Welcome to the world of digital recording! These tips are for those wanting to transfer analog cassette tapes, vinyl records and such to compact disc format. I'm just an amateur at this, but here's what I do.

This link will take you to The MP3 and Internet Audio Handbook page. There is some great information there.

http://www.teamcombooks.com/mp3handbook/MP3_Handbook.htm

Go down to section 20 in the left hand column and then click on Cool Edit 96, scroll the right side of screen to see screen shots and instructions.

First get a set of cables to come out of the back of your receiver and plug into your sound card. I use 2 RCA cables with a Y splitter, the splitter has two female RCA and a male mini plug the same size as my computer speaker plug. On my sound card there is an input (line In) where I've plugged this cable.

On your computer screen you will see a little speaker icon in your lower right corner. Double click it and click options/properties/recording/ok/line in. There is where you will set your recording level by adjusting this slider.

This should take care of your hardware.

The next step is to clean the vinyl record as good as you can. This is PROBABLY the most important step. I use a little Windex with ammonia, alcohol (50/50) and several drops of Kodak Photo-flo. I first play the record dry, then clean the needle with a small soft brush. Then I wet clean the vinyl. Several puddles of the solution on the record and then spread it around the record with a lint free cloth. I then play it wet and clean both the needle and the record of lint that may have landed on the vinyl. Now I record the album. I do this wet, misting a light coating of water on the record just before recording. Your mileage may vary. This is the Most important step because with time your ear will get keener and you will even be able to hear dust or debris on the needle.

Now on to the software part!

You will be creating a wav file when you record. These are files which can be burned directly to an audio CD which can be played in your car or on a regular stand alone CD player. You would name them like such. foggymountainbreakdown.wav, a mp3 of the same song would look like foggymountainbreakdown.mp3 which could not be played on a stand alone CD player. Using programs like cdex you can convert a file from one format (wav to MP3) to the other. I use razor lame to do this also.

I have both Soundforge and Cool Edit Pro, after watching discussions on these and using both for a while I have gone to using Cool Edit Pro exclusively. (I will use CEP for the remainder of this document)

Assuming that you've already installed CEP. Start CEP click red button on bottom bar. Set screen as follows 44100 stereo 16 bit. These settings are CD standards and in order to burn your audio files to a audio cd they must be set at these standards. Click OK, you are now recording. You will see a VU meter on the bottom of your screen which will show your recording levels. I try to keep mine between the -3 and -6 on the scale. You would click your speaker Icon and get to the recording slider to adjust recording levels.

I record the entire album with the same settings. I usually record 3 songs at a time or as many as my old computer will do with out locking up. My computer has been upgraded from Windows 95, to 98, to 98SE, to ME and sometimes it locks up just sitting there.

After you've recorded your first set, save the group of songs to an easy file name. Say I'm doing an album with 12 songs. I record the first 3 songs and name them 1-3untitled.wav, second 3 songs and name them 4-6untitled.wav etc. It will be easy to see the different songs later. This keeps me from renaming the files later. After I have the songs individually named and saved I then delete the files that had 3 songs on them.

The buttons on the bottom of your CEP screen are just like those on a common cassette player. There should be six buttons just to the right that are +, - , full screen, bottom ones have zoom to selection, zoom left and zoom right. These will come in handy later. There are 2 ways to view your syn wave, one is waveform view and the other is spectral view. You can change back and forth by clicking view and clicking the view of your choice. Here are samples of each.

Waveform View

Spectral View

After I record the first group of 3 songs. I save the file and then do the following steps.

1. Center the Wav file. Do the following steps. Transform/Amplitude/Amplify, go to the box a right and use the slider and find Center Wave and click OK. The program will go through a routine. (This is where I have a magazine or good book handy) This is also where your processor speed makes a difference.

2. Click and Pop eliminate. Transform/Noise reduction/click and pop eliminator/ I'm not sure how I did this so you may need to experiment with this. Now you are going to set the following screen to these settings. Click on one of the presets in the right hand box. Now make these changes.

Auto find settings at 14 and 20

Max threshold -15db detect 35 reject 50

avg threshold -40 detect 25 reject 43

Min threshold -65 detect 12 reject 20

check mark in second verification, all other boxes in this section unchecked

FFT checked in auto

pop oversamples 12

run size 14

Now that these settings are all correct go to the box on the top right and click ADD IN THE PRESETS SECTION Type in the name you want to call this, I use my name.

Now that you have saved your settings as your name you then make sure you have the entire wave on your screen. This is important because CEP only makes changes to what is showing on the screen. If you zoom in on a section the changes only affect what you see on the screen.

I then click on the large box on the left that says find Threshold Levels only. The program will go through a quick routine and then ckick the Ok button. Most of the ticks are gone now. When I first started doing this someone on the net suggested reversing the wav before doing tic - pop elimination. I still do this if I get a song that I’m having problems with. In fact I sometimes detic forwards and backwards.

