Step one
Download and install GoldWave. Connect an output on your stereo (such as Tape Out) to your sound card's line input, using the RCA-to-miniheadphone cable. Do not bypass your amplifier and connect your record player directly to your sound card, because your amplifier needs to process the quiet, treble signal produced by your record player before it gets to your computer.

Step two
In GoldWave, click the checked radio button, near the top-middle of the Device Controls window. Select the Volume tab and choose Line as the recording source. Then hit OK.

Step three
Click the New button at the top left of the main GoldWave window. Leave the Channels setting as stereo and the Sampling Rate at 44,100Hz. (You can also hit the CD button to reset the program to those values.) In the Length drop-down menu, select the playing time of that side of the record. If you don't know, enter 26:00.000 in the menu, since that's pretty much the maximum possible length for an LP.

Step four
After the Initializing New Sound bar makes it all the way across to the right, press Play on your phonograph, with the needle in the middle of a song that has reasonably loud volume. Hold down your keyboard's Ctrl button, then hit the Record button in GoldWave's Device Controls window. Watch the levels. If you see the meter jump into the red, turn down the volume on your stereo; if the meter's too low, turn up the volume. Basically, you want the loudest parts of the song to be almost to the red. If the meter goes too high, you'll end up with ugly digital distortion in your recording.

Step five
Now that you have the levels set, click Stop in GoldWave's Device Controls window. Press Ctrl-A, then Delete on your keyboard in order to get rid of the test audio. Click Rewind in GoldWave's Device Controls window, then hit Record. Start playing the record from the beginning again, while GoldWave is recording. After the record has played all the way through, press Stop in GoldWave's Device Controls window and on your record player. Save the file (File • Save) as whatever you want (in this tutorial, we'll call the filename xx). Click anywhere in GoldWave's main window, then press Ctrl-A to select the entire WAV file. To normalize the audio, select Effects • Volume • Maximize. When GoldWave is finished scanning for the maximum volume, enter 0.99 in the New Maximum field and press OK.

Step six
Now it's time to remove any hiss, pops, and clicks that occurred on the vinyl version of the recording. (If you don't care about this, proceed to step eight.) With the entire waveform still highlighted (Ctrl-A), select Effects • Filter • Pop/Click. Leave the tolerance at 1000 percent and click OK. Save the resulting file as xx_normalized_pop.

Step seven
To remove hiss, go to Effects • Filters • Noise Reduction. Select Hiss Removal from the drop-down menu and click OK. Save the resulting file as xx_normalized_pop_hiss. Listen to this file by pressing the spacebar. If it sounds fine, continue to step eight; if not, go to Edit • Undo and try dragging the yellow line to different levels at different points in the song, repeating the process until you get something that you're happy with. Since different songs and hiss levels require different approaches, we can't specify one setting that will solve all problems--experimentation is the only way. Just keep in mind that the left side of the Noise Reduction graph represents very low frequencies, and the right represents very high frequencies. The height of the yellow line specifies how much volume will be removed at that frequency. For instance, if you have a very high-pitched hiss, you want the yellow line to be higher on the right side.

Step eight
To chop the long piece of audio into tracks, listen to it by pressing the spacebar. When you find a spot where one song ends and another begins, right-click that point. This will select all of the audio up to that spot. (In GoldWave, right-clicking makes an end point and left-clicking makes a beginning point of a selection.) Select Edit • Cut, then Edit • Paste New. Save each file as its song title. When you're finished, close GoldWave, remembering which folder you saved the songs to.

Note: Repeat steps three to eight for the other side of the LP.