b.) In Edit – Preferences go to “Quality” tab. Set “Default Sample rate” to “96000Hz” and the “Default Sample Format” to “32-bit float”. Set “Real time” and “High Quality Dither” to none (you will be using 3rd party tools for this later on). Set the other parameters to Default. Click OK and close Audacity. It will look like this:
Audacity high resolution recording settings
c.) In Edit – Preferences. Go to “File Format” tab. Set “Uncompressed Export Format” to “WAV (Microsoft 32 bit float)”. Finally click OK and close Audacity.
5.) Re-launch Audacity and then try to insert a cassette tape with music. Hit the play button of the analog player.
In Audacity, click “Monitor Input” to monitor the playback signal sent by the cassette tape. See screenshot below:
Monitor inputs from Audacity
In the above screenshot, it shows that Audacity is receiving the inputs from the analog player and that it is stereo in format (Left and Right channels contain signals). Also make sure that the peak will not exceed -3dB to prevent distortion and clipping in the music digital versions. You can control this using either the soundcard or the cassette tape player volume.
6.) Your computer should not be doing any other task. Close all programs running except Audacity. If everything is ready, hit the record button in Audacity. Audacity will then capture the sound waveform.
7.) After recording; to maximize the volume of your digital recordings without distortion. Press Control A in the recorded waveform to select all then go to Effects – Amplify. In the “New Peak Amplitude”, enter -0.2. It will automatically determine how much dB boost is needed to maximize the peak volume to -0.2dB. Press OK. This process is called normalization.
8.) You have basically completed creating a “digital master” of your analog music or recordings in a high-fidelity format (32-bit float/96KHz). When everything is OK, go to File – Export as WAV. Save your digital master to a secure location such as your external hard drive backup for long term storage. However this digital master is still not meant or ready to play in MP3 players or CD audio players. You need to one more processing for this to be ready.
Sampling rate conversion and dithering of your digital master
1.) Download this free and high quality sample rate converter.
2.) In the input WAV file, browse to the location of your digital master WAV file which is using 32-bit float/96KHz resolution. Set resample to “44100Hz” and output bit depth to “16-bit”. Set quality to “very high”.
R8brain settings
3.) After clicking “Perform R8brain” it will create a 16-bit/44.1KHz WAV digital audio of your high resolution 32-bit float/96KHz digital master. You can then convert this 16-bit/44.1KHz audio wav file to MP3 format or even burn into a CD.
Content last updated on July 22, 2012