CD-R is meant to be a temporary media. We've seen many discs easily damaged. Even DAT tape is better. The best of course is to just play the vinyl on a turntable. As far as cleaning records goes, using a special cleaner can help prevent damage to your records. The dirt can be abbrasive, and the process of moving a cloth over the record can cause the dirt to scratch the surface. See my post on surface noise. Using commercial vinyl cleaners and protectants is not wise either. They usually have substances to give vinyl a shiny finish that reduces resolution on the grooves and can gum up ypur stylus.
Copying LPs to CDs
I have a nice collection of vinyl LPs that I want to copy to CDs using the CD-R on my computer. Is there any software out there that can take an analog audio sugnal and digitize it for copying to a CD-R. It would also be helpful if this software had a tick-and-pop filter to get rid of scratches and maybe some equalization. Thanks