Vinyl Solutions

Apologies for the headline there, but it seemed so apt that I allowed my crassness to get the better of me. Actually, who am I kidding? I'm nowhere near the first person to have this bright idea. Still would have been by far the best name for the shop in film/movie/flop musical High Fidelity.

I've become increasingly baffled by the plethora of vinyl digitsation aids that crop up on the news these days. The most recent offender was this from the New York Times' Anne Eisenberg, in an article that at least has the virtue of being filed under "novelties".

There's something deeply depressing about the rash of products that have come to market promising a simple way to digitise the buyer's record collection. Thus, turntable companies, which have experienced precious little joy in selling their wares to the non-DJ market, now chuck a USB cable on the end, and market the device as a digital wonder.

What's depressing is that the average computer has a sickening amount of computing power, the ability to record audio in high quality, and usually a microphone port. Just take your old turntable, connect it to your existing amplifier, and then connect the amplifier's headphone output to your computer with a five-dollar cable. Download the same free software that you'll get with the digital turntables, read the instruction manual, and off you go. You're welcome.

Should anyone update the CD Spin Doctor software there might be a reason to pay for the software, but most of the paid packages are pretty humdrum. The rest of the stuff is just fluff. Rant over.