This has worked before, so don’t know what I am doing wrong. Recording from a turntable to WAV, that is.
When I record from a turntable, the input power does not seem to be as strong as in the past. I am not an expert at this, so I just judge it by the blue record display to be enough where it just touches the top and bottom line (-1 to +1). Now it is no where near that level. My recording volume is all the way up to 1.0 and the level is just slightly above the 0.0 mark.
I have Audacity 2.3.3 and am using Behringer U-Phono UFO202
I have a turntable, duel cassette both connected to an amplifier. I have the red/white output from the cassette deck input to Behringer. I have the switch on Behringer set to Phono (according to my notes, I was pretty sure it should be set to Line, since I have an amplifier but that didn’t work at all)
My settings are MME, Microphone (USB Audio CODEC), 2 (Stereo) Recording, Speakers (Conexant SmartAudio)
I have a Windows 10 Laptop. I did change the advanced settings on my sounds to “2 Channel, 16 bit, 44100 Hz (CD Quality)” It was set to “2 Channel 24 bit, 48000 Hz (Studio Quality)” This change did not help either.
I did notice to the left side of the Audacity screen that it says “Stereo, 44100Hz, 32-bit float”, and I was not able to change this.
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
RR.
Let’s try this: Run the Amplify effect (after recording) and accept the default which will normalize (maximize) for 0dB (100%) peaks.
Then if it sounds OK, you’re good to go! If the sound is bad we can work on that…
so I just judge it by the blue record display to be enough where it just touches the top and bottom line (-1 to +1).
With your set-up you may not be able to adjust the recording volume at all… If you are going to adjust the volume, the analog volume has to be adjusted before it’s digitized.
Slightly-low digital levels are not a problem. The usual advice is to shoot-for -6dB to -3dB (about 50% to 75%). If you were recording “live” you’d want more headroom to allow for less-predictable peaks. The WORST thing you can do is record too high and “try” to go over 0dB and clip (distort). Nothing bad happens when you get close to 0dB, only if you try to go over.
If you remember analog tape, you needed a hot signal to overcome the tape hiss, and then tape is a little forgiving if you go slightly “into the red”. But with digital there is no tape noise and the analog-digital-converter hard-clips at exactly 0dB.
Thanks. I figured it out. I had the wrong RCA cables (red and white) from the cassette deck going to the Behringer. Once, I put the correct ones in, things worked as they usually have. This probably explains the whole Line vs. Phono issue. So, my original notes on how to set things up when an amplifier is involved were correct. Setting it to “Line” worked.
Thanks everyone who read this and thanks DVDDoug for the response. Interesting information. I didn’t quite get all of it, especially the part about analog tape. Your response probably would have solved things, considering how I had things set up. The playback was not bad, it was just not as loud as it should have been. I may play around with that some time. Good information.
Sorry again for the mix up and I am sure I will have some questions in the future, once I get back into cassette and reel-to-reel copying.
Thanks!
RR.
Thanks again for the replying. There is a lot of great information here in the forums. Don’t know how much I will delve into what you wrote. It’s more tempting for me to be too technical than too simple, ha ha. I’ll try to soak in as much as I can.
Thanks again.
RR.