hey max, thanks 😉
any fav software you use? i was looking at audacity, though the motu comes with cakewalk, i believe. i was even thinking of using a high end cmedia pci-e card that could take optical in to use it's dac for conversion (i use a desktop dac for listing: optical out from rampage/dac/analog out to nearfields), but the motu looks like it would be a bit more compatible.

the dak solution i got was an xp version,(thats how long ago it was) it was a complete kit, it had a de popper software for records, sound editing software and mixing board. I have used Audiacity for some voice acting in video games, i have never used it for digitizing analog music sources. Your always going to need a interface equilizer to purify the sound so the digital sounds good.
They are actually still in business. but i don't know if they have better solutions now out. for records allot depends on the actually needle used and stuff.
http://www.dak.com

The major reason i got it was i had very rare bar concert of U2 in 1981, it was recorded by one of the bar patrons in the bar and was broadcast on radio in 1985 when i recorded it. I had to edit the cassete tape ending and starting on the other side. But it sounds good still. Allot of unique stuff you want to digitze it, vinyle get brittle and magnetic tape gets brittle.

wow, a u2 pub gig recording! super! lucky you 😉

yeah , I had allot of live broadcast of techno / dance clubs when i was too young to go out being in my early teens. The thing what you are trying to do, is bring the analog as rich a clear as possable and make it deep. You want to have the preamp mixer do all the processing before it even hits your sound chip on your mobo. With radio recorrdings you got the double wammy of analog recording over radio. So you might have interference on the radio station and mixing recording levels between the orginal analog source and the radio stations sound engineers settings during the broadcast.

i hear ya. actually, i'll put up with some analog clinks if they are ingrained in existing wax. i'm waiting for the new boards of canada vinyl to hit atm (electronica/idm). man, i wish i hadn't sold my ancient records collection...all the jazz and 70's prog rock....

after checking out audiophile sites, and realizing i really don't archive to mechanical media, i will forgo 'burning' to disk as method, and instead save files to usb/thumb drives or the like.

m.oreily I would go with the Motu as the ADC on it is higher quality for sure (even compared to a C-Media card). Motu's market is musicians and studios, so it has higher quality DACs and ADCs than cards aimed towards the general pc market. Cakewalk software is good for recordings but what you want is fairly simple to do. So any recording software would do. Unless you want to manipulate the recording. In that case you should look for professional software like Cubase, Cakewalk, Wavelab etc etc As far as cleaning up sound goes, all professional audio software include the required features and can get more advanced plugins (VST) installed as well but the process needs some knowledge in sound engineering to do without deteriorating the original sound sample:)