I've been doing this for a while now for all my old folkie records that will never be re-released for various reasons. I have two amplifiers, one for record and one for playback so I'm listening to what I produce through a good stereo rather than crappy computer speakers. The other amp takes the input source, either cassette, radio or turntable and it has the speaker switch in the off position. I go from the record out section into a mixer that allows me to control the input volume and that is plugged into the sound card input. I started using the mixer because I use Cool Edit Pro and I kept overdriving the input. Cool edit lets you remove the pops one by one as you can see them as you hear them and taking them out by simply looking at the wave in a magnified view then deleting the pop doesn't seem to affect the music. You can also set it to remove the pops automatically but this takes hours. I set it up to do a track then go to bed and save it in the morning. The finished result is good doing it that way, but I generally only do it for those records that were played to death at boozy folkie parties back in the sixties and bear the scars. If you set the levels too high, it mistakes some of the music for noise and alters the sound - you get used to it by trial and error. I always save as a PCM WAV which seems to give me the best result. It's time consuming and sounds complex (but it isn't really) but it's worth it when you hget your old favourites back. I also record a whole side then break it up and work on one tracj at a time. I also picked up a 2gig hard drive cheap when someone upgraded and I use that as an image file. It seems to be happier with the workings on one disc and storage on the other.