Recording Vinyl With SoundForge

Connect the turntable to the computer

• Clean the vinyl.
• Connect the turntable to the computer using a USB cable.

System settings for USB recording

Windows 7

• Start Menu > Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Sound
  • Recording tab
    
  • With Microphone selected as the recording device, click the Properties button
    • Advanced tab:
      • Select Microphone: USB Audio CODEC
      • With USB Audio CODEC selected, click Properties
      • Default format: 2 channel, 16 bit, 44100 Hz
    • Levels tab:
      • Tweak levels until the audio isn’t peaking
      • N.B. The last time I did this (with the Reveen record) I had to turn recording levels all the way down to 3 before the audio wasn't peaking in Sound Forge.
    • Listen tab:
      • Listen to this device: checked
      • Playback through this device: Default playback device
• Start Menu > Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Sound > Playback tab
  • Set “Speakers: High Definition Audio Device” as the default.

Recording software

Sound Forge 10.0

Settings/Preferences

• Options > Preferences > Audio tab
  • Audio device type: Windows Classic Wave Driver
  • If there’s an option, make sure the USB microphone is used as the recording device.
• When recording through USB it’s not possible to monitor the sound being recorded through the computer.
• To monitor the audio while recording, connect the stereo RCA to a second device and monitor through that.

Recording audio

• menu bar > Record button
• Queue the record.
• Click the record button next to "Arm"
• Drop the stylus and play the record.
• Click Stop on the transom when finished.

Saving audio

• With the whole vinyl recording loaded into Sound Forge, zoom into in and out points.
• Drop markers with the M keyboard shortcut.
• Select both channels from in point to out point, then copy.
• Create a new window.
• Paste.
• Save.
  • Format: FLAC
• After saving all the individual tracks, save the project.
  • With the window containing the entire recording with in and out markers, Save As and select the native Sound Forge project format.

Converting FLAC to mp3

Mac OS

Recommended software:

• Audacity
  • File > Chains > Apply Chain
  • Select MP3 Conversion
  • Click Apply to Files... button
  • Navigate to directory containing FLAC files.
  • Select FLAC files to convert.
  • Conversion process will start automatically (default conversion rate is 320kps)
  • mp3 files are deposited in a directory in the source directory named cleaned
• xACT (does converting and splitting)
• XLD
• dBpoweramp
• ffmpeg (command line)

Windows

• AVS Audio Converter
• Drag the .flac files into the files pane.
• Settings
  • Codec: mp3
  • Channels: stereo
  • Bitrate: 192kps
  • Sample Rate: 44100 Hz
  • Sample Size: 16 bit