luque

If you just want one that will play records... head to some flea markets. I bought mine for $30 5 years ago and it's still working great.

Thanks, although re-reading this found I'd made a mistake (phono level should be about 5 mV, and not 50 mV; my bad).

After posting ended up digging around more - your question about turntables prompted me to look up something I've always wondered about - why do many older turntables have a 16-2/3 RPM setting?

I've been around music all my life, but never ran across any albums in that format (although it came in handy learning guitar riffs by running 33-1/3 LPs at half-speed). Turns out that Peter Goldmark, the guy who developed LP records for CBS Labs back in the late 1940s' came up with it for record players intended for use in automobiles.

That idea went bust fast, but 16's had limited popularity in spoken word transcriptions and other uses where it's increased run time outweighed sonic quality limitations.

I should point out that if your sound card has line level inputs then USB features aren't required, and you'll be able to connect a turntable (as long as it has a built-in phono-to-line level preamp) directly to the computer.