Audio restoration - transfer your vinyl recordings to CD

 

 

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Capture

This part of the tutorial deals with getting the music from your turntable into your PC.

Cleaning

Be sure you've cleaned your vinyl (see CLEANING under VINYL LINKS). In general, use the least intrusive method, as the idea is to not scratch the surface any more than it already has been. For light dust, use a carbon fiber brush. For dirtier records, use a wet cleaning method. For really filthy discs, consider a vac cleaner.

Recording

If your computer's sound recording control allows more than one source to be recorded at once, turn off or mute all but the line input, which should be receiving its signal from your standalone preamp or stereo amplifier.

Start your recording software. Start your software's recording process, recording at 44,100 Hz and 16-bit stereo. Optionally, you can record at 48 kHz, but after restoration and before burning to CD, you will need to dummy down the recording to 44.1 by using 'save as' function.

Ideally, your recording should be as 'hot' (as loud) as possible (close to 0db) without clipping. Unlike analog recording, there is no headroom, and your recording will sound distorted. If your recording program shows you are clipping, or going over 0db, lower the controller on the sound recording control until the loudest part of your audio peaks close to but not exceeding 0db.

Record one side of your album, then in your recording software stop the digital recording. Save your file as a wav. Listen to your recording. Clean, record, and save side two.