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vinyl to audacity sounds poor
Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 8:25 am
by tosh1006
I've tried recording form vinyl (via stanton mixer line out) into the mic on my Powerbook G4 and into audacity. Audacity and Stanton levels all look good (just clipping red) but when played back from headphone socket on laptop into line input on stanton mixer it sounds terrible - like it's coming from the next room through closed doors.
What am I doing wrong?
I'd like to sample from LPs into Propellerhead Reason. (Once I've gained copyright permission of course!).
Re: vinyl to audacity sounds poor
Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 2:30 pm
by steve
tosh1006 wrote:I've tried recording form vinyl (via stanton mixer line out) into the mic on my Powerbook G4 and into audacity.
"Into the mic"? You mean that you have a line output from the Stanton into a Microphone input - that will not work correctly - "line level" outputs will severely overload "microphone level" inputs by a factor of about 1000. A line level output must go into a line level input.
tosh1006 wrote:Audacity and Stanton levels all look good (just clipping red)
You also have the levels too high, they should be a bit below clipping red. (The red is a warning that the level is too high).
Re: vinyl to audacity sounds poor
Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 4:20 pm
by kozikowski
<<<You mean that you have a line output from the Stanton into a Microphone input - that will not work correctly >>>
No, he probably doesn't mean that since a PowerBook G4 doesn't have a microphone input. It has a Stereo Line-In and a very good one at that. Circle with two black arrows pointing in, right?
You can go into Apple > System Preferences > Hardware > Sound > Input and adjust the level down a bit so you never get a red peak. Those are deadly.
I'm suspicious of you playing the show back into the Stanton mixer. Do you have a model number?
What happens to the show if you play the PB directly into your headphone or iPod EarBuds?
This might be a good experiment for you. Download the Left-Right sound clip from here...
http://www.kozco.com/tech/soundtests.html
...and play it from the PB through your sound system. I bet the test fails. I bet the last clip which is intentionally damaged sounds OK. This test is quite striking through headphones.
This test was recorded on my PowerBook G4.
Koz