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Turntable Vinyl USB Audacity Really Bad Audio Quality, why?
these vinyls sound just fine when turntable connected to jbl speaker
these vinyls sound like **** when connected to laptop via usb and recorded with audacity. why is this? is this turntable defective or am i doing it wrong?
NOTE:
-only usb connected, rca unplugged
-tried both phono and phono off
7 Answers
- spacemissingLv 71 year ago
The cheap USB converters and preamps
that are built into turntables aren't worth using.
Even a sort-of-crummy turntable and cartridge can produce Much better results
if connected to a decent preamp and external USB converter.
Make sure the files you record are "lossless",
such as WMA Lossless or FLAC,
NOT MP3 in any of its forms.
- Anonymous1 year ago
When you record a vinyl record you are turning the information from analog to digital. Then when you play it again, it is converted back from digital to analog. If the bit rate of the digital recording is too low (CDs have a bit rate of 1,411,200 bits per second or 176,400 bytes per second; 2 channels × 44,100 samples per second per channel × 16 bits per sample and MP3 recordings have lower bitrates) If your bitrate is lower than that then you can get bad sound. Also, if the digital to analog converters inside your laptop are low quality, then you get bad sound as well. Further, LP records require RIAA equalization to make them sound normal. Stereo receivers and amplifiers have built in circuits to handle this. It is one reason you need to plug the turntable into the phono input of the receiver or amplifier. Your laptop may not have any RIAA equalization circuit built in.
Further, why bother buying vinyl records and then recording them digitally when you can buy a CD instead?You mention JBL speakers. They are reasonably good speakers. Your laptop's built-in speakers are a joke usually. So, you may try listening to the music by routing it to your amplifier and JBL speakers or try to listen to it using headphones. Headphones give you better sound than the speakers in the laptop.
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- Robert JLv 71 year ago
If you are comparing the sound through the laptop speakers to that through the JBL, there may well be a massive difference.
If you are recording then playing back through the JBL & it sounds significantly different, either you are using the wrong settings in Audacity or the turntable electronics are faulty.
Are you using 16 bit 44.1KHz stereo as the record settings (or better) ?
Are you saving the file as a .wav or .flac, or playing back directly from audacity without saving?
If you record using too low a bit depth or sample rate, or save using a "lossy" format such as MP3 or AAC etc., you are reducing the quality.
Is the turntable separately powered? If it's powered from USB, it could just be the cable; many cheap USB cables are not suitable for things that take significant amounts of power.
You need short, heavy cables for things that need power.
Also, avoid the front USB sockets on desktop cases for powering things - the internal cables to the front panel add to the overall cable resistance and cause more voltage drop.
Also note that despite all the recent hype, no LP & turntable combination in existence can match the quality and noise levels of the basic CD audio format.
Unless the album was never released on CD, you are better off getting the CD version than trying to transfer it yourself.
- LanceLv 71 year ago
It could be the speakers or sound card for the computer or it could also be some settings in Audacity that your not using correctly, hard to tell with out a more detailed explanation of what settings you have and how your using them ..Also Audacity has a plug in to replicate the RIAA curve maybe that would work better for you. What I would suggest is resetting Audacity to original settings or neutral settings if not sure. Then review a couple of Videos on Your Tube explaining what needs to be done to record Vinyl using Audacity...Follow the videos to the letter and see if that gives you good results. Once you get something acceptable You can try tweaking to see if you can improve results to suite your own taste.
- SSP Bowl DudeLv 71 year ago
Unless the usb adapter is specifically designed for turntables, you need a preamp.