Audacity Forum

I've been using Audacity for several months to convert my vinyl to MP3. I'm not happy with how all of my vinyl sounds now that I hear it, often for the first time in many years. Some songs sound a little warped -- particularly keyboard parts -- and I'm not sure if it's my vinyl (kept in a cool, dry place and doesn't look warped) or perhaps just that some of the '70s material I'm dubbing was never pitch perfect to begin with. Since you can seemingly fix anything else these days, is there a function of Audacity that would allow me to correct warped sounding vinyl?

Most likely its that you are getting what's known as "wow&flutter" - specifically in this case "wow" - caused by small speed changes in the turntable.

This can be caused by any number of things: baldly balanced platter, too light a platter (see below), poor plattter spindle lubrication, worn/tired rubber belt (if you have a belt drive TT - try cleaning or replacing the belt and clead the platter surface that it drives), poor quality direct drive (if you have a DD turntable), turntable not set on level suface - and sometimes by a record whose centre hole is not quite centred (This can be a particular problem with some 45s that have been "dinked" to provide the large hole for playing on a juke box - if the dinking machine operator has not quite centred the large hole).

I started out with an ION iTTUSB which I soon abandoned as it gave me too much noticeable wow (probably caused by the extremely lightweigt plastic patter. So I resurrected my old Technics TT from the attic, gave it a good lube and service - and treated it to a new cartridge. This gave me much better results.

WC