We often get asked to convert people’s beloved albums to some form of digital format. The conversion itself is quite easy. Making it sound good is the hard part. The first thing you have to consider is the music on the vinyl has already been mastered for that specific record. So the last thing you want to do as an engineer is add more compression or effects. So, what kind of equipment are you using? What kind of turntable are you using and what is it designed to do? The biggest question mark is arguably the most important piece of gear in the chain, the phono preamp.
 
Steven Berson, formerly of Europadisk a large vinyl manufacturing plant in the US talks about the importance of using a colourless phono preamp “It shouldn’t be designed to be warm or coloured pre, but instead as a transparent, un-hyped, straight wire type of pre, and as such in my opinion that’s an excellent choice for the mastering studio.”
 
The phono preamp is the piece of gear that goes between your turntable and your DAC (digital audio converter). As a mastering engineer, we have spent hours and days searching for the right one. It is a balance between cost and the ability to reproduce the sound on the vinyl as clear as possible. There are so many to choose from. I have attached a list of links to some of the more popular ones at the bottom of this article. Once the sound has been recorded into the DAW (digital audio workstation) it is just a simple matter of bouncing the files down to the customers’ specified format.
“True imagination is not fanciful daydreaming it is fire from heaven.” - Ernest Holmes
 
Graham Slee
Korora
Bugle
PS Audio
A comprehensive list: Audio Tools RIAA