It is one of the most common things that is done on a regular basis and yet it is also one of the most complicated things for a person to be able to manage, we are of course talking about connecting a turntable to your laptop. This should be pretty straight forward or at least that is the belief among many people, the truth is that it is not that complicated if you know what you are doing and how to go about doing it with the right equipment. The first thing that you need to make sure that you know is that almost any turntable can be connected to a laptop, the question is will you need additional equipment to make it work or not?
The things you will most likely need are as follows, RCA type audio cables, an analog to digital audio converter box, these can be purchased at most audio and computer stores, and last a USB cable. This will be used later on in the instructions. Standard turntables will require that you per-amplify the signal which is why you need to first two items on this list. More modern turntables are a lot easier to connect.
The first thing you will need to do with a standard turntable is to connect one end of the RCA stereo cable you purchased into the output jacks on the turntable. It is important to know that in many cases a six foot audio cable is more than enough for you to connect almost any type of stereo equipment to almost anything. You will also notice that both ends of the RCA cable have a red and white connector. In order to help you keep from getting confused, always thing that right is red and white is left. This will help you to remember and keep you from getting confused and switching the connectors.
Next plug the connectors at the other end of the cable into the preamps jacks for output. The final step is to take and connect the stereo mini phone plug into the computer’s line-in jack that should be on the computer and easy to find as it will generally be light blue in color. Connecting a USB turntable will be a lot easier as these are generally designed to work directly with your laptop so the directions to getting going are far easier.
First take and install the software that came with your USB turntable onto the laptop. This may take a few minutes depending on the software that you are using. Then you will need to make sure that the turntable has power and then power it on. After this has been accomplished, you will need to take the USB cable and simply connect the turntable to the laptop via the cable. Once this has been done, the laptop should recognize the turntable as being connected.
While it may seem a little overwhelming, you will want to make sure that you go out of your way and you follow these directions to make your life a lot easier than trying to battle through getting these devices to see one another and actually work. More and more of these turntables are becoming more advanced and therefore the need to connect to laptops will be ever growing by leaps and bounds. Even if you have a standard turntable, you can still be the life of the party when connected to your laptop. The best part of all of this is that the things that you need are easy to find and are a fraction of the price that you might otherwise expect to pay.
