]

REGA makes a solid table, i had a P5 before the TNT, changed many a persons attitude about vinyl with that table...
(EDIT; 400th post!)