How to edit out needle drops?

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Win 7, Audacity 2.0.6, exe install.

I’m converting my LP collection to WAV’s, and have already read the Help, FAQ, and tutorials, but can’t seem to find any information on how to remove the first few seconds of a recording(the needle drop and silence). Is it ‘Edit’, ‘Remove Special’, then ‘Trim’? I’ve tried that and can’t seem to make it work…if this is the way to do it, what are the steps? I’m probably doing something out of order.

Thanks!

2

just click and drag to selct the section with the needle drop and then either use@

a) Ctrl + K to delete the selection,

b) Ctrl + L to make the selection absolute silence.

You may also want to select the run-in and a very, very short part of the real signal and use Effect > Fade In

And at the end of songs you may want to fade out.

This workflow tutorial may be of use to you: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/sample_workflow_for_lp_digitization.html

WC

3

Ah! Thanks! Both of those methods work, although, I like the ‘Fade-In’ better. Is there a way to change the ‘fade-in’ length(make it shorter)? I’ve noticed that using the ‘Fade-In’ method, cuts off, or makes the very beginning of the track very low volume.

Thanks!

4

Select less of the track start. Have you also tried silencing or deleting some of the lead-in, then fading in?

5

Thanks for everyone’s suggestions. I’ve been experimenting and found that I could use the ‘magnifying glass’ icon to expand the ‘wave-form’ graph, and visually see where to delete the needle drop. So, I’m slowly going through all my 176 albums and re-exporting all the tracks with the needle drops edited out. This is very nifty program. Is there a program like this, but for video…that will record what is playing on a PC? I have some old VHS cam-corder videos of my kids that I’d like to save before the tapes go bad.