Vinyl Archiving to CDR & MP3 - Near Field Monitors

I'm looking for others experiences on archiving their cherished vinyl to CDR or MP3. I travel a lot and need some portable tunes so I've been using a pretty basic "second system" into my PC.

At the moment the system is a Thorens TD160 with SME 3009/Ortofon VMS. The phono stage of an old Sony amp feeding the "line in" of the Soundblaster Live soundcard in the P.C. - Cool Edit Pro is used for manipulation of the .wav files. (trying to do as little as possible!)

I'm pretty pleased with the results so far but obviously wondering how far to (sensibly!?!) upgrade and which items first. From reading around the subject and my own knowledge of audio, my first thoughts are with the phono stage and the soundcard (i.e it's ADC).

Short of moving my LP12 into the computer room, I'm thinking that an old 32.5/42.5/62 with my own power supply could improve things a lot. I'm looking for suggestions on the sound card though, or maybe an external ADC/DAC (Flying Calf?). Just an idle thought, but is a Prefix type device (i.e. two powered phono cards) capable of driving a line level stage without the further "processing" it receives in the pre-amp?

Oh, and another thought... my computer line out is taken to a pair of Goodman active Maxims. Would Kans make good near field monitors ( with suitable amplification)? Or perhaps the BBC monitors??

So many questions, so little time....

I look forward to your thoughts/experiences.

Bye for now.

[This message was edited by pm on SUNDAY 02 December 2001 at 20:02.]