Sorry if this is the wrong place to post, I’m new. I’m working on a vintage Canadian music restoration project, and a file was sent to me that has lag in play (it was recorded off a vinyl record that seems to have been made while other processes were running, causing the lag), and it gets very fuzzy at certain high and low points of the file. I have a small sample here…
I’m an amateur when it comes to Audacity; I try to restore old music as a hobby, but this particular track is throwing me off. It also sounds almost like it’s underwater - the audio is just off in general. Was wondering if any seasoned pioneers had any tips or recommendations. Thank you in advance! 
To automagically correct the changes in speed: Capstan … https://youtu.be/qqK6wgsh3QA $200 for 5 days 
Can manually adjust playback speed in Audacity via time track … Time Tracks - Audacity Manual
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If I understand what you mean by “lag” and describing it as “underwater” it reads to ME as if you are referring to cross-groove echo where the grooves and/or needle are worn enough you are also getting the sound from an adjacent groove or grooves on either side which are of course out of time sync with the current groove track.
I will think on it more but this would be a very difficult problem to solve. Maybe can be reduced a bit with a LOT of hard work and experimenting but cannot be elimited because to the computer all the sound is valid and not different from each other just arriving at different times. The noise CAN be addressed with Audacity’s very effective noise filter
which is covered well in the manual. It may also be that a careful selection of the various non-musical noise sections which also have a noise echo may address this a very small amount. Noise gating between moments of low volume may help too but don’t put a lot of expectation on that. The “fuzzy” may be distortion for the same record physical reasons I mentioned at the top. Distortion is very hard to remove as it’s part of the sound. Another tool to try is the voice isolator. This would again require a LOT of work and experimenting. By creating a voice filter which captures as much of the music portion of the recording as possible and mixing the result back into the original with the volume of the original reduced you again might be able to reduce both echo and noise and a remote possibility some distortion might be lost. With all these techniques except the noise filter there will be a noticeable loss of fidelity. If would be nice if Audacity had an “enhancer” plugin.
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The “lag” is, I think, speed variation in playback and probably has nothing to do with faults in the digitization process.
If there are speed variations throughout the recording it would be tedious and almost impossible to correct them manually.
This may have been transferred from vinyl, but the speed variations sound like playback from a worn out cassette in a worn out cassette player.
The fuzzy bits sound like vinyl damage - playback of the vinyl with a ceramic cartridge can plow through the loud parts. There’s no way to remove this damage that I am aware of.
Given that you can’t fix the distortion, it is probably not worth even trying to fix the speed problem.
I would try to find another source.
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The song is by Marie Bottrell, and available on vinyl to buy, so I might just bite the bullet and purchase a cleaner copy to digitize. From the advice I’ve received, I think unfortunately you’re probably right, it might just not be worth the effort.
I’ll try to see if either of these work. Thank you for the recommendations.
A lot of songs by her are available on Apple Music.