I would like to copy some of my LPs to my computer, which is running Windows 10. I bought a phono preamp and connected to my computer via a simple, cheap USB connector that has 1/8 inch inputs for a microphone and headphones. This worked, but the sound data that I recorded using Audacity 2.1.0 was pretty noisy, so I bought a Behringer ACA202 and hooked it up in place of the USB connector. I couldn’t get it to work at all. I tried adjusting various Audacity settings and Windows sound control panel settings to no avail. What’s worse, now my other connector doesn’t work either. I assume that in all my fiddling I messed up some setting and didn’t know to change it back. Could someone please advise me about ways to troubleshoot this? Thanks.
I assume you mean UCA202…
A UCA202 or UFO202 should work. Plug-in the USB device before starting Audacity and select the USB device as your [u]recording device[/u].
…and connected to my computer via a simple, cheap USB connector that has 1/8 inch inputs for a microphone and headphones. and connected to my computer via a simple, cheap USB connector that has 1/8 inch inputs for a microphone and headphones.
Right! A line input on a desktop/tower computer will work, but the mic input is too sensitive, it’s usually mono, the mic-preamp on a soundcard is usually low quality and mono.
\
After recording, you can try the Noise Reduction, Repair, and Click Removal effects to clean-up the vinyl defects. (You have to be a little careful with noise reduction because you can get artifacts and sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.)
Or, [u]this page[/u] lists several vinyl clean-up applications. I’ve used Wave Repair (developed by the author of that page) and it does a “perfect” job on most clicks & pops and in the manual mode it only touches the audio where you identify a defect. But it usually takes me a full weekend to clean-up a digitized LP, so next time I’m going to try Click Repair or Wave Corrector (both about the same price as Wave Repair).
Or, just buy the CD or MP3! (The only time I digitize vinyl is when the music is not available digitally.)
Yes, Behringer UCA202 is what I am using.
My problem is that it doesn’t provide any input to the computer. I have connected it to the computer via its USB cord and connected it to my phono preamp with standard audio cords. I followed the steps to plug all of these devices in before launching Audacity and then, when I have launched Audacity I select the UCA202 entry as my input device. I play an LP, start recording in Audacity and all I get is a flat line – no input at all. I have checked the input level in Audacity, the recording device level in Windows, and the volume wheel on the UCA202 itself. I also verified that the USA202’s USB connection is at least working in the other direction by plugging earphones into the output side of it and playing a song in iTunes through it, so I doubt that the UCA202 is defective. I think it’s more likely that there is some setting I have overlooked or don’t know about. I’d like to get ideas about ways to troubleshoot this. It seems like it should simply work and I don’t understand why it isn’t.
Can you change the USB cable?
Make sure you connect to an empty USB port on the computer. Don’t use a USB computer hub.
You can also try recording from it in Windows “Voice Recorder”, assuming the UCA is set as default recording device in Windows Sound.
If the waveform appears for six seconds then disappears, that is a problem with your Audacity temporary directory not being writable, or with other applications “cleaning it up” for you.
Gale
I unplugged all the cables and started from scratch, putting everything together the way people have advised, and now it works. The only weird thing, with respect to Audacity is that I have to set both the Microphone and Speaker settings to the USB device I am using to input music to my computer. If I set the Speaker to a different value, the input comes through looking like a sine wave. That’s OK for my purposes. If I set the Speaker to the USB device, it plays through to my computer’s built-in speakers, which gives me the way I need to monitor the music I am recording.
Clearly something is broken or configured outside Audacity, but if you’re happy that is the main thing.
Gale