Transferring recorded music from analog sources to digital.

Tools:

• Audacity
• sox
  • 'rec -c 2 -r 44100 -s w $filename'
  • (record 2 channels at the rate of 44100, size = w <wide?>)
• mhwaveedit

Links:

• Audacity <http://audacity.sourceforge.net/>
• http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Transferring_tapes_and_records_to_computer_or_CD
• http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/tutorials
• sox http://sox.sourceforge.net/

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If you want to record from tape, you can connect your deck directly to the computer. Connect the deck's "line-out" RCA jacks to your computer's "line in" jack.

If you have a standalone turntable, you cannot record directly to your computer. You have to connect it to an amplifier or receiver with a "phono" or turntable input, or to a phono pre-amplifier and then record from the amplifier's "line out" or "tape out" jacks. USB turntables can be plugged directly into your soundcard jack.

Our primary goal is to get down a listenable copy of a vinyl record without losing significant information. We are making a realistic trade-off between time spent recording and sound quality, between noise reduction and loss of data. After all in most cases a new cd costs less than $10.00.

Setting up Audacity:

1. Go to the Audio I/O tab of Preferences and set both the playback and recording devices explicitly to your inbuilt sound or to the computer sound device your cable is plugged into.
2. Change the recording channels on the same Audio I/O tab to "2 (stereo)".
3. Select line-in as the recording source on Audacity's Mixer Toolbar dropdown input selector:
4. Set software playthrough to monitor the recording.
5. Set the volume level of your recording input to avoid clipping.

Record and Modify

1. Record either with Audacity ( red record button ) or sox
2. Save as either .aup or .wav
3. Modify:
   • Amplify
   • Remove noise
   • Remove clicks
   • Enhance???
   • Break into tracks

Write to CD:

• K3b
• XCDRoast
• ?

-- TedRoche - 14 Sep 2007