I would hope that the WAV file is a bit transparent image of was captured by the audio interface and recorded in first instance by Audacity
It should sound identical (assuming nothing “goes wrong”). [u]Here is a short story about an informal demonstration/experiment[/u].
With some click & pop reduction the digital copy can sound even better than the original!* And some older records sound a little “dull” so I sometimes boost the highs a bit. I ASSUME modern records are more consistent but back in the vinyl days sound quality varied a lot and most were mediocre, at least the rock records… The rumor was that classical records generally had better quality, but that’s not what I was listening to.
Your choice of recording software doesn’t affect quality (again assuming nothing goes wrong). The software just has to “capture” the digital audio stream and send it to the hard drive. And, Audacity doesn’t have the ability to add effects in real time effects during recording. (Windows can mess with the audio, but when that happens it’s usually drastic AGC, etc., and it’s pretty obvious. And Windows will automatically
re-sample if your hardware is not capable of matching the software settings.)
I would hope that the WAV file is a bit transparent image of was captured by the audio interface and recorded in first instance by Audacity
“Full disclosure”: By default Audacity will [u]dither[/u] when you export, but you can turn it off. Dither is very low-level added noise which is supposed to sound better than quantization noise, but under normal conditions you can’t hear quantization noise, dither, or the effects of dither at 16-bits or better anyway. Plus, vinyl noise is much greater than dither noise so you can consider it “self dithered”. The “rule” is to dither whenever you downsample and since Audacity works in 32-bit floating-point it doesn’t “know” if you are really downsampling or not.
What I want as an outcome is 24bit 96KHz Wav files stored on my network drive,
The only issue with WAV is that metadata/tagging is not well-standardized or widely supported. Virtually all software players support FLAC. FLAC also makes a good archive format because it’s lossless so it can be converted to any lossless or lossy format anytime in the future, it does support metadata, and the files are almost half the size of WAV.
Speaking of metadata… Audacity can’t add the album artwork. I use MP3Tag (which works with almost all formats, not just MP3). I also just find it easier because I can select several files at once for the common information and then I usually just have to enter the song title and track number for each song. Usually you can find the artwork somewhere online. If you have to scan it, an LP cover is too big for a standard scanner but you can use "photo stitching’ software to patch-together 4 separate scans.
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- You can “clean up” the digital copy to reduce/remove “snap”. “crackle”, and “pop” so the digital can be better than the vinyl (although you rarely achieve “CD quaility”). Audacity has 3 tools that can help:
The Click Removal Effect is automatic.
The Repair Effect is manual.
As a “last resort” you can zoom-in and use the Draw Tool to manually re-draw the waveform.
For background hiss & hum you can use the regular Noise Reduction Effect. Noise Reduction can be tricky because you can get artifacts (side effects) depending on how bad then noise and how aggressive the the noise reduction is. (The same is true for click & pop removal.) Sometimes I’ll use Noise Reduction just on the fade-in and fade-out and live with any artifacts. (Of course you can mute completely between tracks.)
Or there are specialized 3rd party applications:
[u]Wave Corrector[/u] is fully automatic and it’s free.
[u]Wave Repair[/u] ($30 USD) works manually.
I’ve used Wave Repair for several years. Since it’s manual means it only “touches” the audio where you identify a defect. But of course, it’s VERY tedious and time consuming. I’ve spent a day or a weekend fixing-up an LP. It offers a few different repair methods and in most cases (but not all you can get audibly perfect results. Sometimes the worst clicks and pops are the easiest to fix, maybe because they are easier to “find”. Another thing you might not like is that it only supports 16/44.1 or 16/48. But if you have a bad click that you can’t fix otherwise, it would be worth reducing the resolution.
The developer of Wave Repair has a [u]website[/u] with several other software recommendations (maybe somewhat outdated) and a TON of other information about digitizing vinyl. One application he doesn’t mention is Izotope RX ($130 USD and up). It gets great reviews but I’ve never tried it.
