Whats the best way to digitise your vinyl?

[the_psychologist]

from my own experience, the best rips i ever got are with my Numark TTX-1 deck that has a digital coaxial out and Groovemaster II needles. i run the coaxial right into my firewire soundcard's coaxial input, and there is no perceptible loss in quality. the signal also seems to be just below clipping at all times, which may be a function of some digital trickery. best i could have hoped for, and the tracks sound huge when played out. as another poster wrote, the chain needs to add as little "color" as possible to the rips, and also come in as hot as possible without clipping. somehow, i lucked out with this deck and it did everything using a single cable and no mixer. i still have the deck around just for ripping.

unfortunately, i only ripped about 1/2 of my collection that way - the rest were done earlier, using a mediocre integrated soundcard's analogue input. deffo a step down, but the same deck was used and it has line-level analogue output that still does a good job.

also, i experimented with noise and click/pop removal, and (in some cases) got awesome results. Cooledit has noise reduction and click/pop filters built in, and you can fiddle with the settings to see what works for you. some old, worn Goa records came out sounding incredible, but sparser music had audible artifacts that ruined the deal.