Problems recording vinyl using Behringer UCA222

Audacity 3 Help Forum
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Looking for some guidance on what I may be doing wrong.

I have my father’s Panasonic SL-H305 turntable running through a Panasonic receiver (don’t recall model # right now, but it’s just as old as the turntable: 80s-ish).

I have plugged my Behringer UCA222 into the phone out jack on the front of the receiver using a 1/4-to-RCA cable. The Behringer then is obviously connected to the computer with its USB cord.

In Audacity, the proper USB Codec is selected as the recording device, set to 32-bit float at 48kHz in stereo.

When I plug a pair of headphones into the Behringer and listen with the monitor switch set to on, the sound coming through is clean and excellent. However, what gets recorded is horribly distorted, and the volume kind of wavers high and low when there are louder hits of drums or other instruments. Almost like a hard pan. In overall louder parts, like, say, a chorus, the volume of the recording as a whole drops, not out completely, but it dips. Almost like it’s throttling or something.

The recording level is set at an appropriate range so that the maximum volume is somewhere around -6dBs to allow for headroom and avoid clipping.

Again, it doesn’t sound like this when listening with headphones through the monitor of the Behringer.

Interestingly, if I use the headphone line out from the Behringer to connect an aux cable from the Behringer to the PC, and then select as recording device in Audacity the line-in option instead of USB, I get a much cleaner recording.

I would assume that recording through an aux cable would reduce the overall quality of the recording, though I don’t know enough about this stuff to say whether that’s accurate.

All the guides I’ve found have indicated that the recording should be done using the USB input. So what am I doing wrong here? I can’t find a similar problem being discussed in other forums, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

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Hi, thank you. I’ll have to try this out this evening when I get home. Will let you know if it helped or not. Would this be creating the distortions I was talking about?

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Make sure Windows “enhancements” are turned OFF.

That’s OK. The Behringer interface is mostly for laptops that don’t have line-in. (They also make the UFO202 which has a phono preamp, but you don’t need that as long as your receiver has a phono input, and line-out or headphone-out.)

If you have a desktop/tower computer with a regular soundcard and line-in you don’t need the Behringer. You can connect the headphone-output, or “tape out” if your receiver has it, to line-in. The main difference is that the volume control affects headphone out, and tape-out remains constant.

In some cases one will be better than the other (less background noise) and with line-in can control the recording recording-level control with software, whereas you can’t with the USB device.

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Hi Doug,

I have a laptop. I’m using the laptop’s headphone aux jack to connect the Behringer, and a dialogue window pops up that asks what I just plugged in. If I click “Line In,” I can use it to record to Audacity. I haven’t tried, but I don’t believe I’d be able to connect the phone out jack from the receiver directly to the computer’s headphone jack, as I’ve tried that with my bass amp before to no avail.

The receiver has phono input and headphone-out. It also has speaker output on the back, but that’s connected to the cabinet speakers I use to listen to the turntable.

When I use the line-in option, I have to control the recording level using the Behringer volume control. When using the USB Codec, I have to use Audacity’s recording level slider.

So with the aux line-in option, I assume I would be getting more background noise than if the USB Codec were working properly? Are you also saying that I could record from the line-in without any loss of quality vs the USB Codec?

Thank you for your time.

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If your laptop has line-in it should be good. The microphone input (or “microphone setting”) is too sensitive for a line or headphone-level signal, usually mono, and usually low quality.

The headphone output from the receiver should be about the same as the headphone output from the Behringer. I don’t know what’s different with the headphone-out on your bass amp.

Headphone voltage is about the same as line-level voltage and you can use headphone-out to line-in. The difference is that the headphone output is capable of driving headphones (lower impedance). And headphone outputs always have a volume control. Some line-outputs don’t.

The headphone output is fine. You shouldn’t use the speaker outputs.

I wouldn’t assume anything about which one is better… The Behringer is generally “known good”. There MAY be a difference or they may both be fine. Usually the worst source of noise is the record itself. :wink:

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This is really helpful. Thank you.

A poster above suggested that Windows may be automatically assigning the USB input as mono, which may be giving me the problems. I’ll look into that as well as your suggestion to turn windows enhancements off. Then I’ll try with the USB from Behringer again.

If that doesn’t work, then I’ll try the headphone out to line in directly from the receiver as you suggest.

If both of those solutions don’t work, then I’ll use the headphone monitor from the Behringer as a line-in, which you suggest should be fine. Just wasn’t sure if I’d be getting a lossier signal, but from what I’m understanding from your response, it shouldn’t matter.

