 The second step involves transcription of a record using a suitable turntable and a suitable cartridge-stylus combination.More often than not, a magnetic cartridge and stylus combination is used because of its superior sound characteristics and signal-to-noise ratio over other pickup systems.The output of a magnetic cartridge is of a very low volume (typically ~5mV) so the signal must be amplified with a preamplifier to bring it up to line level before being routed into the line-in jack of a computer's sound card.