The sound is flowing easily into your computer now, and you’re ready to capture it to your hard drive. The first step is making sure that the audio-recording program is getting the signal from the line-in jack. You can use Roxio, Nero, or any other media program capable of recording audio for this process. For this discussion, however, I’ve chosen to go the free route and use an open source program called Audacity. You can find this program at www.sourceforge.net.
Open sourcemeans that both the program and the underlying code are dis-tributed freely to the public. Donations are always welcome to support their effort, however.
Using a program like Audacity is a good way to introduce yourself to the world of digital-to-analog recording without spending a lot. If you later decide to move on to a program with more features, you haven’t lost a thing.
Download Audacity and follow the instructions to install the program on your machine. Open the program and make sure that it’s active, as shown in Figure 6-6.
Figure 6-6:
Audacity’s program window.
First, make sure that the audio file is recorded in stereo. Select File➪
Preferences, and click the Audio I/O tab. Select the option “2 (Stereo)” in he bottom pull-down menu to record in stereo, as shown in Figure 6-7.
Also make sure that you’ve selected the correct sample rate for your project.
The recording should default to the CD-quality rate of 44.1 kHz. Note that unless you’re running professional-level audio equipment, you aren’t likely to get the same quality as you would from a factory-duplicated CD. That’s just the nature of the equipment you’re using. However, the recording should still retain virtually all the quality. If you record at a lower sample rate, you’ll lose sound quality. Figure 6-8 shows how you choose the default sample rate.
I like Audacity for its simple interface. You have straightforward controls that are easy to understand and use. However, you can’t check the audio level of the file before you begin recording. Therefore, it’s important to start low on the volume and raise it using test recordings to get a decent level (a higher-level recording program would have some kind of meter to show the volume of the audio being recorded).
To check the volume levels, press the Play button on your analog device and click the Record button in Audacity (it’s the large circular button with the smaller dot on it, as shown in Figure 6-6). A visual representation of the audio being captured scrolls across the screen, as shown in Figure 6-9.
After you’ve recorded a bit of the audio, click Stop, move the cursor back to the beginning by clicking where you want it on the visual representation of the audio, and click Play.
Figure 6-7:
Audio I/O options.
If the volume levels are too high, the audio will distort and you’ll get a dirty recording. Digital distortion is bad — very bad. It’s full of glitches and static that’s unusable, and you want to avoid this at all costs.
Figure 6-9:
Recording with Audacity.
Figure 6-8:
Sample rate options.
You know your audio is too loud if you notice either of the following things:
You can see a peak in the audio (part of the visual audio representation touches the top of the recording audio track).
You can hear an unpleasant distortion or glitchiness during playback of the file.
Again, your goal is to make sure that you have as much volume as pos-sible without encountering distortion. You can adjust the signal level going into the player by opening Windows XP Audio Mixer, selecting Options➪
Recording, and making sure that the Line In check box is selected. Then click the OK button to open the mixer. Start with the fader at about 25 percent and move it up or down, depending on your volume needs.
When you get the best possible audio level, it’s time to make your recordings.
It’s always a good idea to start the digital recording before the analog audio recording to make sure that you get everything from the original recording.
Otherwise, you could chop off some of the analog audio. You can always go back and edit out the unused digital audio at the beginning or end of the track.
Start the digital recording, and then start the analog device. You should notice the audio wave shown by Audacity as the sound is recorded. When you get to the end of the song, click Stop, and you should see a window that is similar to Figure 6-10. The audio is temporarily held in a file associated with Audacity, and it’s now time to export the audio.
Select File➪Export as WAV. (You can also export to OGG Vorbis, or to MP3 with a plug-in called a LAME encoder, which is available at http://source forge.net.) You’re now ready to save the file, as shown in Figure 6-11.
You’ve successfully recorded your analog song to the digital world — Congratulations!
Cleaning up
You should know that simply recording your records or cassettes to the digi-tal realm does not automatically make them sound better. This process just makes a digital representation of how the analog source sounds. However, you can clean things up a bit.hearing the audio you want to keep.