Turntable for Converting Vinyl Records to Digital Formats
The turntable is located on the first floor.
Instructions:
- Clean dust from your record, place it on the turntable
- Start the turntable -- also start Audacity (Audio capturing freeware)
- Place the needle on the record
- To start recording, click the round red record button in Audacity
- You’ll see a new audio track in Audacity
- To monitor while recording you can use headphones or turn the volume on low
- OPTIONAL: For LP’s. you may run the vinyl at 45 rpm to save time. The resulting file can be converted back to 33 ½ with Audacity
- When done, click STOP (yellow square)
- Optional: Press CTRL-A to highlight entire file, then Effects/Click Removal and/or Noise Removal
- Export entire file--or portions--by clicking the selection tool and dragging over the areas you wish to save.
Some helpful Audacity commands: (Here is the Official Reference for Audacity)
-HOME and END keys go to the beginning and end of your recording
-Click I-beam button; drag to highlight a piece to manipulate (CTRL-A selects all)
-SPACEBAR toggles PLAY on and off
-Zoom button: after clicked, then left click zooms in, and right zooms out
- Click File/Export to WAV (lossless, large file) or MP3, (the more commonly used compressed, small file).
- Save to your flash drive or burnable CD. There is no network on this PC.
- WARNING: If you use "save project" to save your unfinished work to Audacity’s native .aup format, and you bring this file to another computer with Audacity, there is a chance that the file may not be accessible. Tests on small files using the same version of Audacity worked, but we’ve had reports that large files were not accessible. If you do try this, it might help if both versions of Audacity are the same.
To record vinyl at home:
Install the free Audacity software from http://audacity.sourceforge.net to a PC or Mac, and connect a turntable to the computer. New turntables might have USB connections. Otherwise you’ll need a cable that looks like this 
(two RCA males, and one mini stereo male) The mini stereo goes to the PC’s “audio in” or microphone jack, and the two RCA plugs go to the turntable’s “audio out” jacks.
You may need to adjust the PC’s Recording volume via Start/ Programs/ Accessories/ Entertainment/ Volume, then click Options / Properties and “recording” to make adjustments. Clicking EXIT will save your settings.
Please note: |
University of Minnesota Campuses