Living in the City

Yes, we have been salivating for a turntable for almost three years now. Old technology? Yes, it is. Aside from wanting an iPod, I also want to own again one honest to goodness record player. Back when I was a teen-ager, (and that's a long, long, long, long time ago) my father used to assemble turntables. That is right. He is asseeembling them turntables. He has no electronics degree but he sure can whip up a radio tuner complete with speakers and phonograph players in 3 months. Galing no? (Great huh?) Turntable Basics "Turntables are, in fact, record-playing systems made up of three parts: the main housing, the tone arm, and a phono cartridge. The main body includes the base, the motor, the drive system, and the platter. It supports the tone arm, which in turn holds the phono cartridge. Phono cartridges have a stylus (a.k.a. a needle) that traces the LP's grooves and converts them into an analogous electrical output signal. Each subsystem plays a part in the quality of

From: reviews.cnet.com Vinyl rules: shopping for turntables in the digital age Remember the old record player that you put out to pasture 15 or 20 years ago? Turns out that that "dead" technology offers the potential for sound quality that's far superior to what you're hearing from your CD collection or your MP3 player, so much so that the joys of vinyl are being rediscovered by a new generation of music fans. CNET takes a look at three turntables for music lovers of any budget that will put your iPod on the defensive. By Steve Guttenberg (February 23, 2006) The past decade has seen digital media almost completely subsume the consumer entertainment world. HDTV is an all-digital standard; DVD has all but killed off old-fashioned analog VHS; cell phone networks have long since gone digital--the list goes on and on. The music industry was a trailblazer in digitization, with the compact disc laying the groundwork for the current MP3 era. But this seemingly inevitable marc