After exporting a music track from my LP, I hear lots of static listening to the exported track, however when playing back on the time line in the Audacity app it sounds clean. This only happens on one LP album (The Best Of The Guess Who). I don’t have this problem on any other album. The album is in fairly good shape and sounds good on my stereo. I have changed the RCA cables and no change. What can I do short of buying the CD version?
Very strange!!!
What format are you exporting to (MP3, WAV, etc.)?
What happens if you re-open the file in Audacity and play it?
When it fails, are you using different hardware? (Maybe playing it on your phone?)
…By any chance is that record mono?
Thank you for responding! The format I used is AIFF (Apple/SGI). I imported the track that I had previously exported and played it back in Audacity and the static is still there however it does sound much worse on my phone. I recorded in stereo. Should I try mono as a test?
What I can’t understand is why the re-opened AIFF sounds different from what it sounded like before exporting…
I was actually asking if the record itself is mono. Is it marked “stereo” or “mono”? I wouldn’t expect it to be mono because stereo was pretty standard by the late 60’s. These problems I’m suspecting will be worse if the record is mono.
This gets a little complicated, but I’m thinking that the left & right channels might be out-of-phase. That can happen if your phono cartridge is mis-wired.
Another related possible problem is a broken ground which can create a “center channel vocal remover effect”. The vocal remover subtracts left from right, killing whatever is in the “center” (whatever is identical in both channels). If the recording is mono, everything gets removed except the record noise (which is random) and any mismatch between the channels.
Or if the channels are out-of-phase you’ll get a vocal remover effect when mixed to mono (a phone speaker). Or if the record is mono, everything but the noise will be canceled (except for some small mis-match between the channels).
Here’s an experiment:
First, make a regular mono file -
Click the … in the box to the left of the waveform and select Split Stereo to Mono
Export that regular mono file.
If it sounds a lot worse (or if you get that vocal remover effect) that’s an indication that the channels are out-of-phase.
Open the original file again
Split Stereo to Mono again.
Click on one of the track names to select it.
Go to Effect → Special → Invert to invert one track.
Again, export as mono.
If that creates a vocal remover effect the tracks weren’t out-of-phase before you inverted one.
If that sounds better than the 1st mono track, the left & right were out-of-phase and you can fix it by opening the original file, but this time, Split Stereo Track, invert one channel, and export as normal stereo.
Another experiment is to unplug the left & right RCA connections one at a time while recording. If you get left-only and right-only as expected… good. If you get sound in both channels with one side disconnected, you’re not getting stereo and you may have that broken ground problem.
I tried your suggestions on experiments. I hope I did them right. My channels don’t appear to be out of phase. When I inverted one channel I did hear the vocal remover effect. Also, I unplugged each RCA cable separately and heard music from the connected channel but I did hear music faintly in the unconnected channel when I held my ear to the speaker. Thanks for the help!
Well sorry, I’m out of ideas…
No worries. Thank you for your troubleshooting ideas!
Caljoe,
I sent you a private message.
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