Transferring vinyl records to a digital format can be a time consuming affair, plus it probably require the skills and ears of a trained recording engineer to make it right. Fortunately there are experts who has shared their methods. I have skimmed different forums and websites for advices on this, and have found a method that works for me in most cases. I use Adobe Audition 1.0, plus ClickFix, Cuelisttool and a few other utilities.

1) Record both sides of the LP as 16 bit 44100 hz PCM wav. (The experts prefer 32 bit float. But that requires an extra step to convert it back to 16 bit in the end, and I am not sure how much effect it really has.) Trim off the silence before, after and between sides A and B. Include the big pop caused by the stylus hitting the vinyl. Then "save as" <artist> - <album>.wav.

2) If there are big pops, remove them manually. Zoom in and use click/pop eliminator, fill single click now. If the command has to be done several times, hit F3 to repeat the last command. (If it doesn't work you have to zoom in more.)

3) Remove clicks. This can distort the audio, so be careful. I use the plugin ClickFix. I mostly use the automatic modes, Auto gentle or Auto normal. Finally I use the LP, final polish setting from the authors website. Alternatively, if you don't have ClickFix, use Auditions built-in Click/Pop eliminator. In later versions than 1.0 this also has auto modes. Otherwise this might work:
GOOD QUALITY :
Window Sensitivity = 14
Window Discrimination = 30
Window Detect Big Pops = 60 Check
Window Multiple Passes = 4 Check
Window Pop Oversamples = 12
Window Run Size = 10
Check Second Level Verification
Check FFT Size Auto
Uncheck Pulse Size Verification
Uncheck Link Channels
Uncheck Smooth Light Crackle
AVERAGE QUALITY :
Window Sensitivity = 14
Window Discrimination = 30
Window Detect Big Pops = 60 Check
Window Multiple Passes = 8 Check
Window Pop Oversamples = 12
Window Run Size = 10
Check Second Level Verification
Check FFT Size Auto
Uncheck Pulse Size Verification
Uncheck Link Channels
Uncheck Smooth Light Crackle
BAD QUALITY :
Window Sensitivity = 14
Window Discrimination = 20
Window Detect Big Pops = 60 Check
Window Multiple Passes = 4 Check
Window Pop Oversamples = 12
Window Run Size = 10
Check Second Level Verification
Check FFT Size Auto
Uncheck Pulse Size Verification
Uncheck Link Channels
Uncheck Smooth Light Crackle

With these settings, click "Auto Find All Levels" and click OK. Some times I use the more radical settings on soft parts of the music if there is still a lot of crackle. But I listen to it before I continue in case it damages the sound.

4) Normalise to 97%

5) Remove groove noise. This can also distort the audio, so be careful. Zoom in between two tracks and select a part of the wave with no music at all. Enter Noise Reduction. Set Snapshots in profile: 1200, then "Get profile from selection". Close the window. Zoom out to the whole wave and select all. Then enter Noise Reduction again. Now click on the curve and enter these values:
1) 0 Hz, -25%
2) 250 Hz, -25%
3) 500 Hz, -75%
4) 3500 Hz, -75%
5) 7000 Hz, -25%
6) 22050 Hz, -25%

Drag the Noise Reduction Level to around 80%
Then enter these values:
FFT size: 8192
Reduce by: 25 dB
Precicion Factor: 11
Smooting amount: 2
Transition Width: 1 dB
Click OK. After this there will probably still be some noise between the tracks, but when there is music it will mostly be masked. In soft parts, if the noise is still disturbing, the Noise Reduction Level and Reduce by can be increased. But listen (preview) first.

6) Set cue points. Zoom in at the beginning of each track and set the cue point (F8). At the same time I trim off the non-musical parts before, after and between sides A and B. If the noise between tracks is still bothersome, I might fade out, silence, fade in between the tracks. If the start of a track is difficult to find, use the track timings that might be found on the LP cover, the LP or the net. Or use the ears.

7) Go to "Show Cue List". Check that you have set all the cue points. If there are 10 tracks there should be 11 cue points. Select all and click "merge". Then change cue type to "track". Now you can name the tracks. I search the internet first to see if I find a track list that I can copy and paste in. Otherwise I type it in.

8) Split, burn or convert format. You can split and convert to your favourite lossy of lossless format from the "Show Cue List" window by pressing the "batch" button.

I use another method: Save the file. Start Cuelisttool (I have it installed under the "Favourites" menu for fast access.) In Cuelisttool open the wav-file, extract the cuelist and save (or save and burn, if you want to make a CD right away.) If the file was named <artist> - <album> the corresponding fields will be automatically filled. From now there are two options: Either open the Cue-file in a program like Foobar2000, and tag, split and convert the file from there. Or: My favourite method is to mount the cue-file in a virtual CD-rom like DAEMON tools or Magic disk and rip it with a CD ripper. My favourite now is dBpoweramp. The advantage of this is that the ripping program can add additional tags, including cover art. More often than not the album will be listed in a CD database. But dBpoweramp also reads the cuefile for track names, artist and album.

8) Save the wav-file as a compressed lossless file. I use Wavpack for this, because it saves also the the cue points set in Audition. Other alternatives that can save directly from Audition is Flac and Monkeys Audio, but they don't save the cues.

That's it.

I always thought "quick and dirty" was record it, delete the start and end of each side, split the tracks (CDwav, cue sheet, whatever) and burn the result to CD.

Once you start trying to fix things, it's anything but quick - but it can get much more dirty! The thing about "one size fits all" settings is that they don't (though I admit to using them myself too!).

Cheers,
David.

2B - you must be reading my mind. i was just thinking your entire post

i do like the minimal processing of:

*record
*combine both sides and do minimal editing (silence, etc.)
*write a cuesheet
*burn to CD (and encode to lossy for the DAP )


later

I don't even make a cue or a CD.

After I record, I remove rumble (it buys quite a bit of volume during normalization), trim the sides, remove only the most egregious pops to lower the peak volume, normalize, save, encode to MP3, and throw on my iPod.

You might take a look at the new Audition 3 - It has great tools to clean up audio in spectal views.

The general advice is to do as little as possible. But not removing the clicks and rumble is not an option for me and many others. This processing takes 10-15 minutes with ClickFix and a decent modern computer and is well worth it IMO. The suggestions above are very gentle to the audio. The idea with the curve in the noise reduction settings is to not affect the most important musical frequencies as much. Fortunately it is possible to verify how much the music is affected before you do any harm. Both ClickFix and the Noise Reduction has a preview function. This can also be listened to in "reverse" - check the "keep noise only", and listen if you hear any music there. On a few records the settings are too gentle. Then I increase the levels a little, but I always preview the results and try out just a small part of the file first.

don't ever normalize!!!

What's wrong with normalizing?

Why? What harm does it do?

none

Normalizing an entire vinyl that's recorded as a single file shouldn't really do any harm to how dynamical the disc is since it won't normalize the tracks individually.