New user, trying to get up to speed. Using W11 and Audacity 3.7.7. Bought an AudioTechnica turntable to digitize my old vinyl collection.
DIgitized the first couple vinyl albums. Playback from the AUP3 files sounds okay on the little speakers on my laptop, but when I export to MP3 or MP4 and play back on my good Bose soundbar, it sounds really REALLY bad. More static than music, as if I’m pushing the speakers way too hard.
Diagnosis? Suggestions?
Would you be willing to share the aup3 file by uploading to Google Drive or similar and posting the link to it? Having a look at it might help with diagnosis.
Done. Was the 1Mb sample insufficient?
I tried a few different combinations of export settings, to no avail. Here are the settings in this version:
Channels stereo
Sample rate 44100
Bit Rate Mode: Preset
Quality Standard
I will try it with your settings tomorrow. It’s kinda late here now.
Sorry. Just saw that you asked for the AUP3 file. Here’s a sample from it, to reduce from 700mb to 44mb.
I’m also trying to evaluate whether the new turntable is worth it. Wondering if the stylus has the dynamic range needed for some of my finer classical and jazz albums.
The file on Google Drive is not an aup3 file but an mp3 file. And it sounds okay on my iMac’s internal speakers.
I suspect the problem is between your computer and your soundbar (not a line-out on the computer to a line-in on the soundbar, or similar).
Oh, and while I am typing, you uploaded the aup3. Apparently, you use a newer version than I do (3.6.4), so I am out here…
It’s WAY too LOUD! (I downloaded the MP3.)
It’s badly distorted (at full volume) and when I open it in Audacity the waveform looks like a solid red brick instead of a “waveform”!
Do you have any idea how that happened???
It doesn’t sound bad (to me) if I lower the volume digitally. I don’t have that song so I don’t know exactly what it’s supposed to sound like. But it goes WAY over the “digital maximum” of 0dBFS and you’ll clip (distort) your DAC (digital-to-analog converter) if you feed it full-volume into your DAC.
It MIGHT be OK if you go-back to the AUP3 project file and run the Amplify or Normalize effect to bring the volume down.
You can also edit the MP3 (to bring the volume down) but that’s not ideal for a couple of reasons.
NOTES:
ADCs (recording), DACs (playback), regular WAV files, and CDs are all limited to 0dB. 0dB represents how high you can “count to” with a given number of bits.
If you clip your ADC during recording the damage is permanent.
Audacity uses 32-bit floating-point internally which essentially has no upper or lower limits. So for example, you can boost the bass in Audacity and if it goes over 0dB it’s not actually clipped (yet) and you can use Normalize or Amplify to bring the level down before you export.
If you go to View and and select Show Clipping in Waveform the waveform will turn red to show potential clipping. It doesn’t really know if the waveform is clipped… It’s just checking the level. It might be going over 0dB without clipping or it might be clipped. Or if it’s clipped but for some reason it doesn’t hit 0dB Audacity won’t “show red”.
MP3 can go over 0dB without clipping. It seems to have a limit but it might be “complicated” and I don’t think it has a fixed-hard limit. I don’t know if your MP3 is distorted or not but it’s NOT hard-clipped. Floating-point WAV files don’t have a limit but you should avoid making a file that goes over 0dB because the listener will clip their DAC if they play it at full digital volume.
As you may know, MP3 (and MP4, etc.) is lossy compression. Data is thrown-away to make a smaller file and the wave shape changes making some peaks higher and some lower. So it’s not unusual for the MP3 to have peaks of around +1dB (which will “show red” in Audacity). So again, the listener can clip their DAC. As far as I know that slight clipping isn’t audible and I don’t worry about it but some people normalize to peaks around -1dB before making the MP3 to avoid that.
It certainly is. I downloaded the project file and there was no red at all. However, on playback it was in the red the whole time. Then I spotted this:
the audio played beautifully in Audacity and my exported MP3 was great too.
