Newbie Questions on Tracking and Project Rates

New to this forum and Audacity.
I’m embarking on a project to digitize some 300 LPs to digital. Most are not available on the music services like Spotify and I do not want to be burdened with the albums. Most are from the 1950s and 60s. So here are my initial questions;

1. Is there a way to setup Audacity to automatically mark album tracks or is it a strictly manual process? Step by step instructions would be helpful.
2. What Project Rates are suggested when storage space is not a concern? Do I need to match the Project Rate to the USB spec of the turntable USB output?
3. What other set-up options are recommended to make this project efficient and seamless

The computer is 64 bit running WIndows 10 running. The turntable is Audio-Technica AT-LP1200XUSB

Thanks, Billy Bob

There is silence finder which can mark the silent gap between tracks.

It’s usually best to “process” the album (or at least one whole side) at once so all of the tracks get the same volume adjustment, EQ, noise reduction, etc. Then split the tracks as the last step before exporting (or during your final-export).

2. What Project Rates are suggested when storage space is not a concern? Do I need to match the Project Rate to the USB spec of the turntable USB output?

From what I found your turntable works at 16 bits and either 44.1 or 48kHz. By default, audacity will convert to 32-bit floating-point when you record (and you can optionally change the sample rate but there’s no reason to do that).

As you may know, 16/44.1 is used on CDs and it’s plenty good enough for analog vinyl (or anything else). So that’s fine when you export. If you make WAV or FLAC files, 48kHz will give you proportionally larger files. If you make MP3s, the file size is determined by bit rate, not sample rate.

3. What other set-up options are recommended to make this project efficient and seamless

It’s time consuming if you want the best results…

A lot of older records are “dull sounding” so sometimes I’ll boost the highs.

If any of the records are mono, converting the file to mono after recording will (slightly) reduce the noise, or if one channel is particularly noisy you can delete the noisy channel completely (before converting to mono). Or, if there is a click in one channel you can copy just a short selection from the good channel to the bad channel. This sometimes actually works with stereo records because you don’t notice the loss of stereo for just a few milliseconds.

You can try some regular Noise Reduction for the constant low-level noise. But listen carefully to the result because there can be artifacts (side effects).

For clicks & pops you can try the Click Removal or Repair effects. If you are using the (manual) Repair effect, the Spectrogram view or Multi-view makes it easier to “see and find” the defect before you start zooming-in.

There are special-purpose programs for cleaning-up digitized vinyl. [u]Wave Corrector[/u] is now free. I’ve had [u]Wave Repair[/u] ($30 USD) for a long time. It can do an audibly perfect repair of most (but not all) clicks & pops and it’s manual so it only “touches” the audio where you identify a defect. But, that makes it VERY time consuming and you wouldn’t want to use it on 300 albums. [u]This page[/u] lists some more software alternatives and it has TONS of other information about digitizing records.

If you can’t find the album artwork online, an album cover won’t fit into a regular scanner but you can scan in sections and then use “photo stitching” software to re-assemble the sections. It’s been awhile and I can’t remember what I used, but I found something free that worked well. I once took some albums to Kinko’s (now “Fed-EX Office”) but they wouldn’t use their large scanner because the images are copyrighted. Audacity doesn’t support Album artwork so you’ll have to use a different “tagging” application. I use MP3tag (which actually works with almost all formats except WAV).

As one who has gotten through digitizing most my own ~300 LP collection I can tell you it is a slow processes (I’ve been at it, in fits and start for about eight years now). For particularly noisy records there is another relatively inexpensive tool called “click repair” that is also worth the investment. But I’ll admit may standards may be lower than some, most records get converted to mp3 without any noise reduction of any kind.

I wet-wash the records in a “Spin Clean” before digitizing. Also inspect the stylus often to make sure it hasn’t picked up an crud.

I can second the recommendation for Wave-Repair I did a lot of albums where that tool was the primary recording tool as well as splitting the files for import into iTunes. Fairly recently I switched to using Audacity for recording as the main recording computer is now a Raspberry PI. I digitize whole album, often including a fairly long gap between the sides as I’m usually off doing other things while it is playing.

I briefly tried using the “silence finder” to split tracks and found it not very useful at all. For records with well defined tracks they are easy to spot by eye. For records where one track blends into the next I use the track times from the label to find the approximate location and decide where to split by listening.

There is a windows tool called “mp3tag” that is pretty efficient at getting the mp3 metadata added. The only metadata that’s added at the Audacity track-split stage is the actual track title, the rest I add after converting to .mp3 with mp3tag.

All track get a QC listen through headphones after the entire process (from iTunes), I keep the .wav original until after that step is done.

That sounds about par for the course - and after I’d finished mine I had to work on my wife’s

I used ClickRepair on my transfers after Koz steered me in that direction - it produced almost magical results.
See this sticky thread: Click/pop removal - ClickRepair software

I made the (expensive) mistake of cleaning the stylus on my lovely Shure V15-III cart with a sable brush dipped in alcohol. D-oh it removed the tip - it turned out cheaper to buy a new cart that retip the V15-III

I used two approaches:
a) Press Ctrl+M in the song gaps as it records to make a labe;
b) pre-created a label track based on the LP cover time listings

Indeed - audio review is important

I still keep the WAVs I made on two 2TB disks I have at home and an offsite 2TB disk in Zurich - I worked hard on those WAVS


Peter.

I made the (expensive) mistake of cleaning the stylus on my lovely Shure V15-III cart with a sable brush dipped in alcohol. D-oh it removed the tip - it turned out cheaper to buy a new cart that retip the V15-III

Sad indeed. My current cartridge is a Grado (chosen primarily because my turntable requires a P-Mount cartridge, and Grado is one of the only cartridge makers still making that form). I clean using a Q-tip dipped in 99.9% isopropanol under my stereo microscope and have never had any issues.

Like Koz, I have an SME 3009 - the V15-III was the natural partner for it.

I still have the now-untipped V15-III - I can’t bear to throw it away - it gave me many hours/years of listenting pleasure (onward to QUAD 33/303 and ELS-57 electrostatic speakers - which I still have).

Peter.