Checked your recording vs the youtube clip - sounds like distorsion on yours, as if you’d recorded too hot. Rip quieter, then add gain - that seems to be the worst problem here, not so much the “dj needle vs hi-fi needle” thing. Or maybe the whitelabel isn’t setup right. Or maybe that’s a very loud pressing and there’s no getting around it (in which case see if it’s as bad with a quieter record).
Gotta figure out how to not overload your preamp. Of course, if it’s already distorting before you turn things down in Audacity, recording at a quieter level won’t make a difference.
Sure, it makes sense to use a hi-fi needle for archival. Here’s a little tale, though.
I used to rip with my Concorde Pro, then an M97. I found I always had to eq more stuff back in the top highs with the M97.
Then I got Concorde Elektros needles as an experiment, because the Pros were getting a little old and I had to put my home spares on (which I kept for ripping only).
In the process, I made a few tests. A/B-ing edited M97 vs Elektro, the latter sounded more precise in the high end, despite the specs showing the latter having a shorter range topping off at around 18khz.
Some parts can show some sibilance, which seems to be acknowledged with Concordes, but that was still there with the Shure, so in those cases, it wasn’t the needle being shitty - just the actual track sounding harsh.
I also A/B tested both carts with the same record vs. a WAV of the same vinyl from one of the popular shops, and the Elektro was blatantly closer, which was expected considering the lack of EQ correction (which is not fixed by a tweak on a three band eq, or even on the 92’s four band).
Obviously, it made sense to go on playing with Elektros at gigs, just to keep a closer level of detail between traktor/flac and real vinyl (I’d switch a lot between the two). Furthering that, it made sense to play rips which would sound like my vinyl through the concordes, therefore I just rip with an Elektro now.
Unless I get a spare Elektro tip, I will experiment with the M97 again when I can get a third headshell for it, since my spares are used with my home M44Gs - great for timecode btw, but lousy for a crisp sound, so switching between timecode and actual vinyl sounds, again, a bit jarring.
Of course quite a few soundsystems have harsh highs and would favour straight M97 rips, or vinyl with more muffled carts like M44x.
(Still, if I went all vinyl+shure when playing out, I still wouldn’t rip with an M44 following the above logic, because they just sound nasty in comparison to concordes to me 
)