Other than that, the process seems to be working well. It’s wise to save your captured audio as a WAV file, if disk space allows, so you have something to roll back to should anything go wrong in Audacity. The project files are not bulletproof and they ARE specific to Audacity. If you depend solely on the project file, and it breaks, you would have to record it again from scratch - and who wants to do that?
Good luck with the rest of the LPs. Once they’re done, you will feel a great deal of satisfaction.
Friends, thank you. I had the volume up like that because that was the only way to get playback from the AUP audible on my laptop speakers. Reset it to +0, and the export is good. So now it’s obvious that that volume setting also controls the exports. So with your help, Problem Solved and Lesson Learned!
Now I have to decide if the mediocre sound quality is because the new turntable isn’t up to the task, or something else. Ideas for how to discern that? I’ll probably just try some more nuanced music, like Brahms, Vivaldi, Marsalis, and Keith Jarrett.
I suspect that’s not right. I think you will have to adjust the volume level In Windows NOT Audacity. I don’t use Windows much.
Can you clarify if you think the quality is mediocre despite changing those settings? You said the export is good. How is it not good enough, exactly? How is everything connected? Be as detailed as you can, please. Which model is the turntable?
These might help too: How to digitise vinyl and Digitising LPs and tapes - Audacity Manual tutorials
Good to hear it was solved!!!
I would recommend running the Normalize or Amplify effect to “maximize” the volume for 0dB (or near 0dB) peaks. Do that as the last step after any other effects/processing, before exporting. It’s a linear process so it doesn’t hurt sound quality (as long as you don’t clip). As above, you might want to leave about 1dB of headroom if you’re making MP3s.
Normalize the album as a whole (or at-least one-side), especially with classical albums, so you don’t mess-up the relative loudness between tracks/movements. (You probably don’t want to split classical into separate tracks anyway.)
A couple of things:
As I mentioned, MP3 is lossy so to evaluate quality, export as “CD quality” WAV (16-bit, 44.1kHz) or better.
MP3 isn’t “terrible”. It often sounds identical to the uncompressed original, but let’s eliminate that as a variable when you’re checking quality.
The MP3 you uploaded has a bitrate of 192kbps which is “good” but not the “best.” The highest bitrate is 320kbps which is potentially better, or VBR (variable bitrate) “V0” which can use up to 320kbps on hard-to-compress audio, and lower bitrates during simple audio or silence.
FLAC is lossless compression You’ll get a bitrate (and file size) about half of the uncompressed WAV, and metadata/tagging is better standardized & supported than WAV.
“CD quality” is generally better than human hearing (and WAY better than analog vinyl) but some people like to go higher in resolution and the ONLY downside is bigger files.
Tagging is a bit tricky for classical. The tagging standards are geared more toward popular music with “artist”, “title”, “album”, etc. And, you can only have one set of tags for each file, so if the whole performance is one-big file you won’t be able to separately identify the movements.
And BTW - Audacity doesn’t support album artwork so you’ll have to use something like MP3tag (which works with all popular formats, not just MP3.) Scanning the album art is tricky too because it won’t fit a standard scanner but you can usually find the artwork, or something appropriate online.
Vinyl is inferior to digital (1) so keep that in mind when listening to the sound quality. 
But the digital should sound identical to the what you hear with the same turntable plugged into your stereo (when you play the digital through the same stereo at the same volume).
The record itself is usually the weak-link but the phono cartridge makes a difference, especially in frequency high-frequency response. The Audio Technica turntables usually come with good cartridges but a different cartridge can make a difference (better or worse).
Of course, frequency response can be tweaked with EQ. A lot of older records sound a bit “dull” so sometimes I’ll boost the highs when I digitize records. (The rumor was that classical records were better produced than rock and popular but my records were rock.)
Also, some cartridges have less distortion with hard-to-track records. Back in the vinyl days, I remember reading reviews where they used a certain version of the 1812 Overture cannon shots to test tracking.
