Convert your LPs into CDs

Recording the LP (Cont'd)

After having correctly adjusted the recording level volume, put the A side of the LP to record. When side A is over, click the icon to stop recording (stop). At the end of the recording you should be seeing a kind of wave on the screen. In case this does not happen, go back and review the process, mainly the mixer settings. Next, you should record the B side of the LP. We recommend that this should be done in the same Wav file, at the end. That is, record the B side at the end of the A side, in a way where all the songs are recorded in a same file. To do this, just click on the wave on the screen and push the keys Control and End. Following, set the program to record again.

The ideal is that you always start recording a little before and stop recording a little after the songs on the LP. This will make sure that you do not lose any part of the songs. After that, inside the same Wav editor, we will cut those not wanted parts.

Save your file through the option Save in your editor. That’s it, your vinyl record has been totally converted into a Wav file.

The next step is to correct the volume of the file through the function Normalize of the Wav editor. In Sound Forge this function is in the menu Process. This function analyzes the file and takes its peaks and stretches them (if you have recorded the sound at a lower volume, as we recommended), making the maximum peak to be at 0 dB. This will make the volume of the songs stay at the same level of the CDs recorded commercially. Do not forget to save the file after applying this function.

After the audio is set to its correct level of volume, you should apply filters to erase the noise inherent to vinyl records. The noise can be classified basically in two kinds: the background click and crackle. There are many programs on the market to eliminate those kinds of noise, such as the DC Art (https://www.diamondcut.com). If you use the Sound Forge (or another program which accept the Sound Forge filters), you will be able to use a package of filters called Noise Reduction. There is a lot of shareware with this same purpose (enter https://www.shareware.com and search for “noise reduction” to know many programs of this kind), such as the DePopper (https://www.droidinfo.com). The DePopper also has as a facility the option Normalize built in, making all the process of normalizing the sound and eliminating the noise automatically.

As most of the people who deal with computing should already know, the choice of a program is pure personal taste. We will give our examples using the program Sound Forge with the filter pack Noise Reduction installed only because it is comfortable for us, since this program is one of the most famous in the audio editing area. This does not mean at all that there are not programs as good as it on the market.

In the Sound Forge with the Noise Reduction installed, choose the option Sonic Foundry Noise Reduction from the menu DirectX. In the window that will open, you will be able to click the box Preview to listen to the sound as it will be like after you apply the filter. We should be very careful with the use of filters, because they can, besides eliminating the noise, eliminate part of the song, turning the result into something very bad. So this is the importance of the function Preview, for you to check if the filter will work properly or not. In many cases the sound will be muffled or “metallic”. As you will be able to see, this filter allows countless adjustments and sometimes the configured adjustment can be bad. In our tests, the presetting from the factory has removed correctly the noise of dozens of LPs that we have converted into CDs. We suggest you use it. Only change the adjustments if the Wav file you recorded is really with a very high noise level, and do not forget to always use the function Preview to check if your setting is not making the sound worse instead of making it better. When you find the “right point”, apply the filter and save your Wav file.