A friend of mine allowed me to borrow his new Numark Turntable. The Numark is a plug-and-play, USB-compatible turntable that makes digitizing your vinyl record collection to your PC or Mac a snap. I just plugged it in to my MacBook Pro, opened Audacity, put the needle on the record, and clicked record. It worked the first time with no fuss and no drivers or software to install.

I have not tried this, but the turntable also includes a 1/8–inch stereo mini jack input connector to facilitate the transfer of cassette tapes.

The first album I ripped was my 1962 "The Beatles Featuring Tony Sheridan" record (shown in the pic here). That album barely survived Hurricane Andrew (the cover is falling apart), so it's really nice having this turntable to backup my collection. It was a strange sensation lifting the needle again after so many years, and it brought back a lot of fun memories. Below is a short clip of track 5 from the Beatles album so that you can hear the result. You'll hear Tony Sheridan singing with The Beatles (listed as "The Beat Brothers" on some tracks, and featuring Pete Best on drums) backing him.