Reducing album noise

[nedifer]

Hi all,

I have just started using Vinyl Studio, so my apologies in advance if this is a newbie question. 

I am using an old B&O RX2 turntable in conjunction with a Parasound Zphono USB to record my albums to my laptop.  What I have found is that the background album noise is much more noticeable when playing the resulting FLAC files than it is when playing the original album through the Zphono USB pre-amp to my amplifier.  It is almost as if the AD conversion amplifies the background noise and not just a little.

I have been fiddling with the various tools to try to reduce noise but find that if I am too heavy handed, it ends up distorting the music (and, even then, I still hear more noise than when playing through the Zphono direct to the amplifier).  The FLAC files are being played through the same amplifier as the lp output (albeit via a Squeezebox music server and a Schiit Audio Modi 2 Uber DAC).

Does anyone on the forum have experience with the Parasound Zphono USB who might have a few pointers in how to minimize noise while recording (or how best to clean it up afterwards without compromising the quality of the recording?)

Any tips you have would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

[skolis]

This will be a wholly unsatisfactory answer.... but... after playing around with the zphono usb, testing, experimenting, listening, etc....  I sold it.
I'm a big fan of parasound, but this one didn't do it for me.  I ended up getting a ps audio phono converter and
have been quite happy.