To upgrade or not to upgrade?

I have Yosemite 10.10.5 running version 2.0.4 Audacity.

I use the program only for the purpose of converting vinyl records to digital. I am completely thrilled with Audacity except that I can’t seem to adjust the recording levels. I use a high quality, very light tracking cartridge so this usually isn’t a problem, but occasionally I do get distortion and/or skipping.

I don’t plan to upgrade my operating system and don’t want to upgrade Audacity unless I know that this issue will improve.

I would be thankful for any advice.

You left out the part that matters.

Audacity assumes a digitized signal arriving has been adjusted and no further work is needed. So it turns off all the volume sliders. I think that reflects what the Mac is doing, so it’s not all on Audacity.

If you have a turntable plugged into a high quality, analog Phono Preamp with volume control and then on to an A/D converter, then you can adjust things to suit your goals. That’s how I do it. I have a Hafler Phono Preamp and volume control and I connect that either to a Behringer UCA-202 A/D converter or the Stereo Line-In of one of my older Mac Book Pros that still had Stereo Line in (on the left).

There are very high quality preamps with everything built into one box. The Art series works like that. Highly recommended.

There is an “affordable” interface made by Behringer, the UFO-202. It has correct RIAA phono compensation, local monitoring and a place to put the hum-bucking third turntable grounding wire, but it doesn’t have a volume control.

Koz

And to specifically answer the question, if you’re happy with the way your Audacity works (other than that), you should stay there. You should know it’s possible to install multiple Audacity versions by installing each one in its own Application folder rather than leave the Audacity installer to its own devices.

When the installer graphic appears, drag the icon directly to the Application folder and your custom folder rather than the Application icon in the graphic.

It will still try to share plugins and settings (that happens in a different place), so it’s good to know that’s going to happen.

Koz

It should not make any difference, but I would avoid putting dots in folder names. That’s why all those folders look like: Audacity2-0-3.

The -dash- is one of the two unconditionally acceptable name characters. The other is underscore.

Koz