WRT the physical hookup, you can avoid the phono pre-amp if you use an amplifier/receiver with a Phono input. Older units all had this. About 30% of new ones do too.
If you only have a turntable, or you don't want to lug your stereo equipment to where the computer is, you can also do well with a USB audio-input device that includes a phono pre-amp. I use a (very inexpensive) Behringer UFO-202 (http://www.musictri.be/Categories/Behringer/Computer-Audio/Audio-Interf…) for my audio recording. It's only CD quality (48KHz, 16-bit), but it's got very clean sound and it is very inexpensive.
I've found that there is little benefit to digitizing at high sample rates (I know that others will have strong disagreement with me over this), but I would recommend high bit-depth. Either digitize at 24-bit or convert to 24-bit after digitizing the audio. This way all the round-off error that inevitably results from processing will end up in the low-order bits of the result. When you convert your final result back to 16-bit, all those errors will be truncated and removed.
In my case, I record at 44.1kHz (so I don't need to perform any sample-rate conversion) and 16-bit (the limit of my hardware), but I have audacity work in 32-bit floating-point mode. When I'm done with my edits, I export the result as CD quality (44.1kHz, 16-bit) AIFF files.
I load the AIFF files into iTunes where I edit metadata (title, artist, album artwork, etc). Then I export those AIFF files for archiving (on data DVDs) in case I need the uncompressed audio in the future. I think convert them to 128Kbps VBR AAC audio, which is what I sync to my iPods. If I decide I need to re-compress at some later time, I have my archived AIFF files so I don't need to re-digitize from my analog masters.
A boxed Red Hat 5 (not "Enterprise 5") set, from 1997. I've also got a FreeBSD installer from that era, although I could never get it to install properly.
My oldest UNIX installer, however, is a CD with SunOS 4.1.4, dating to 1994. Still one of the best Unices I ever used.
Authored Comments
WRT the physical hookup, you can avoid the phono pre-amp if you use an amplifier/receiver with a Phono input. Older units all had this. About 30% of new ones do too.
If you only have a turntable, or you don't want to lug your stereo equipment to where the computer is, you can also do well with a USB audio-input device that includes a phono pre-amp. I use a (very inexpensive) Behringer UFO-202 (http://www.musictri.be/Categories/Behringer/Computer-Audio/Audio-Interf…) for my audio recording. It's only CD quality (48KHz, 16-bit), but it's got very clean sound and it is very inexpensive.
I've found that there is little benefit to digitizing at high sample rates (I know that others will have strong disagreement with me over this), but I would recommend high bit-depth. Either digitize at 24-bit or convert to 24-bit after digitizing the audio. This way all the round-off error that inevitably results from processing will end up in the low-order bits of the result. When you convert your final result back to 16-bit, all those errors will be truncated and removed.
In my case, I record at 44.1kHz (so I don't need to perform any sample-rate conversion) and 16-bit (the limit of my hardware), but I have audacity work in 32-bit floating-point mode. When I'm done with my edits, I export the result as CD quality (44.1kHz, 16-bit) AIFF files.
I load the AIFF files into iTunes where I edit metadata (title, artist, album artwork, etc). Then I export those AIFF files for archiving (on data DVDs) in case I need the uncompressed audio in the future. I think convert them to 128Kbps VBR AAC audio, which is what I sync to my iPods. If I decide I need to re-compress at some later time, I have my archived AIFF files so I don't need to re-digitize from my analog masters.
A boxed Red Hat 5 (not "Enterprise 5") set, from 1997. I've also got a FreeBSD installer from that era, although I could never get it to install properly.
My oldest UNIX installer, however, is a CD with SunOS 4.1.4, dating to 1994. Still one of the best Unices I ever used.