Hi there,
I’m pretty new to all of this and purchased the Numark USB turntable with Audacity software only yesterday. I’ve set it all up and tried to record my first vinyl, however, it’s only recording at 198 kbps. I would like to record at 320 kbps as this is the best quality but I don’t know how to do this.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I would recommend that you set your Project rate to 44100 (44.1kHz) 16-bit stereo (this is the Red Book standardfor CDs).
I assume from your posting that your are trying to export MP3s at a bitrate of 320 to get very high quality MP3s, right? As you haven’t told us which version of Audacity you are using I assume that you are using 1.2.x which will have shipped with your Numark TT. If so then you can reset your export bitrate via Edit > Preferences. If however you are using a Beta vn. 1.3.x the the bitrate can be selected at export time by clicking on the Options button in the Export dialog box.
WC
Following on from what WC said …
If your Numark TT did indeed include Audacity 1.2.5 or 1.2.6 I would very strongly recommend that you go to the main Audacity site and download the latest 1.3.9 beta version. In my opinion you can safely ignore the dire warnings (Beta! Unstable! For advanced users only! May cause hair loss! 
) and use it with confidence, as long as your computer is less than 5 years old (Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista; Mac OSX 10.4 or higher). The improvements over 1.2.x are vast.
– Bill
Hi - I want to be able to record my vinyl too but I’m still in the process of figuring out what turntable/interface to pursue. So this thread is interesting - did you try making the output to WAV format as that is less compressed than MP3 and even higher quality (at least that’s what I’ve read).
How is that TT and interface? Are you able to get the basic working easily (aside from the bit rate issue)?
Don’t mean to hi-jack your thread but I’m going to do this as well so I was interested in your experiences.
Thanks,
Spud
WAV is indeed higher quality than MP3 as it is not compressed at all - it retains the entire audio signal. The downside is that WAV files are arounfd ten times or more larger tha the equivalent MP3 file (but the MP3 file has compression damage to the audio which can never be recovered).
What I do is to export my music files as WAVs. I backup the WAVs (on two separate USB disks) as backup. I use the WaVs to creat AACs in iTunes (I prefer AAC compression to MP3). If in the future iPods get REALLY big disks than I will use the WAVs for future use on a portable player.
We get a lot of problems reported about USB TTs on the forum - to be fair there probably many folks who have no trouble at all with them and so they never visit the forum. I personally started out with the ION iTTUSB - the electronics were fine, but I got too much wow&flutter (presumably due to a very lightweight platter). So I abandoned that in favour of resurrecting my old Technics TT from the attic, treated it to a home service and a new cartridge - and bought a phono pre-amp (I also use an external USB soundcard - but that is not absolutely necessary I just prefer to work with one of these rather than the onboard soundcards in my PCs).
WC
I have ecellent results by putting the audio from the TT via the RIAA phono input through the amplifier and recording it on Reel to reel at 7.5 IPS.
Then play the R2R tape to computer via audacity 1.2.6. and avoid clipping by setting the levels at the right level.
use 16 or 32 bit at 44100 Hz.
Save in WAV for best quality audio, then copy tracks over to CD via the normal method.
My own made CD’s have a better sound quality then the purchased ones in the shop.
Ok there may ve the odd vinyl crackle in it but that adds to the charme of vinyl anyway.
Just my 0.02 worth.
You’re like my son - he insisted that I supply him with undoctored versions of the transcriptions of my 45s that I made for him for his iPod - he wanted to hear them just as he remembered them on our old juke box (now his jukebox - complete with the scratchy 45s …).
However if you do want to clean then up, I would recommend a look at Brian Davies’ ClickRepair tool. It does cost a little, but you get a 21-day free trial - and I think it is well worth the money. See this thread: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/click-pop-removal-clickrepair-software/1933/1
WC