There are two reasons to digitize records, and they lead to different answers.
The first is preservation. You own something that does not exist elsewhere, a private pressing, a home recording, a record so scarce that replacing it is not realistic. Here digitizing is genuinely worth doing carefully.
The second is convenience, wanting your records on your phone. This one deserves an honest question first: is the album on streaming already? If it is, ripping your own copy is hours of work to produce a file that is almost certainly worse than the one already on your phone. Digitize the records that are not available, and stream the ones that are.
The Two Ways to Do It
A USB turntable. The analog to digital conversion happens inside the deck and it appears to your computer as an audio input. It is the simplest route and it works. The compromise is that the built in converter and phono stage are usually the cheapest parts of the machine.
A separate audio interface. Your existing turntable goes through its phono stage into an external analog to digital converter, which connects to the computer. More boxes, better result, and it means the quality of your capture is not tied to whichever deck you own.
For a handful of irreplaceable records, the second route is worth the trouble. For working through a whole shelf casually, a USB turntable is fine and you will actually finish.
Do This Before Anything Else
Clean the record and the stylus. Every click and crackle you capture is permanent in the file, and no software removes them as well as simply not recording them. Our cleaning guide covers the process, and it is the single biggest quality difference in this whole job.
Settings That Matter
Record to a lossless format. WAV or FLAC, never straight to MP3. You can always make an MP3 from a lossless master later, and you can never go the other way. Do the job once.
24 bit, 48kHz or 96kHz is a sensible capture. The extra headroom over CD specification is not about hearing more from the record, it is about having room to adjust levels afterwards without degrading anything.
Set levels so the loudest passage peaks below maximum. Digital clipping is unrecoverable, unlike analog, where pushing a little produces distortion you can live with. Leave yourself several decibels of headroom and normalise later if you want it louder.
Turn off any automatic processing during capture. Record flat, then decide about noise reduction afterwards on a copy.
Software
Audacity is free, open source, and entirely capable of this. It records, it splits tracks, it exports, and it has click removal built in. It is what most people should use.
Dedicated vinyl ripping software such as VinylStudio adds conveniences that matter across a large collection: automatic track splitting, looking up track titles, and writing tags. If you are digitizing dozens of albums rather than three, that automation earns its price.
Either way the workflow is the same. Record the whole side in one pass, split it into tracks, tidy the gaps, then tag and export.
About Click Removal
Use it sparingly, on a copy, and listen to the result against the original.
Click removal works by finding transients that look like damage and interpolating over them. The problem is that percussion, plucked strings, and brass attacks also look like transients. Push the setting too far and you get a recording with no clicks and no snare either, which is a worse artefact than the clicks were.
Always keep the untouched capture. If you decide in two years that you were heavy handed, you want the original file to go back to.
What to Expect
A careful capture of a clean record on a decent setup sounds like the record. That is the honest ceiling. It will not sound better than the vinyl, and it will carry whatever surface noise the record has.
It will also take real time. A side is twenty minutes and you cannot speed that up, because you are recording in real time by definition. An album is roughly forty minutes of playback plus splitting and tagging. Budget an hour per record and you will not be disappointed.
That time cost is the strongest argument for being selective. Digitize the records that are genuinely unavailable, and let streaming handle the catalog that is a search away.
Gear
If you are buying a turntable anyway and know you will digitize, a USB model saves you a purchase. The Audio-Technica AT-LP120XUSB is the common recommendation and doubles as a capable everyday deck. Our turntable bracket guide covers where it sits against the alternatives.
If you already own a turntable you like, buy an audio interface instead and keep the deck. Local shops and hi-fi dealers carry both, and Amazon stocks the mainstream options: USB turntables on Amazon. Find a local shop first in the Record Store Directory.
Disclosure: Record Store Directory participates in the Amazon Associates program. If you buy through the Amazon link above we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It does not change what we recommend, and we point you to a local shop first.
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Clean the record first. Everything after that is just patience.
