1. After capturing one side of a record, I would immediately
Export as WAV.... BGoodmanHelsinkiSide1.wav. That represents your live capture master. Make copies of that, clicks, pops and all onto a second drive. Any valuable work should exist on two different spinning platters. It could be a second drive inside your big deskside PC, or it could be a portable USB drive. If one hard drive becomes defective, you don't flush months of hard work down the toilet. You can use the backup. I would not leave both drives connected to the computer during editing.
Pull one of those performance files into Audacity and edit your brains out. When you're done, Export a Uniquely named WAV file that will be burned to a CD later.
Do Not name it the same as the capture masters. Somebody else posted earlier about trying to do this. Terrible idea.
2. <<<44.1>>>. Those are the settings for CD quality audio. You can capture and edit at a higher quality--and some would urge you to do that--but I think simple and good works here. Especially since the noisy vinyl represents the weak link in the chain.
3. Windows Media Player and I don't get along, especially version WMP10 which I found to be intrusive and in some cases damaging to my work. I use Windows 2000 and no Windows Media at all. You'll need to hit somebody else with that question.
4. So there's no shortage of CD authoring programs. I would stay away from WMP10. You may discover that you are only allowed to make three CD copies of the work or something evil like that. I don't trust Windows Media.
5. <<<All I want to do is transfer the music from the Vinyl and burn a whole vinyl album to one .wav file, and then to a CD.>>>
I personally don't think that's a good idea. Export the initial live vinyl capture as one whole side of the record WAV file (plus one protection copy) and then break it up into individual songs by editing later. Once you have the first capture, you can do anything you want. That's why that first capture is so important and you should have two physically separated copies of it. And by the way, I wouldn't go over two (main and a backup). At three copies, most people get sloppy and forget which copy is good and which one is a damaged backup.
5b. <<<When i select "Export as WAVE" from the "FILE" menu, WHAT happens?
Do I have to have a place ready to put the exported files in? >>>
Yup. The program will ask you what you want to call it (See: Benny Goodman, above) and where you would like it to go. Put one copy on the second hard drive in your computer and the second, protection copy on your external USB drive. Did I just buy two new hard drives for you? Live audio and video productions are a lot bigger than Excel spreadsheets and Word documents.
Later, when you get good and tired of capturing vinyl (Benny Goodman, Side 1 and Side 2, Paul Whiteman Side 1 and Side 2..... you can pull one of the capture WAV files back into Audacity and perform what we in Hollywood call "post" or post production. Remove the clicks and pops, adjust the volume, cut the performance into acts and save each one in a separate folder called BGoodmanFinals. Pull songs out of that folder in whatever order you like and dump them into your CD authoring program and burn.
I make that sound so easy, don't I?
There's another reason I'm urging you to save each side of the vinyl as one valuable capture WAV file plus backup. Unlike CDs, each time you put needle to vinyl it wears out a little more. If you try to do everything in one go--capture, clean, adjust, depop, edit, export, burn, and you mess up anywhere in the process, you're back to playing and capturing the vinyl again--only this time it's a little fuzzier with a few more pops....
Koz
