Best for recording records?

Sorry I'm asking this just out of curiosity. Do you folks record your LPs because they are not available through Tidal or other (digital) streaming services or they actually sound better this way even after all the post processing? Thanks.

Alesis Masterlink is the one.  

I use an E-MU 0404 USB ADC. It's fairly inexpensive (~$200), but good quality and supports up to 192kHz/24bit.

I connect my phono stage to the 0404 , and then run USB into my laptop.

Here's a review.

Best off getting something that does not record to the computer. Most of the ADCs that do record to the computer via USB etc introduce noise as well. You are generally better off getting something that will record to an SD card and then transfer that to the computer. But as other have written it is time consuming, budget about twice the time it takes to record the record to do all the cleanup on the file to get a nice clean recording.

I use an RME Babyface Pro. It is a German pro audio A/D converter, is reasonably priced and sounds excellent.

I record at 32/96 and then downsample to 24/96 for "archival" purposes or 16/44 for most purposes. Recording at 192khz is in my opinion unnecessary since LPs don't produce frequencies up to 95khz. Using 32 bit is useful only for manipulating the dynamic range without compromising sound quality. Having a final version at 24/96 is in my view more than adequate, and to be honest I can't tell the difference between those and the 16/44 versions, and happily listen to the latter.

As others have noted, it is an enormous amount of work  - for each hour of recording allow 1-2 hours of additional work to edit, remove clicks etc. I really only do it to make recordings to allow me to hear the difference between, say, two arms or two cartridges, through instantaneous comparisons, while keeping all other variables the same.

Even if the digital recordings seem to sound identical (which they do) they still lack something I can't quite define which means they are no substitute for playing the original record.

I use the PS Audio primary as a phono stage is it sounds incredible.  Digitalizing - it sounds great too, but it's a lot of work.  I only records albums that I really cherish, or if they're not replaceable. 

It's an enormous amount of work to digitize records (or anything else, like tapes.)  If you think about the time involved to digitize even a fraction of your collection...even a couple of thousand records is several thousand hours of work.   

 I have heard recordings made on both of the benchmark and the ayre converters, and they both sound really good, but the ayre wins out in preservation of subtle details, especially in regards to locational information  The ayre is just so darn expensive.  The benchmark does not do DSD, and it's USB output is limited to 96K. I would like to hear about comparisons between the benchmark and the PS audio if anybody has them. 

Used Alesis Masterlink records it directly onto its own hard disk or burns CDR. The playback is super as well.