All:
Very good posts, and helpful. Might I ask a question or two? I am interested in transferring some or all of my vinyl collection to digital for archival and convenience reasons. So I would prefer to archive them at 24 bit, 88.2 or 96kHz minimum. Since I only want to do this once, I would like to feel comfortable that the quality is quite good.
I have an Oracle Delphi table running through a Cary phono pre. However, I have an HP laptop which has no analogue inputs. Even if it did I understand I would be better served using an outboard A/D converter. Then I assume I would need a more audio friendly soundcard, yes?
Can you advise me about:
1. A good A/D converter for this purpose. This seems to be the difficult thing to find, at least from a good audio perspective.
2. A good sound card for taking the digital signal from the A/D converter
3. Anything else I might need to know, such as better audio grade software (Pure Vinyl is out since they only serve Apple computers, which is well and good except for those of us that don't own one). I see some recommendations above for software to perform the needed admin duties. Seems that FLAC files are all the rage, so that would be a plus, but WAV would be acceptable.
Thank you for any detailed information you might want to provide!!