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Basically what the title says. I have a Columbia House 1982 pressing of Prince's 1999 and was wondering how I could rip it to my PC. Any and all help is much appreciated.

You need a cable from the output of your LP player to the input of your PC, and some software, an audio editor, allowing the recording (Audacity?) - it is to act as your "tape recorder", and post-recording you will be able to edit out pops, static, whatever in this very software. Check the right and left channels before the important recording, then whether your captured sound is in-phase - with some other recording; then set up the recording volume, make sure your treasured LP rotates at a right speed.

zaval80 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 05, 2022 10:39 pm You need a cable from the output of your LP player to the input of your PC, and some software, an audio editor, allowing the recording (Audacity?) - it is to act as your "tape recorder", and post-recording you will be able to edit out pops, static, whatever in this very software. Check the right and left channels before the important recording, then whether your captured sound is in-phase - with some other recording; then set up the recording volume, make sure your treasured LP rotates at a right speed.

Not quite that simple if you want good results. You can't record straight off your 'LP player' as the input level will be to low and the RIAA curve won't have been applied. And unless you have a really good onboard soundcard you need an external ADC of some kind rather than go straight 'to the input of your PC...some of these little boxes include a phono pre-amp too to do the level boost and the RIAA equalisation.

I don't have what could be termed a really good turntable, so I don't have practical experience of aiming for great quality with my set-up, but it's perfectly possible to raise the volume by software without increasing hiss, and to apply any EQ.

zaval80 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 06, 2022 4:18 pm I don't have what could be termed a really good turntable, so I don't have practical experience of aiming for great quality with my set-up, but it's perfectly possible to raise the volume by software without increasing hiss, and to apply any EQ.

Here's what I do. Turntable is connected to amp. Take the output from the amp which goes to cassette deck/minidisk deck and plug it into a DAC. I use the Behringer UCA202 (very reasonably priced). Plug the USB cable from the DAC into the laptop. Open Audacity, select the USB DAC as the input and record the LP. I save the output as a WAV file, as I use Clickrepair to remove the majority of clicks. Play the clickrepair(ed) track in Audacity and manually remove any clicks that have been missed. These are usually in first and last few seconds of a recording. Save the output as a FLAC file. Job done. Other than click removal I don't perform any other processing.

Alternatively, buy a decent USB turntable (not the cheap and nasty versions which are nothing more than toys) and plug straight into the laptop.

Note: when selecting the USB DAC in Audacity make sure you check the sound settings in control panel. In my case it defaulted to mono and it was a while before I realised this.

Nimbus wrote: ↑Wed Jul 06, 2022 9:43 pm Here's what I do. Turntable is connected to amp. Take the output from the amp which goes to cassette deck/minidisk deck and plug it into a DAC. I use the Behringer UCA202 (very reasonably priced). Plug the USB cable from the DAC into the laptop. Open Audacity, select the USB DAC as the input and record the LP. I save the output as a WAV file, as I use Clickrepair to remove the majority of clicks. Play the clickrepair(ed) track in Audacity and manually remove any clicks that have been missed. These are usually in first and last few seconds of a recording. Save the output as a FLAC file. Job done. Other than click removal I don't perform any other processing.

Alternatively, buy a decent USB turntable (not the cheap and nasty versions which are nothing more than toys) and plug straight into the laptop.

Note: when selecting the USB DAC in Audacity make sure you check the sound settings in control panel. In my case it defaulted to mono and it was a while before I realised this.

Worth noting that your instructions above assume using an amp with a phono input. If you use one that hasn't one you will also need a phono pre-amp for most turntables to connect via a spare line level input.

Nimbus wrote: ↑Wed Jul 06, 2022 9:43 pm Open Audacity, select the USB DAC as the input and record the LP. I save the output as a WAV file, as I use Clickrepair to remove the majority of clicks. Play the clickrepair(ed) track in Audacity and manually remove any clicks that have been missed. These are usually in first and last few seconds of a recording.

I also use clickrepair but I've never done manual removal in Audacity. Could you share your method so I can give it a try?

I haven't used it for a while, but my route to digitise vinyl (or cassettes) was using a standalone CD-R recorder, a hifi unit a bit like a cassette deck but using CD-Rs (doh!) I had a machine made by Pioneer, but all the major hifi brands offered them.
It took care of all the audio stuff like sorting out signal level, converting an analogue source to digital etc. A bit fiddly cos you had to manually insert 'CD tracks' for each song on the LP as it recorded - it just recorded one lengthy CD track otherwise - and basically transferred exactly what was on the vinyl, complete with any scratches and pops, just like 'taping a record' onto cassette. But you then had a CD-R which could be ripped to a PC for duplicating, or using sound managing software to de-click and adjust if you wanted.
You can find used CD-R machines on eBay easily and fairly cheaply.

ianbuckers wrote: ↑Thu Jul 07, 2022 10:22 am

Nimbus wrote: ↑Wed Jul 06, 2022 9:43 pm Open Audacity, select the USB DAC as the input and record the LP. I save the output as a WAV file, as I use Clickrepair to remove the majority of clicks. Play the clickrepair(ed) track in Audacity and manually remove any clicks that have been missed. These are usually in first and last few seconds of a recording.

I also use clickrepair but I've never done manual removal in Audacity. Could you share your method so I can give it a try?

Manual removal is easy. The waveform should be scaled so that the resolution allows you to observe all of it (or the most of it) still remaining within the screen limits what regards the amplitude axis; as to the time axis, the scaling should be between several milliseconds and a fraction of 1 msec. Then you analyze the look of the waveform. Anything looking out of the ordinary is suspect, but it can be useful signal and not the pop or the click. Mark the place with a marker in the software and scale the waveform back, so you'd be able to play the sound back through this suspect spot and to check whether you hear the pop / click in the position of your marker. Then, set up the time resolution to a fraction of a millisecond. Now, if you "extrapolate" the suspicious place by drawing in the software a straight line between the points which look convenient for making the "extrapolation", and if upon the playback you won't hear the pop or the click, or probably hear what sounds like a change to how it sounded before, then you hit the exact spot of a pop or a click. In the latter case, if you still hear something, probably you'll need to retry your "extrapolation" by choosing different points. The smaller the time range of the extrapolation, the better. It is preferable for it to be less than 1 msec, but in some cases it could be up to something like 5 msec. Sadly, I've never done this in Audacity, as I have SoundForge which IMO is more convenient for editing, but the principle is the same, you "draw" in the software the line between two points which seem like it, and if you hit the pop or the click, you'll notice this in the course of playback. (Otherwise, if you chose the wrong spot, the pop or the click will remain in its rightful place.) It is possible to edit out things manually in any place provided you can still hear where the wrong sound occurs.