I have tried recording from my Music Hall USB turntable to both my windows 10 (audacity 2.1.0) and Windows Vista (audacity 2.0.3) PCs and get same problem.
The problem is poor quality vocal content. The instrumental portion is good. Pure instrumental vinyl is good. For vinyl with vocals the volume is low and sounds like it is a tunnel at times. If I pan left or right the vocal improves, so it seems like the vocal on both channels is canceling out somehow. I have to pan way left or right so the converted file play of the CD as all in left or right speaker depending upon what pan I used.
I am trying to determine whether the issue is audacity, something in the computer, the USB Codec or the cartridge. There are no adjustments on the turntable.
I believe I have set the config correctly. Yes, the turntable is under warranty. I have called the retailer but they don"t really know how to use the software. They are willing to have me bring the turntable in and check it out. So I guess that will be next.
That sounds like a problem on the “analog side”. Do you have something to plug the turntable’s analog inputs into? I would expect the problem to show-up there too.
As Gale says, a mis-wired phono cartridge, or a missing ground in the “right place” can give you that center-channel removal (“vocal removal”) effect.
If the left & right channels are being subtracted, you should be missing centered instruments from the instrumental records, and there should be little or no bass from any of the records. If you have any mono records they should be mostly very-quiet but the random vinyl noise won’t be suppressed so you’ll have a poor signal-to-noise ratio.
If the analog outputs work OK, try the USB with the analog still connected. There’s a slight chance that having an external analog ground will “fix” (hide) the problem.
P.S.
Audacity has a Vocal Removal effect, but it’s pretty much impossible to do it accidentally and Audacity cannot apply ANY effects in real-time while recording. All effects and processing have to take place after you stop recording. And even then, your original file isn’t over-written until/unless you save or export to a file with the same name.
To be clear, it can’t really be an Audacity problem. To satisfy yourself of that, you could record with Windows Sound Recorder (called “Voice Recorder” in Windows 10).
Thanks everyone. Went to audio store today. Their demonstrator turn table at the store behaved identically recording to my computer. I also checked wiring of cartridge. It appears to be correct. So I think I have ruled out the turn table.
The audio tech at the store, who claimed to be very versed in digital sound, thinks it is some type of computer or audacity configuration parameter.
As too the cartridge being miss wired, they indicated that if that were so all music would be poor and the vocals would not sound good through the stereo into conventional speakers.
My computer is an HP Envy and Beats Audio s also installed. Going to chase an interaction with that for a while.
Do you have the turntable’s RCA cables connected to anything?
The problem is not an Audacity configuration parameter. Audacity can record in mono or stereo. If you set Audacity to record in stereo when Windows has the turntable set to record in mono, then you will not record correctly.
Did they check the wiring of your cartridge? Do the vocals sound OK if you connect the RCA cables to the phono inputs of an amplifier and listen through speakers attached to the amplifier?
Beats Audio is often a source of problems.
Do you have a known correct-sounding song on WAV or MP3 that you can drag into Audacity? Does it play with stifled centre?
I’d be surprised if this was the cause of what you’re hearing, but I saw the instructional video on setting up the turntable.
It jumped out to me that they advise 1,5 g of needle pressure. That is too low. The manufacturer states 1,5 to 3 g. You should at least have 2,2 g on the needle and maybe even 2,5 if you have high quality dynamic vinyl.
I am running out of ideas. Here are all the things I have done or checked.
Two different turntables - mine and the store’s.
Two different computers, operating systems and 3 versions of audacity (2.0.3 and 2.1 and 2.1.1)
Two different USB cables
Multiple vinyl LPs with vocals
Multiple settings of tone arm balance
Confirmation that cartridge is wired correctly
Confirmation of USB CODEC properties for two channel 16 bit 441000 Hz recording
Confirmation of Audacity settings: USB CODEC Recording, stereo and speaker playback
Confirmed that my sound card drivers are up to date.
My PC has Beats audio and I have played with all the settings and found none that appear to affect
I did try to record using “Voice Recorder” but couldn’t make that work at all. Couldn’t figure out how to make it playback. Voice recorder appears to have no play function. I haven’t chased this hard at all.
We are all assuming that the left and right channels are out of phase with each other. We can easily check if that is the case if we can test a short sample from one of your recordings. Please post a short audio sample in WAV or FLAC format to demonstrate the problem. Just a few seconds will do. See here how to post audio samples to the forum: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/how-to-post-an-audio-sample/29851/1
Well I don’t see what the problem is - apart from the level being somewhat low - the default Amplify gave just over 12dB
I loaded your clip into Audacity Amplified it to a max, 0dB and then played it - it sounds absolutely fine to me. You do have a click at about 1.4 seconds though - probably dust on the LP.
I did forget to mention that via Audacity the recorded file does play well through the speakers on my computer.
However, when I plug in a pair of Bose noise cancelling headphones to the computer or play a CD burned from the file through my stereo it sounds absolutely terrible. With the headphones plugged into the computer the software pay through sounds just as bad as the playback function.
I think I also forgot to mention that I have used two different USB cables from the computer to the turntable.
I understand on the pops and clicks. The tool seems to do that kind of clean up very nicely on the instrumental recordings I have made. I just didn’t go through that process for this test clip.
I am thinking that this is some type of computer configuration issue. However, after many hours at this I cannot find it. It would have to be something common to both my Dell running Vista and my HP Running Windows 10 because they both exhibited the same behavior. I am thinking about loading Audacity up on my wife’s MAC Pro and trying that.
I did forget to mention that via Audacity the recorded file does play well through the speakers on my computer.
Now things are getting stranger… That seems to say you ARE getting a good recording and something bad is happening when you play it back.
However, when I plug in a pair of Bose noise cancelling headphones to the computer or play a CD burned from the file through my stereo it sounds absolutely terrible.
With the headphones plugged into the computer the software pay through sounds just as bad as the playback function.
Is this a laptop? So the “computer speakers” built into the computer are OK, but anything plugged into the headphone output sounds bad?
When you play the CD, are you playing it on your computer connected to your stereo? Have you tried a stand-alone CD player, or your car stereo?
…Since we are still assuming this is a “vocal cancellation” problem, try taking a known good file (that you didn’t record from your turntable) and [u]convert it to mono[/u]. If the “center channel” is getting cancelled the mono file will be silent. If laptop speakers are OK, but the headphones are silent with a mono file (or anything plugged into the headphone output is silent), we’ve found a problem with your headphone output.