VINYL - 2,200 LP's to CD or Hard Drive - HELP

06-12-08: Arnold_layne
USB turntables are not built for sound quality but for ease of use. I doubt one would last thru 2200 LP's being transfered to a HDD.

The Project Debut and AT-PL120 were built for sound quality. The USB section is an add-on. Both of these turntables have functioned and sold well for a long time as analog turntables. It's the ION that's made and marketed purely as a USB digitizing turntable that's a lightweight plastic POS.

Furthermore, the Audio Technica is a Technics knockoff, with cast aluminum plinth, close tolerance bearings, and targeted at the dance club market. As a $200 turntable it is simply unbeatable and should survive well past 2,200 LPs WITHOUT A BELT CHANGE! :) (though maybe the motor bearing could use a little oil along the way).

If you outfit it with an Ortofon 2M Red, you can replace the stylus after 1,100 LPs for a mere $69 retail.

The perfect is the enemy of the good, here. Sure, you could get a SME 20 with 12" arm, Clearaudio Goldfinger, EAR or Graham Slee phono stage and pro-quality A/D converter, but I seriously doubt the "client" wants to spend far more money on analog playback gear than he listened through for his entire lifetime.

If he already has a component turntable, maybe the best thing is to just get a USB A/D converter.

I make this out to be about 5 months of work, 12 hours per day, to do the transcription, tagging, and record manipulation;

Figure 45 minutes x 2,200 = 99,000 minutes = 1650 hours = 137.5 12/hour days, with no days off or weekends. If you pay a college kid $10/hour to do this, you're out $16,500. If only (?) four hours a day, it's well over a year and a half.

Are you sure you're up for this?

06-12-08: Dfhaleycko
I make this out to be about 5 months of work, 12 hours per day, to do the transcription, tagging, and record manipulation;

Figure 45 minutes x 2,200 = 99,000 minutes = 1650 hours = 137.5 12/hour days, with no days off or weekends. If you pay a college kid $10/hour to do this, you're out $16,500. If only (?) four hours a day, it's well over a year and a half.

Actually, I think you can figure an hour for each LP, for the time it takes to mount each record, brush or clean it, clean the stylus, pull the record out, put it away, etc. 40 hours/day x 52 weeks = 2,180 hours, so this is a 1-year, full time job with weekends off, but no holidays or vacation.

Great suggestions all around - especially the mathematical ones - which makes me realize he is going to have to pick about 50 he likes! There is no way I am going to make this happen and no way he will pay $16,500 (or more) to make this happen, which leaves us one option.

Thanks for all of you efforts, legal and functional.
I will chase down one of the USB turntables and do some for him, but we will just sell the rest.

Thanks for your time - great community!

Dan

I would do both. CD's are more of a main stay for now than a hard drive as solid state hard drives may become the norm till the next craze. PC hardware can change fast as I'm sure you know. Take for instance what they are saying about newer OS's and the future of them my be internet based. CD space can be saved by using double sided sleeves, I use them.