Audacity Forum

Your levels are way too high - you have an oversaturated signal which is clipping. The waveforms should not touch the top&bottom of the dispaly like that. A good level to aim at for recording is 0.5 which corresponds to -6 dB on the meters. Do yourself a favour and enlarge the meters by clicking...

Are you zoomed in at all - it helps accuracy of selection if you do

See http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/zooming.html

WC

... BUT how do you ensure you select JUST the portion you want??? i selected the track using seconds and hundreths when i selected it but how do you select that exact portion of the track with the selection tool it just does not want to go to the exact start and stop its always a tiny bit out which...

Your screenshot appears to show that you do not have Stereo Mix enabled (no little blue bars to the right as there are with your Mic and Line-in) so I suspect that you may actually be recording from your onboard mic.

Right click on the Stereo Mix in the control panel and enable it

WC

I became more acutely aware of this during my LP transfers as I find myself adjusting the gain on my little phono pre-amp for almost every record I record in to Audacity to keep a target -6 dB peak. That may not be due to the variation between the LP recording levels. It may be because some origina...

But in your case youre not recording withe the microphone (or I hope you're not). For recording sound playing on the computer you ned the Stereo Mix (or equivalent) - double click on that in the recording section of Windows Sounds dialog and turn off effects in there. - also check the speakers setti...

and see this FAQ in the manual: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/fa ... hancements

WC

Have you checked your Windoze sound settings in the Control Panel?

W7 and W8 normally come pre-configured to enhance conference calls skype etc. Try turning that junk (sorry set of enhancements) off.

WC

There is no "standard loudness level" for LPs - and they do vary I was unaware of that. Are most standardized and some are not or do they all vary? It seems when listening to LPs I usually set the volume once and then do not change it for different LPs. I became more acutely aware of this...

That's because you should be using a set of labels to mark the so ng start positions - see: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/splitting_a_recording_into_separate_tracks.html which is part of this set of tutorials: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tutorial_copying_tapes_lps_or_minidiscs_to_cd....