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When recording, the goal is to try to retain the maximum amount of quality from the original source as possible. To do this you have to understand where the points of quality loss are and how much they affect the overall quality. First, you are playing the original source from a record. The player works by picking up vibrations from the needle, and hence anything that is not from the vinyl groove, is a source of extra noise (quality loss 1). I would have the player set on a very sturdy surface and not have the speakers on at all. You can wear headphones to monitor the track. If you do have the speakers on, then play them quietly and do not put them on the same surface as the turntable. From here you can go directly into your soundcard if you can input rca cables. If not, then then use your mixer. If you can bypass your mixer without spending more money (if you are being cost effective) then do so, otherwise use the mixer and all you will need is an inexpensive ($10-$15 for gold plated) cable to go from rca to 1/8" stereo jack that you can pick up at radio shack. The next source of quality loss (#2) is from the wires themselves. I wouldn't suggest going out and getting all new gold plated wires though because it's going to be quite costly and it won't improve sound THAT much. Next is the DAC/ADC (digital-to-analog converter/analog=to-digital converter) in your mixer. Hopefully you have a decent mixer and it is 24-bit or higher. If it is lower, you may wish to get a new soundcard that you can plug rca cables into. This will be the 2nd biggest source of quality loss. The same thing goes for your soundcard. You want to have at least a 24-bit DAC on your soundcard too for the same reason. The lower the bitrate on your DAC/ADC the lower the quality. Think of it like lines on a TV, cable is about 90/sec, VHS is about 120/sec, DVD is 600/sec and HDTV is like 900/sec I believe. Think about the difference in images you can see between cable and dvd, then make the analogy to a sound file!
From here you come to the biggest source of quality loss (#3), which is conversion into an MP3. Well, it may not be your biggest loss depending on your encoding bitrate, but it has the potential to kill all of your quality! First thing, I would record the track as a wave file, which is default in SoundForge anyway. Then you can listen to that and see if you are loosing the quality between your record and your harddrive or from your harddrive to your MP3. I wouldn't encode an MP3 any less than 128kbps, and I would suggest using at least 160kbps if you want to retain a good amount of quality while still being space effective. If you have unlimited space, or almost anyway, then I would jump up to 192kbps or 256kbps. After that point, chances are you aren't loosing a considerable amount from the original source anyway.
Anyway, so when you are all ready to record, then you want to make sure that you aren't overloading any of your parts. Make sure you use record out or master out on your mixer and NOT booth out. Also make sure that you don't overload the signal either. This is done by letting the song play out and making sure that the LEDs don't spike above -2Db or -4Db at the max. You can go over 0Db, but not by too much! You can always use the normalize function that SoundForge has to increase the total volume of the track without robbing any quality from it! Also, make sure that you are using your line in and NOT your mic in on your soundcard!!
I hope this helps, let me know if I can answer any other questions!
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