The phono preamp (in your case built into your turntable) can have some affect on sound quality too. All analog electronics generate SOME noise and with a high-gain preamp it gets amplified so it may be audible when listening loud, and/or with headphones. But once the record is playing, the surface noise usually dominates, and the surface noise is almost always audible between tracks or during quiet parts. And if the RIAA EQ is imperfect the resulting frequency response will be imperfect.
Audacity has some tools (“effects”) to improve the analog noise: Regular Noise Reduction can help with the constant low-level background noise but there can be artifacts/side effects so listen carefully to make sure “the cure isn’t worse than the disease”.
You can also try the Noise Gate which is a simpler effect. It simply reduces the volume (or kills the sound completely) when the volume falls below the set threshold. (Generally, the threshold is set so it’s only triggered when there is only noise and no actual audio.) This too can be distracting if the background suddenly goes dead-silent.
Audacity has 3 ways to potentially fix-up vinyl clicks & pops:
There is automatic Click Removal, manual Repair, or you can zoom-in and use the Drawing Tool to re-draw the waveform. The Spectrogram view or Multi-view usually make it easier to zoom-in and find the defect for manual repair.
I have two 3rd-party utilities for cleaning-up clicks and pops:
Wave Corrector is FREE and fully automatic. (I don’t have a lot of experience with it.)
Wave Repair ($30 USD after free trial) can do an audibly perfect job on most (but not all) clicks & pops. It’s manual. You have to find and select the defects. The benefit is that it only “touches” the audio where you identify a defect and you can un-do it, if you don’t like what it’s doing. The downside is that it’s often taken me most of a weekend to fix-up an album.
(1) It’s technically inferior, especially the background noise. But many people enjoy playing vinyl, many people enjoy the sound, and some people prefer the sound. In that case, they can legitimately say it “sounds better” to their ears.
P.S.
Personally, I ONLY digitize a record when I can’t find it digitally.
Thank you! The video links were very helpful.
Re the mediocre quality, the turntable is an Audio-Technica AT-60XBT-USB, belt drive with a built-in cartridge. I have tentatively observed 2 things:
WOW which almost certainly would be in the turntable itself
Muddiness in the sound, which probably would be from a too-cheap stylus or cartridge.
Now that I feel a bit more comfortable with Audacity itself, I plan to digitize a variety of albums all the way through to exporting to MP4 and then listen to each of them on a variety of devices: good speakers, plain old earbuds, etc.
Yes, but I’ve never heard wow (or flutter) unless something was broken (a worn-out belt, etc.) Usually they last several years and I doubt your AT turntable is that old. (My 40-year old direct drive Technics still works fine. 
)
Sometimes it’s the record itself, especially if the hole is off-center but you would have noticed that.
Cartridge issues are usually in the higher frequencies. I’d blame the record.
You can experiment with EQ in the lower frequencies to see if you can improve the muddiness.
If it sounds “dull”, that may contribute to the "muddy’ sound so also try boosting the highs a bit. That’s a common problem on records too so the cartridge might be fine.
You MIGHT want to consider making a (lossless) FLAC or WAV archive. Sometimes it’s just nice to have a lossless copy and if you ever want to convert from MP4 to MP3 (or some other lossy format) it’s best to avoid lossy-to-lossy conversions where “damage” accumulates.
Or if you ever want to come-back for some more noise reduction or EQ, etc., you can end-up going through another generation of lossy compression. …And AI is getting smarter every day so in the future it will probably be able to make it sound like a “clean” digital original.
I notice that this turntable has various output options and I assume that you have connected using the USB cable. This requires that the turntables onboard analogue-to-digital electronics are used and selected by switching output to “line” mode.
For any significant improvement in quality you could use the analogue cable output in phono mode fed in to a suitable sound card with line input. This would allow the sound card and Audacity to in effect become the A to D interface giving you far more control of quality based on the quality of the sound card.
The turntable does provide the necessary cartridge eq adjustment in the phone mode ( analogue domain) but you should be able to use higher sample rates and greater bit rate to improve the A to D quality. If you have a hi-fi system with an integrated amplifier you could let your ears decide by plugging the turntable in to the AUX inputs ( NOT the phono inputs).
