Whats the best way to digitise your vinyl?

[Symmetric]

I'll clean my records with denatured alcohol and a lint-free optical grade cloth...then record thru the A&H Xone 62 into my Presonus Firebox at 24bit 48kHz, normalize the file after and create 320kBps MP3 from that for the portable version (I retain both and use the .wav w/Serato or FS) Sounds great!

[MARK ANXIOUS]

Well what I tend to do if make sure EVERY element in the chain is as perfect as it can be. Let's start from the top (the very first point of contact):

Record: Cleaned with Surgical Spirit and one of those cotton wool pads
Needle + Cartridge: Shure N44-7 and M44-7
Deck: 1210
DJ Mixer: Allen and Heath Xone 64 (although Pioneer are perfect too)
Phono Cables: The BEST you can buy - try a studio cable specialist
Desk (although you can do without this and plug direct into card if you don't produce)
Soundcard: MOTU 828 MkII
Editor/Recorder: Soundforge

Now, once you have the PERFECT chain in place, it's all about levels. make sure at every point in the chain, the level is nice and hot to reduce noise. OK so on your DJ Mixer, make sure levels are at 0. On the Desk, again make sure everything peaks at 0.

Then check the input levels in Soundforge. Chances are they will be clipping, as a 0db analog signal from the analog Desk, gives you no chance of overshoots in the digital domain. OK, so pull the input level down, via the soundcard settings, so the signal peaks at like -2 db (this makes sure you dont clip if there are pops or glitches on the record)...

OK so hit record and let's get it into the computer!

Once it's in you can do all sorts of weird and wonderful tricks via tape plugins to make it sound a little more analog. I actually used to master everything I recorded in, to a certain sound, so that all my records would sound similar when I played a digital set, but these days I just can't be arsed/haven't got the time (ps if you do this, it's easy to make mistakes if you don't know the art of mastering entirely!)

You can now save as WAV or MP3. I used to save everything as WAV but tbh if you save the wav as 320 Kbps MP3, it's alot smaller and the difference in quality is practically impossible to tell.

OK well I hope that helps. The only thing then is to tag your files properly.

Good luck!