Audacity Forum

The short answer is that:
44.1 kHz is the standard for CDs (44.1kHz 16-bit PCM Stereo)
48.0 kHz is the standard for DVDs

So if you are planning to produce only CDs and your kit will support 44.1kHz then it is best to stick with that throughout the recording/editing/export process - otherwise you are likely get small noise artifacts when converting from working in 48KHz and then downsampling to 44.1kHz on export.

WC

waxcylinder wrote:The short answer is that:
44.1 kHz is the standard for CDs (44.1kHz 16-bit PCM Stereo)
48.0 kHz is the standard for DVDs

So if you are planning to produce only CDs and your kit will support 44.1kHz then it is best to stick with that throughout the recording/editing/export process - otherwise you are likely get small noise artifacts when converting from working in 48KHz and then downsampling to 44.1kHz on export.

WC

Got it...thanks

pmcwillie, sorry if I over-estimated what you already knew. It is certainly worth understanding at least the two basic parameters involved in digitising an analogue audio signal, namely sampling frequency and bit depth. Take a look at the Audacity tutorials, and ask again if the basics remain unclear. Your post shows the speaker output settings from the Realtek chip. That's a downstream issue, and yes, assuming your Audacity project is using the default setting of 44.1kHz then you want that setting for the speakers. Feed the output from your TT (internal amp set to ON) into the Line (not Mic) input and (this is the important choice) check that the sampling rate is 44.1kHz. That's a good basic setup, and is not likely to be the weak link in the chain – that's almost certainly your TT/cartridge/phonoamp combination. You may be able to improve the end result by using tools in Audacity such as Repair and Noise Removal. You can use Repair to eliminate individual clicks with no risk of overall damamge to the sound quality, but be very careful with other enhancement tools – it is easy to make things worse rather then better.

Alternatively, as you realise, you can feed the output from your TT with the switch se to OFF into the Behringer UFO 202 with the Phono/Line switch set to Phono, or you can set the TT switch to ON and the Phono/Line switch to Line, and I assume that these are the two alternative that you are comparing in your other post. In each case, you need to set the sampling rate of the UFO 202 to 44.1kHz. It would be interesting to make a third comparison with the direct connection method not using the UFO 202. I would expect the UFO 202 to do a better job of digitising than the Realtek chip, but it would be interesting to have the evidence.

pmcwillie wrote:........snip.........you can set the TT switch to ON and the Phono/Line switch to Line, and I assume that these are the two alternative that you are comparing in your other post. In each case, you need to set the sampling rate of the UFO 202 to 44.1kHz. It would be interesting to make a third comparison with the direct connection method not using the UFO 202. I would expect the UFO 202 to do a better job of digitising than the Realtek chip, but it would be interesting to have the evidence.

Thanks for the clarification.

Using the Sony's pre-amp is the way I've decided to go...although I couldn't tell the diff between the 2 after tweaking the files in Audacity to be similar. I did actually consider doing the test u mentioned, but I've dropped the idea due to time constraints.

Thanks to all who mentioned Click Repair...I'll be buying that for sure...excellent results from it. Also thanks to Steve for the pseudo stereo plugin...I've got several mono LPs from the early 60s which r sounding pretty flat & dull..I was just gonna put up w/ them that way till i tried the plugin....mucho better!

Using the Sony's pre-amp is the way I've decided to go...although I couldn't tell the diff between the 2 after tweaking the files in Audacity to be similar. I did actually consider doing the test u mentioned, but I've dropped the idea due to time constraints.

Other things being equal, and provided you still have a bit of headroom below the clipping level, the combination that gives you the higher-level signal is preferable, so this should be the right choice. Of course, other things might not be equal – the higher-level signal might be of worse quality – but your own tests give you some assurance about that.

Thanks to all who mentioned Click Repair...I'll be buying that for sure...excellent results from it. Also thanks to Steve for the pseudo stereo plugin...I've got several mono LPs from the early 60s which r sounding pretty flat & dull..I was just gonna put up w/ them that way till i tried the plugin....mucho better!

Another vote for ClickRepair. DeNoiseLF/DeNoise from the same guy are also very good, and being, like their author, a mathematician/statistician, I just love the documentation. However, with ClickRepair, be careful using the Mono setting. What this does is take the pair of tracks that you get by transcribing a mono LP through a stereo system, merge them intelligently, and duplicate the result to give identical L and R tracks (these can, of course, then be the basis for faux-stereo if you like that sort of effect). I had excellent results using the Mono setting when transcribing a mono LP, but serious loss of sound quality when I tried it with a commercially recorded cassette tape produced from a mono master – don't understand why, so case-by-case checking is now my policy.

RS_RS wrote:Another vote for ClickRepair. DeNoiseLF/DeNoise from the same guy are also very good, and being, like their author, a mathematician/statistician, I just love the documentation. However, with ClickRepair, be careful using the Mono setting. What this does is take the pair of tracks that you get by transcribing a mono LP through a stereo system, merge them intelligently, and duplicate the result to give identical L and R tracks (these can, of course, then be the basis for faux-stereo if you like that sort of effect). I had excellent results using the Mono setting when transcribing a mono LP, but serious loss of sound quality when I tried it with a commercially recorded cassette tape produced from a mono master – don't understand why, so case-by-case checking is now my policy.

I have used CR's mono setting to successfully return to mono several "singles" that had been re-issed on CD with horrible faux stereo - much better back to mono

WC

'Waxcylinder:

P.S. A lot of Lps have been re-issued as CDs, so if you can get a cheap-ish CD copy that's way easier than doing the LP transcription. All you have to watch out for is that some aof the re-issues are "re-mastered" to make them sound "louder" - and this is not always an improvement.

Absolutely. In fact a lot or re-mastered CD's sound awful when an a/b comparison with the vinyl original is performed. It lead me to believe cd at 16/44 was lacking but nope, it is the re-mastering as you say, to sound louder, as the root cause of the problem. I wonder if the a/b tests whereby people can correctly identify 24/96, when compared to 16/44 are from the same master. Now there is an interesting thought.

A good example of this is Emmylou Harris' Luxury liner which I re-bought on CD (having both his & hers copies on vinyl in the hoses already). The "re-mastered" CD was truly awful. The engineers have made it louder by bringing all the instruments forward so that Emmylou gets lost in the mix somehow. So I went back to the vinyl and ripped that instead.

Remasters are not all bad though - I do have a superb re-issue of Donovan's recordings where the "new" CD sound is clearer and better than any I had on vinyl.

WC