hi guys
whats the best way to avoid distortion while recording and editing lps?thanks.
coonsanders
From all the postings on the forum, I’d say staying away from USB turntables leads the list.
Set Audacity preferences for 44100, 16-bit, Stereo and capture at a volume that could not possibly overload. You can make it louder later, but if you clip or overload, you’re dead. The best you can do is change the volume of the damage.
At the end of each side, Export As WAV. Glenn_Miller_Helsinki-SideA.wav
Upper and lower case letters, numbers, dash and underscore only. No other characters. I don’t like to use spaces, either.
You can break each side up and edit them later, but that will give you capture master sound files that you can copy to a protection drive for safety. Audacity will not Save sound files and you can’t copy or move Audacity Projects.
Wash your disks before playing. I use dish-washing up liquid and warm water, rinse in clear water and finish with distilled water. Distilled dries perfectly clear.
There is a Library of Congress formula for using alcohol, but I’ve used alcohol for other cleaning jobs and it leaves a film. If you have greasy dirt, you may have no choice.
The last step for avoiding distortion is to stay out of compression. Apply the finished edited uncompressed WAV files to the Music CD authoring program of your choice and burn to high quality disks at something slower than top speed.
This step is sometimes harder than you think. If you use iTunes to burn your Music CDs, iTunes will convert your music to Apple AAC compressed format in the middle and only then burn your disks. You can prevent iTunes from doing this by changing the iTunes Import Preferences to WAV Auto instead one of the other variations.
We had one poster that produced enormous distortion until he removed the wad of dog hair from his stylus. Highly recommended.
Koz
hi koz
you mentioned "capture at a volume that possibly overload"where are these volume options?thanks
lenny
And I would advise against using alcohol or alcohol-based solvents to clean the stylus - I did this on one of my (expensive) Shure cartridges and it dislved the glue causing the diamond stylus to detach from the cantilever - Ouch! - expensive to repair/replace 
WC
i c
hi
well if u already have a ubs turntable what other turntable can you use?would a preamp help at all??
lenny
Hey everyone,
I am having a problem with distortion suddenly appearing in the middle of a recording. I know something somewhere said to close out of Audacity, then open it again. But when you have recorded a 20 min recording and all of a sudden distortion appears, it gets rather frustrating. Any suggestions?
hi nurse…
there is a slider on the audacity menu that you can use to lower the volume and distortion…do some tests with it.play a tune
from an lp and play with it.this slider is marked with a microphone and its on the left side top of the menu.hope that helps.
lenny