Converting LP to digital. Advice please...

I used the attached with my Sonata MC-101 with great success it is simple to use and works well with a windows machine

Roland UA-1EX

I use a dedicated hard drive/CD recorder, high-end, the Alesis Masterlink. It is a dream. I record album sides (or tapes) from my TT/preamp setup to hard drive at 24bits, normalize, separate tracks, (takes 5 mins or so) and burn to CD. If you do it right, you look at the CD in your PC/Mac with iTunes, and the CDDB database will automatically identify the track names/album, like magic. After that you can use Audacity for click/pop removal or other editing. The Masterlink is pricey but the rest is free. BTW, nobody has talked about normalizing here, but if you don't want to blast your speakers because some recordings are louder than others, it is a mandatory step.

I use a Roland Edirol FA-101 10 in 10 out firewire interfance and capture at 24/96k then downsample for cd.

Hockeydoodle, I checked out the ML 9600 - very neat item, as per the review in Stereophile " at 24/96 the masterlink delivered sound surprisingly close to the original LP " So are you recording at 24/96? I am using a Imac and want to set this up as a server and have a large collection of LP's I would like to record. Any other comments on the learning curve etc would be helpful.

I had read that if you are going to truncate down to 16 bits from a higher bit/sample rate, it is better to use 88.2, because the algorithm involved in going from 88.2 to 44.1 is simple and direct, whereas going from 96 to 44.1 is more likely to create errors. Any experience with this out there? btw, I don't know of any company that can beat the cost-effectiveness of M-audio converters.