Best recording

Lp's not created equal - very much agree! But the better the playback and recording chain, the larger the proportion that sound good or at least acceptable.

There is no single best way to record. This is much a matter of subjective taste, context and so on. I have always been a recording enthusiast, moving from a 1967 Radionette tape recorder to a variety of Tandberg recorders, then a 1970 Revox A77 that i used for many years, Dat recorders in the 90s and sound cards later, to the Korg MR-1 now.

As I wrote above, retrying a couple of vintage Revox tape recorders did not work out, but if good cassette decks do - fine. For most people, I think, hi-res digital will be the best solution today, and like many others, I think dsd is the best-sounding format, compared to hi-res pcm. Blueray etc may change that, but not in the near future, it seems.

I tend to lean towards the 24~96 computer software route myself for ease of editing dsd seems the logical next step

Based on my experience with a Cowon D2 and Creative 24/96 external laptop card as well as the Korg mr1, the Korg is a big step up. Even downsampled with Audiogate from dsd to pcm 24/96, the Korg files sounded better than files recorded with Creative 24/96 pcm. Difference was notable even on the Cowon (accepting only up to cd format 16/44).

Dsd recorder discussion cf
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f15/korg-mr-1-can-used-portable-player-425849/index1.html

Assuming that I wanna record streaming music, online radio, audio track, etc. on my computer desktop screen, I will ask my screen recorders windows for help. I indeed fall in love with it after a period of use, which allows me to customize codec, bit rate, channel, etc. in the way I like, create recording task, skip unwanted sections, cut audio files, edit ID3 tag info, etc.
Importantly, it can work as a independent video recorder at the same time.