I have been spending some time digitizing some old LPs. It isn't as painless as turning CDs into mp3s, but it isn't difficult either.
My setup involves connecting a Griffin Technology iMic to the headphone out jack on my preamp. The iMic connects to my Ti Powerbook via usb and is recognized by the Mac in OS X without having to add drivers.
I use Griffin's free Final Vinyl software to control the digitization. It is fairly bare bones, but does allow you to set equalization curves and label track start and stop points. If I had more money (the startup leaves one with out much in the way of surplus cash) I would go with Peak LE for OS X. It is their low end tool at about $100, but is probably overkill for this purpose.
The rest of the setup is my old Technics direct drive turntable and a Shure V15VxMR archive quality phono cartridge (probably overkill).
You have to sit with the music in real time and note new tracks rather than blindly stuff CDs into a computer. The wonderful feature of this is that you hear the music rather than just collect it for later use.
Quite a bit of wonderful stuff has been committed to LP - I have literally hundreds of albums many of them with very thick notes on the music (particularly true for opera recordings). I haven't listened to ...
I'm so happy I never got rid of my LP collection ... a wall of yellow (DGG), the complete Beethoven piano sonatas performed by Wilhelm Kempff (his Waldstein is as perfect as the piece can be rendered) and several old RCA Victrola records of Emanuel Feuermann - one of the great cellists of the century.
The only fly in the ointment is that my iPod only plays mp3 files and everything I archive is in aac. Perhaps Apple will make an announcement in the near future that will make all of us iPod owners happy.
7:14:39 AM 
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