if you have no intention of DJ'ing, just get a decent direct drive turntable. You could get one of these:
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Stanton-T.60X-DirectDrive-Turntable-?sku=804017 and a little mixer or a phono preamp and you're good to go.
You got it backwards man...
If you wanna DJ/scratch/cut etc you need a decent direct drive turntable. But for audiophile purposes (listening/sampling) youre better of investing in a decent belt drive. With direct drives the motor is closer to the stylus so it picks up hella more noise than a beltdrive in the same league. Dont get one of them cheap ass crappy low end consumer ones unless you dont have much money or whatever though (usually really big and plastic and dull grey or similar dull color), they suck nuts (sony etc). Try to find a nice decent vintage joint (dual, thorens), maybe one of them old pioneers. Its not too hard to spot the difference betwen a crap turntable and a better one. The cheap joints usually have tonearms that are one piece without a weight, with maybe if youre lucky only a little antiskate knob, without a standard half inch mount headshell (where your cartridge is),plus the big cluncky cheap plastic design. Nicer joints have big heavy wooden plith for example, the tonearm can be adjusted in all the proper ways (weight, height, anti skate, etc) and you will be able to change the cartridge on it.
You may think this is wack or that im full of shit, but trust me, the difference between a crap turntable and a decent turntable for sampling is HUUUGE soundwise in so many aspects ranging from rumble to bass feedback, to carridge output to tracking force to distortion etc... On that note, the turntable in the link above will be better than a crap ass belt drive so maybe cop it till you can spot a nice vintage decent turntable joint. Thats another apsect of diggin imo, i always peep the electronics and shit when im diggin to see if i spot anything dope, got myself a nice old vintage turntable that way in perfect condition (only missing the cover
).. Also if you cop the joint above you might start scratching and shit and decide you want a decent cutting table after all....
Then you could just cop a 1200 or two and call it a day
(sorry for my long posts but i rarely post, so when i do, i wanna make the shit count
)
peace
Oh, and as far as the topic goes, vinyl > *. (except live sources maybe
)