The easy way to record your old vinyl

It's no particular trick for a computer geek who started out as an audio geek to record old LPs and 45s to CD. But the vast majority of us aren't geeks of either variety, which is why there ought to be a tremendous market for the Teac GF-350.

The retro-looking GF-350 shelf system includes two items seldom found in shelf systems of any description: a three-speed turntable (yes, it plays 78s) and a full-fledged CD recorder. Recording an LP side is a simple matter of setting the recording level, just as you would on a cassette deck, and starting the record: the GF-350 will insert track-increment points where it finds blank space. (Obviously there are some records where you won't want to do this, or because there's no space to begin with, so the automatic track increment can be switched off.)

Records are played with a ceramic cartridge, which means that RIAA equalization is approximate at best: test recordings I made were slightly bright and a tad bass-shy. Played back on the GF-350, though, they're indistinguishable from the original. And you can presumably copy tapes to CD as well; there's an Auxiliary input which will accept the output of a cassette or open-reel deck. What you can't do is record off the AM-FM tuner, presumably for copyright reasons.

And speaking of copyright, the GF-350 supports the Serial Copy Management System, which means that you can make only one digital copy of anything it records. Also, it's trained to look only for CD-Rs (and CD-RWs, if you can find any) that bear specific Digital Audio labeling; it won't necessarily work with your big stack of generic CD-Rs.

It's not the definitive answer to the question of how you convert an enormous vinyl collection (like mine) to digital, but it's a remarkably handy one, and anyone who can make a mix tape can run it.