Adding Vinyl records to iTunes

I have an ION TTUSB Turntable. The turntable itself is not of the greatest quality. The version I got for $89.00 didn't have a dust cover. I keep mine stored in the box until I am ready to use it. The tone arm is rather heavy. The manual recommends a tracking force of 3 grams.

The turntable works fine. Recording is very straight forward and simple. The cleanup options are pretty good considering the provided software is shareware. One thing you need to be aware of is that the turntable will only from analog into huge .WAV files (you can purchase a plugin to convert to MP3). This does not present a real problem because iTunes will convert the files into AAC at your command. The turntable is a bargain and does work! You can even covert 33 RPM at 45 to speed up the process. I have not done this so I don't know if there is any loss.

Sounds great, doesn't it? I bought one close to a year ago and have not brought over a single piece of music. Everything you import must then be further refined to bring into your library (at least at my last look at the software). True, you can really clean up the sound BUT it is not a time efficient way to digitize some 300 albums.

You don't say what kind of Mac you have. I have a turntable plugged into my stereo syztem. I run output from that to a thing that converts RCA plugs to USB, then record directly onto my computer. Audacity is free and will let you do that. It does not clean up the sound but reading web comments suggests that you really have to get a very high end (and high priced) package to do a really decent job of that. I have tried Spin Doctor but there was still a lot of junk in the recording. You could use a program like Amadeus Pro which lets you manually clean up the tracks. Laborious but since the inexpensive programs that claim to do this don't really seem to work, you either do it this way of get the high end kind.

Don't pay for a mp3 plugin. iTunes can convert to mp3 for you if that is what you want. Just bear in mind that mp3 is lossy so you may want to keep your original WAV files (or compress it into lossless FLAC or ALE) if you put a lot of effort into this and want to burn the tracks to audio CD.