I want to transfer some of my vinyl recordings to cd; I recently bought a Crosley USB Turntable that provided a disc to install Audacity.
I am using Windows 10 Home, and upgraded the Audacity to 2.1.3 after downloading from the Crosley disc.
I am using a USB cable from the turntable to my laptop, and nothing seems to work properly. I also have a cable that lets me plug in to the AUX of the turntable and the microphone on the front of my laptop. I have also tried with my PC with the same results. My computers do not have the Sound Mapper that is referred to in help tips, so I guess I need the “101 for dummies” version. Can someone please give me the 1-2-3 steps that will get me the results I desire?
What exactly is happening? Are you not seeing the USB turntable as a recording option?
Plug-in the USB before starting Audacity.
Then, try WASAPI as your [u]Audio Host[/u], it’s the “latest & greatest”.
Then if you see “USB…something” as a Recording Device, select that. (It may not say “Crosley”.)
I also have a cable that lets me plug in to the AUX of the turntable and the microphone on the front of my laptop.
Although that will “work” it WILL NOT work well. The mic input is too sensitive (an ‘AUX’ line level signal is about 100 times stronger than a mic signal), the mic input is usually mono, and it’s often poor quality. (The line-input on a the soundcard in a desktop/tower computer is fine.)
Thanks, DVDdoug, I know I had some of the settings wrong.
Here’s what I did, step by step, AFTER reading your reply: 1. Plugged in USB cable to phonograph and laptop. 2. Turned on the phonograph. 3. Started Audacity. 4. Made the selections WINDOWS WASAPI and USB PnP AUDIO. 5. Got my vinyl ready to play. 6. Selected Start Monitoring. 7. Pressed START on AUDACITY. 8. Began playing my record. 9. WOW! I see waveforms!! 10. At end of record track, pressed STOP on AUDACITY. 11. Not knowing for sure what to do next, I Exported Audio to a new file that I called Temp. 12. Amazing! I actually found the file, and was able to replay it on Audacity. 13. Then I copied the file (.WAV format) to a CD, and found that it played fine on my computer, but not on my home stereo.
I think I am making progress, but still have a couple of hurdles to overcome. Your help and advice is appreciated greatly.
Then I copied the file (.WAV format) to a CD, and found that it played fine on my computer, but not on my home stereo.
What software are you using to burn the CD?
You need to configure your burning software to make an “audio CD”. If you simply copy the WAV computer files onto the disc, you are making a “data CD” and it won’t play in an audio player.
[u]Here[/u] is some more information.
Audio CDs use the same underlying format as WAV files (uncompressed PCM) but it’s “packaged” differently.
Thanks again, DVDdoug for you patience and assistance. Following your instructions, I finally got a track exported and burned to a CD! However, when returning to the program to try to burn an entire record to a CD, I was miserably unsuccessful. I just can’t figure out how to record several vinyl tracks in one session. I’m sure it has something to do with the settings in Audacity, but I haven’t figured it out, and can’t find what I need in the User Manual.
In retrospect, my last post may not fully explain what I need help with.
It seems Audacity quits recording somewhere while my vinyl is playing, but I have no idea why.
I’m guessing it has something to do with one or more of these settings:
Pinned or Unpinned Record/Play Head; Snap To; Selection Start; O End O Length; and/or Audio Position.
I will appreciate someone telling me how to fix this, or how to work around it so that I can eventually burn an entire vinyl record to a cd.
It seems Audacity quits recording somewhere while my vinyl is playing, but I have no idea why.
I don’t know either… There are level-activated and timer options, but those should be off by default.
Are you getting an error message, or is it just stopping?
or how to work around it so that I can eventually burn an entire vinyl record to a cd.
Once you’ve got your basic issues solved, there is more than one way of making CDs rom LPs and the Aduacity manual has - [u]Sample Workflow For LP Digitization[/u]. And, [u]Transferring LPs to CDR: Some Advice[/u] has a ship-load of information.
Here’s an outline of my workflow -
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Check to see if the CD or MP3 is available. 
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After recording both sides (and after exporting to WAV to have a “safe” copy), join them into one file (so I can “process” the whole thing at once).
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Normalize (maximize) the volume using the Amplify effect.
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Trim the ends as necessary.
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De-click the record. Audacity has some tools for this, but I generally use [u]Wave Repair[/u] ($30 USD). Wave Repair does an audible-perfect job removing most clicks and it only “touches” the audio where you identify a defect. But, it usually takes me a full weekend to clean-up an LP. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with [u]Wave Corrector[/u] which is fully-automated (and it’s now FREE).
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Try regular Audacity Noise Reduction (using the “silence” between tracks for the noise profile) to remove/reduce any remain hiss/hum/crackle, etc. Sometimes there can be noise-reduction artifacts, especially during quiet parts, so if it “sounds funny”, I might not use noise reduction.
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If it’s an older “dull sounding” recording I’ll boost the highs (maybe +3 to +6dB at 5kHz and above, or whatever it takes to make it sound more-like a modern recording).
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Mute any noise between tracks, maybe using a very-short fade-out & fade-in if it happens to sound odd with the sound going suddenly dead-silent.
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Normalize (maximize) one last time. …There may be a little more headroom after click reduction or EQ may have pushed the peaks above 0dB and normalizing will bring the peaks back to 0dB. It’s important to do this before exporting to WAV because WAV is hard-limited to 0dB and it will clip (distort) if you “try” to go over.
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Export to WAV as one big file.
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If I’m making a CD, note the start-times of each song and make a [u]Cue Sheet[/u] (or more-likely edit an existing one) for CD burning.
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If I’m making MP3s, I select/highlight each song and Export Selected Audio, one at a time, using the song title as the file name. Then, I use [u]MP3tag[/u] to add the tags/metadata (title/album/artist/genre/year/artwork etc.). With MP3 tag, you can select all of the files in a folder at once and enter the common information once (artist, album, genre, artwork, etc.), then the title & track number one at a time. (If it’s a compilation or greatest hits album, I like to enter the original release year for each song, and that can take some time to research.)
CDs support metadata with something called CD TEXT, but not many players support it so I don’t bother. …When you play a commercially released CD on your computer the player software gets a “fingerprint” of the CD and looks-up that information in an online database… The title/album/artist information usually isn’t on the CD itself. Of course, your homemade CD isn’t in the database so you’ll just see “track 1”, “track 2”, etc.
- If I can find the album artwork online, I’ll use that. (Same if I’m making a CD.) If I have to scan the LP artwork, it can’t scan the whole thing at once so I’ll use a photo-stitching application to re-assemble the image. (I haven’t done that for awhile and I don’t remember what application I used.)
No error message. Just when I replay, I discover that it has quit before the end of the record.
There seems to be a wealth of information in your last reply. It will take me some time to work through and apply it.
I’ll try to make good notes, so I can answer questions someone else may have.
Thanks again for the prompt and helpful response.