Just kind of repeating this back to see if it makes sense to you. Thank you again.

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I haven’t watched that video but both Audacity and Windows need to be set for stereo. It would be a good idea to unplug the left & right RCA connections one at a time to make sure you’re getting stereo. There’s more than one thing that can go wrong and sometimes you’ll get the left channel through both speakers or a left+right mono mix out of both speakers, etc.

…There are a few records from the early 60’s with a screwy stereo-mix where the instruments are on one side and vocals on the other. If you happen to have one like that it can make a handy “stereo test record”. There are a couple of Beatles albums like that, and I’ve heard of a similar Mamas & Papas record. (I used to have an actual test record but I don’t know what happened to it, and now I don’t have any vinyl.)

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Unplugging the left and right RCA connections is exactly what the video suggests. Audacity is set to record stereo, but it may be that this Windows automatic setting is what’s causing the issue. Will run through all the suggestions I’ve received here this evening.

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Hi all. Thanks for the suggestions. I made sure Windows was treating the USB input as stereo (it was already.) I turned off Windows Enhancements.

The solution it seems was to turn down the volume on the receiver. Although I had set the recording level in Audacity to ensure no clipping, the signal coming to the Behringer was already too loud. The Behringer monitor must be able to compensate for this, which is why it sounded clear when I listened through headphones plugged into the Behringer. But the signal it was pushing forward through the USB was clipping before it came into Audacity.

A user on the discogs forums identified the phenomena I was hearing, which is called pumping.

Many in other forums are suggesting that I need to get a dedicated phono preamp usb soundcard instead of taking the signal from the headphone jack on the Panasonic SG-20 receiver. Behringer makes one called the UFO202, which would take signal directly from the turntable. It may be a thing I look into in the future, but the short recording I was able to take this morning before leaving for work sounded much better, and it was providing a much greater range in soundwave (soundform? the peaks and valleys were more pronounced) than the previous line in recording.

I still have yet to try to just run a line directly from the receiver to the line in on my laptop, but I’ll continue to mess around with this before settling on the best solution with the limited gear I have.

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There can be a second layer of “audio enhancements”,
(sometimes called “MaxxAudio”), that need to be turned off.

Some of the “audio enhancements”, like “loudness equalization” , (aka AGC), can cause pumping.

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Do I turn off MaxxAudio by closing the program? Or another way?

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If you can find the MaxxAudio app (or equivalent), on your computer,
it has the options to switch off the enhancements https://forum.audacityteam.org/uploads/default/original/3X/6/f/6f859410669c6638101befd721a22497b468727c.png

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Thank you! I’ll add this to the list of things I need to do before settling down and recording.

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Is it possible that what you hear from the headphone monitor is only what the UCA222 “hears” on the analog input before the analog to digital conversion (ADC)? I’m spitballing here, but I’m thinking the levels on the input are too hot and are overloading the ADC which can cause clipping or possibly the “pumping” that you described (perhaps there’s a limiter before the ADC stage), but the levels aren’t hot enough to overload the analog headphone amplifier.

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Yes, that’s exactly what was happening. The receiver was turned up too loud. Thank you for the input. Beyond any extra tips that will help me get a better recording, the initial problem I was describing has been isolated and fixed.

I’ve got the receiver volume level turned nearly all the way down. I’m having to set the recording level in Audacity at -6dBs to get signal that loud. I’m not sure if it would be better to turn the receiver up just a touch more and turn the Audacity recording level back down, just something I’ll have to play around with.

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Unfortunately, I don’t have a UCA222 so I can’t give any specifics on it (I’ve looked into getting a Behringer in the past but haven’t yet). In the past several years I’ve only used a standalone digital audio recorder (a Tascam DR-40) to record some records using the headphone output of an Emerson tape/CD/AM/FM/turntable.

On this particular setup I turn the volume knob to about halfway to get the occasional peak around -6 dB on the recorder. I found that the record player itself has a constant background hiss that doesn’t change with the volume knob so I tried to maximize the volume without clipping.

I don’t know if it’s just my cheapo turntable (which probably has a low-quality/uncalibrated RIAA equalization circuit) but I have to later EQ every record to reduce 500 Hz and boost the bass and treble. Otherwise it sounds thin and it kind of feels like I need to pop my ears after listening to it for a while (especially when I play it in a car).

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