[Music Alchemist]

  Vinyl is best for things that aren't available on CD.

 
Indeed. Nearly all my vinyl is exclusively on vinyl or versions of albums with exclusive bonus tracks and so on.

 

[wakibaki]

What is required to get a perfect vinyl rip?
 
Perfect vinyl.

 

[Music Alchemist]

  What is required to get a perfect vinyl rip?
 
Perfect vinyl.

 
I get your point. Guess I should have asked about getting the highest "reasonable quality" rip.

 

[PalJoey]

With a clean new LP, you can get a great-sounding rip that doesn't need too much work. With a cheap 2nd-hand LP, you may have to find your own level of noise tolerance and/or willingness to spend time cleaning up the digital file after recording.
 
If you already own a turntable and you like the sound, pair it with an ADC and it will give very decent results. Buying a shoddy, ultrabudget plastic turntable with built-in USB convenience will make your rips sound like... they are being played on a shoddy, ultrabudget plastic turntable.
 
Happily, decent budget options are also available, including Pro-Ject, who sell a model with a built-in USB output.
 
Automatic click removal can work, but not always. And with certain recordings, it can actually mess up the high frequencies of percussion etc. Sometimes, you've just got to zoom in and deal with some clicks one at a time. 
 
Audacity can open and edit FLAC files as well as WAV files. It's free, so download it, play with it and see if you're prepared to do the work.

 

[Audiophilic10]

I've been doing my vinyl rips taking the sound from the tape out of my amp directly to the mic input of the laptop and it sounds very good to me

 

[Mataugust]

I use tape out from my amp, into Terratec dmx6fire.
I do have a reducet hearing, but I cant tell the difference between vinyl and rip