Well, you have the computer. Do you know if it has a CD writer in it (most recent laptops do)? If it does, you're almost good to go. If not, you'll want to purchase an external CD writer. They're not real expensive.

The tricky bit will be getting the signal from the turntable to the computer. Turntables don't put out enough of a signal by themselves to give you a good recording. The signal has to be amplified. Some lower-priced new turntables include the amplifier so all you have to do is plug it in to whatever you want to listen to. If you have an older turntable, you can either buy a phono amplifier or plug the turntable into a receiver and then take the signal from the receiver to the laptop. You'll probably need a set of cables with the right ends to go from the receiver/phono amp to the laptop.

Then there's what to do with the amplified signal. If your albums are in good shape, you can just "play" them into your laptop using software like Apple's iTunes (which also will be good to get the music onto your iPod). There are other programs out there that will work to import music; some of them let you play with the bass or treble or clean up pops and clicks on the record, etc. Some is free, some is cheap, some is rather pricey. You can get iTunes free from Apple's Web site.

I would make one other suggestion: think about whether you want CDs if you have an iPod. I had started burning my vinyl onto CDs when I realized just how large a project I had given myself (300 albums). I really don't have time to do a lot of cleaning up of the records or to scan album covers so I can put something in the CD jewel case to avoid having a couple hundred identical-looking CDs. I plan to keep the records, so I decided to rip them onto an iPod, which is much more convenient to carry around than CDs. I haven't spent as much time on that project as I'd like, but it seems less formidable to me.

Thanks for the reply!! I do have a cd burner in my laptop and I use itunes so I am good there. I would look at getting a program that would let me clean up the albums, do you know of one to recommend, not too pricey?
The question though is...I have an old receiver that works well but it just has standard stereo cables connections on the back. Are there cables you can buy that go from that to usb? Do new receivers have usb connections built in? I would rather not buy a new receiver but to get all those great old ablums into my laptop, it would be worth it.
I think I would make cds of most of them and then put some in my ipod, especially since I am doing this for both my husband and I and he listens to the cd's and I listen to the ipod I would need to do both.
Thanks for your help!!

You're welcome.

I can't recommend a program to clean up records because, frankly, I haven't used one. I figure most of my records are in very good condition, so if the records were good enough to listen to as-is, I wasn't going to spend a lot of time cleaning them up.

As for connecting the receiver to the laptop, you have a couple of options. One is to see if the laptop has a "sound-in" jack (not for a microphone). If it does, you can feed the tape output of the receiver into that jack. You might have to buy a cable with the appropriate ends at Target or Radio Shack or such.

If your laptop has only a USB connection for sound input, there are some "external sound cards" which will connect to the receiver (usually with standard cables) and then feed USB out to the laptop. The external sound cards should go for less than a hundred bucks, depending on features and quality. Best Buy and Circuit City are places to look, as well as Internet vendors if you're comfortable with any of those.

Finally, it might pay to find out if the CD players your husband uses can handle MP3s or AAC (two of the formats iTunes can handle). I'm assuming you're going to use standard data rates to convert the files. If so, you might consider putting MP3s or AAC-format files on the CDs. You'll find that you can put a ton of data files on a CD, which simplifies the logistics of how many CDs one has to carry around.

I was looking at external sound cards today, thanks to you, as my laptop doesn't have an in jack. Then when I was reading the paper tonight there was a question to the computer tech column about just this subject. They suggested something I didn't see today which is a ...ADS InstantMusic...box that you plug the audio cables in to and out comes usb with included software that does has some fixing ability and convertes it into a few different file formats that I really don't understand. MP3-WMA and AAC, whatever they are and some others it doesn't list.
Sounds like it would do exactly what I need but I probably wouldn't have even read the article if you hadn't told me this was possible. Have you heard of this? Thanks.

I took a quick look at a review for the InstantMusic box and it is just the kind of thing I'm talking about. I actually have a stereo system (receiver, turntable, cassette deck, CD player) hooked up to an Onkyo audio hub (no longer made) which then feeds my Macintosh. Works great. Mine just converts to bits, and the software I use has to convert into the various music formats; this goes one step further. For $40 or so, it looks like just the ticket.

The various music formats. There are a bunch of them. AAC, MP3, and WMA are the most popular.

AAC is the format used on iPods and Apple's iTunes by default. Apple claims that AAC results in better-sounding files that are the same size as MP3 files. I don't know anyone who has a particular opinion on that, though I'm sure this is discussed to death elsewhere on the Internet. Music you buy from the Apple iTunes Music Store also is AAC-encoded. One disadvantage is that music from the iTunes Music Store has additional coding that makes it difficult to move those files to a non-Apple player (the main exception being iTunes for Windows).

MP3 is the more generic format. iPods can play MP3s as can digital audio players from whoever is left in the business (Apple owns about 80% of the legal digital music business).

WMA is a Windows Audio format. I don't know a lot about WMA other than Microsoft would prefer you use it. :-) I have not heard that it sounds significantly better or worse than any other format (including ones I haven't mentioned here); the big issue with WMA is that if you're not using a Windows-based system for playback, it will be harder for you to find a player for WMA-encoded files. Not impossible; just harder. It's not as popular a format as AAC or MP3.

The general things to remember about digital audio formats are 1) that the smaller the file, the less good it sounds. That may not be a big deal if you're listening through iPod earbuds or a portable speaker or your cell phone -- it may sound just fine through those devices. It might be a bigger deal if you pipe your music to a quality home stereo. But it costs you pretty much nothing to try it for yourself; and 2) unless you have access to an "uncompressed" digital file of the music (or the original record/tape/CD), once you "rip" it into one of these formats, converting it to another format often causes some audible damage to the file. Then there's the labor that entails. So you might want to think just a bit about the format in which you want your music. It would be a pain to have to convert hundreds of files if you decide to move to another player that can't handle your chosen format.

What I think I want is to end up with a CD of each album. Then some of the music I would also put on my ipod. And I would like each CD to be the best quality possible cause they would be played on the stereo. Can regular CD players play MP3s? I have heard of these different file types but never really paid any attention cause I didn't know I would want to know. Why can't they just pick the best one and stick with it!! What format do you think would be best for what I want to do? I am planning on using itunes, I think and I really only want to do this once.
I DO really appreciate your help with this.

Well, the "best quality possible" would be a lossless AIFF import. Those files could be burned on a CD which would be playable on pretty much any CD player. Those files, however, would be quite large and you would not want to waste iPod space on files that big. For those, an MP3- or AAC-format file would be fine. I decided to use the 192K rate as the best compromise between size and sound quality. MP3 format is more transportable to other players, but AAC will sound a little better at that size. Many recent CD and DVD players will play an MP3-format CD; some will play several others. I'm enough of an early adopter that none of mine will :-o . You might want to check the manuals or manufacturers' Web sites to verify which formats your players can use. If you really want to do this once, then you can have both AIFF and MP3, but you'll chew up a fair amount of computer hard disk space creating and maintaining those files.

Why can't they just pick the best one? There are lots of arguments about which format is best and why. Technological advances create new formats which are better than old formats even though they are incompatible. Companies creating these formats often see them as a way to lock in customers to their products or services, so there is a business reason (but, IMHO, not a good one) to provide incompatible formats. It's a mess, and our government's policy of "let the marketplace decide" causes a lot of churn as customers end up picking winners and losers. OTOH, I don't think I'd want the government making the decisions on which technology formats were most viable. That would kill competition that would make any format better.