Kevin Sutton asks about adjusting for the RIAA (Recording Industry
Association of America) curve.  Unless your records go back until- oh,
somewhere in the early 1960's, I think- you don't have to worry about this
one bit.  At the risk of giving an old-time recording engineer apoplexy,
here, in brief, is the background.  You see, when music was recorded, they
had to attenuate the bass in order to allow the desired resolution in the
treble.  (Imagine, if you will, the needle of a phonograph record having to
trace the relatively wide excursions caused by notes in the lower register
while retaining the definition of the small "squiggles" produced by the
upper register).  So, the bass was attenuated before the recording was
applied to the phonograph disk.  But, or course, that bass had to be
recovered- or enhanced- when the phonograph was electronically amplified,
or else the resulting sound would have had sounded "tinny" (i.e.  with
insufficient bass response).  This process was referred to as equalization.
Unfortunately, in the early years of the LP, the recording industry used
two slightly different equalization techniques in recordings produced
Europe and the US.  So pre-amps had to be adjusted differently to
faithfully reproduce sounds from European and American phonographs.  Some
pre-amps had an RIAA equalization switch that the listener could switch
to the appropriate position.  Somewhere in the early 60's, I believe,
the recording industry got its act together and devised a worldwide
equalization standard that I think was a compromise between the US and
European versions.

Note that this as only an issue during the early years of the LP recording.
I think the issue did not arise during the era of 78's.

Larry

 [Equalization was and is an important issue for any LP playback.  -Dave]