Besides, my hearing’s not what it used to be. Maybe it’s my age. Maybe it was that Van Halen concert in 1984 (with David Lee Roth; you know, the real Van Halen).

But there is something about a vinyl record. You know, the big, black CDs, as my younger daughter called one the first time she saw it. I can’t tell you exactly why they are different. Maybe it’s the fact that you control where you put the needle. One daughter was annoyed that you had to manually skip songs. Maybe it’s because you have to manually pick them up and turn them over.

Whatever the reason, most of us over about 45 years of age have a bunch of old records stacked up somewhere (if our wives haven’t sold them in yard sales), and many of them are not available either on CD or at one of several electronic media stores (my favorite is, of course, the iTunes Music Store).

For example, look for Gene Cotton at iTunes, or Amazon. There are 27 songs on the mp3 download Amazon site, but that doesn’t include his top hit, “Before My Heart Finds Out.” But I’ve got an album, autographed, with that song on it. In fact I have a four-record set containing a Gene Cotton concert I was at in college. (You can actually still order the recordings, but only on cassette tape). As an aside, Gene still lives near Nashville, Tennessee, but I haven’t heard of him doing any shows in a long time.

iTunes comes up with the same 27 songs and includes one song with Kim Karnes on one of her albums.

So how do you get those great albums onto your shiny new iMac?

The easiest way I’ve found so far is the Stanton T.55 USB turntable. Selling for about US$200, this belt-drive turntable is perfect for digitizing those old albums.

I’ve owned a bunch of turntables over the years, but none this good. If you’re not into the DJ circuit, you may not recognize the name Stanton, but the company is one of the top manufacturers of DJ equipment. And it shows in this consumer turntable.

The turntable features a high-quality Stanton cartridge (the needle), adjustable counterweighted tone-arm, speed adjustment, USB output directly to your computer, and RCA output for your A/V receiver or amp and an LED light to illuminate the record at just the right place where the needle hits the record.

The Good

It sounds great. Which is what you want when you play that classic music. The turntable is heavy and feels well-built. There’s real metal in there. But the little things, like lighting the cartridge so you can see where you are putting the needle and the speed control make this turntable stand out in the crowd. The turntable also looks really nice sitting on your AV rack. And did I mention it sounds good?

The Bad

The only thing bad about this turntable is that the software that comes with it is PC specific. The instructions tell Mac users where they can download software to capture the audio on their computers, but the accompanying CD is Windows only. I already had software for capturing audio, so this wasn’t a problem for me. And the software they recommend, Audacity, is free and a pretty good option.

The Ugly

Nothing to see here.

Conclusion: If you have a lot of albums you’d like to digitize, or just listen to, you can’t go wrong with Stanton’s turntable. If you’re one of those ‘audiophile’ folks, and prefer a direct-drive turntable, Stanton has a wide variety of turntables and a wide variety of prices. For the rest of us, the T.55 USB is just about perfect.

Macsimum rating: 9 out of 10

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