Excellent informative, work. No pre blather very appreciated.

I just Subscribed.

The thing is, you should actually keep Behringer at its default recording volume settings 54%. If you manipulate with this record level setting whether on Windows or MacOS, keep in mind you do it already in the digital domain, the same applies also for onboard cards, you need to attenuate the signal before A/D conversion, otherwise you attenuate an already clipped signal, and when you normalize it, you are at the same place as if you recorded it at 54% level (except that you may lose some resolution). So you either need an interface with gain knobs for input signal (potentiometers) or you can use your amplifier’s headphone output (not the line out) and attenuate the signal with a volume knob, but that’s generally a less preferred solution. Although the Behringer recorded audio quiter than my onboard card, it actually managed to record LP’s well, however singles and EP’s sometimes more or less showed digital clipping, but that was from my amplifiers with built-in phono preamps (which had a gain around 30 dB for a MM cartridge), external preamps have much higher gain, 40 or 45dB, a that is too much for this Behringer unit, it comes close to a CD player output level. You can try to plug your CD/DVD player output to this sound card, and if you play some loud recording, you’ll hear heavy distortion and no level settings in Win/Mac can fix that, as it attenuates an already digitized sound, that I’ve already mentioned. Also if you actually try to digitize a record that was clipped or just square waves from a test record, the graph won’t look that simple, these flat upper and lower lines are often sloped, and the graph may look fine unless you zoom in and know what to look for. ( forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/is-the-dr-database-really-accurate-for-vinyl.330706/ , hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,66401.0.html )

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The main reason I record my records is for archival. Purposes.

I love all the stuff you are doing on this channel. It's really fun. I capture records with a usb mixer using the phono stage and analog outs on my Emotiva TA-100 for a Jazz radio show I do. Fun to see your methods. I use a Mac app called Amadeus Lite to capture but it's fundamentally the same as what you are doing in Audacity. I just like the Amadeus UI more.

I hear surface noise but no clicks on some programs after processing

Where did you buy the record storage cabinet behind you on the right?