3. Cleaning up hiss! I only do this to small portions at the beginning and ending of songs. I've found that sometimes on quiet sections of a song it will cause distortion. Here is the trick! Right after you pushed your record button you will drop your needle on the record. Always record the sample lead in hiss before the music starts. Here is what you do with the sample hiss. Now try this left click on the center section of the screen, see a yellow vertical line where you clicked. This is one of the ways to select a part of the song you want to zoom in on. With the wav on the screen left click on the very beginning where there is no music recorded, only the hiss. Now to the right of the record button is a zoom button. zoom in on the hiss section and mark it on the screen just like you would text in a word processor. Now with the hiss selected go to Transform/noise reduction/noise reduction/ click the 3rd button down on the right "get profile from selection" Now select the first couple of notes at the beginning of the song. (once again left click and drag the mouse to select that portion of the wav) go back to the screen where the noise reduction sample was taken from. Click OK. You have now taken the hiss out of this section of the songs. Keep in mind that you just did the beginning of the first song. You will have to do the end of the first song and the other songs you recorded as well. (My preferece is that a little hiss is ok but ticks and pops annoy the heck out of me. If I get an mp3 from someone with electic ticks or pops it gets deleted or I try to work on it and see if it can be fixed with CEP.) Keep in mind that there is a slider on the noise recuction screen so you don’t have to take 100% of the his out. You can slide it back ant take 50% out. Once again, you may want to play with this an a sample song to see how it works for you.

You're done cleaning them now just separate the songs and save them as separate file names.

keyboard shortcuts come in handy here.

1. Left click and (highlight) drag/mark the first song on the left of the screen.

2. hold down the control button and C (as in control copy)

3. Alt F as in File -New

4. N

5. Return

6. Control V as in Paste.

You have now pasted the first song into another screen of CEP, You may want to trim away some silence from the beginning of the song. Just mark the section and hit the delete key. You can undo things also but clicking the edit key and the first item down is Undo.

Just click file save as and put all your songs in a directory so you know where they are.

SINGLE TICKS AND POP CLEANUP!

After you have created your single tracks, go back and listen to them in the view/spectral view. Zoom in on the large ticks, they will look like this.

Use your cursor to highlight the different colored spot, in this case the tick it the flame colored spot in the center of the screen. Highlight it with your cursor. I would just mark the yellow spot first and see if that takes care of the tick. Then bring down your TRANSFORM/NOISE RECUCTION/TICK AND POP/ and hit the Fill single click now button.

It is now gone.

It is possible to set up 'Fill Single Click' as a 'favorite', which you can
then assign to a shortcut key. Simply highlight the 'click' and go into
Favorites>Edit Favorites. Select NEW and give it a name, something like
Fill-A-Click. Type in a shortcut key (I used Shft+Alt+F which shouldn't be
taken) and then go down to Function. Select Noise Reduction>Click/Pop
Eliminator under 'Function' and then click EDIT SETTINGS. It will open the
ClickPop window. Simply click FILL SINGLE CLICK, then click OK. Back in
the Favorites window, click SAVE.

Now, back in Edit View (with the click still highlighted) run the favorite
(either with the shortcut key or from the Favorites list).

I have a wheel mouse which I have set for the "push down wheel" set to the F1 key.

I set up this single click trick to work with a single click to my mouse wheel. It is unbelievable how much time I have saved!

There are further tricks to take out the noise on really bad albums but I’m not going to give away all of my tricks. I just say to go to the Cool Edit web page and start reading.

Now get to work cleaning those old albums.

Editorial notes !!!!!!

These are some settings, which I have found listed on the net for CEP and they have been pretty good for me. Your ears may tell you something else, keep in mind that everyone's sound card and speakers are different. My good friend has a great computer and we both like the same type of music how ever both sound different so keep in mind that Earl Scruggs banjo doesn't sound the same on every computer, just like stereo's and radios, all are different.

Another thing I like to do, after recording and cleaning a song or album. Burn your original wav files to a CD. Then listen to it in your car or where ever you listen to music the most at. If you hear outstanding flaws, make a note of where they are and maybe attempt to further clean the wav files before encoding to mp3. Some folks recommend using headphones when cleaning the wav file. I've tried it and it works good but they get a little uncomfortable after about an hour. I have a 3 way set of speakers hooked up to my computer, which I use. You can also take your output from your sound card and run another cable back to your receiver and listen to the files through your stereo speakers. Whatever rings your bell and what ever you think is going to do the best job.

When I'm satisfied that I have the song playing back as good as I can get it then I encode the original wav files at a bit rate that I want to share with others. I think there are a lot of folks out there who are selling this service. Folks are taking their vinyl records to places to have them put on CD, then those charging for the service are downloading the songs from file sharing programs and charging folks big bucks for this service. ASK YOURSELF IF ALL THE EFFORT YOUR PUTTING INTO THIS IS JUST GOING TO BE PASSED AROUND THE NET FOR FREE. I've done many an old vinyl record and posted.