How do I get a digital recording to sound like the original?
I’ve never used audacity but I converted a lot of tapes to digital audio using Cool Edit (which I this is/was free at some point? I paid for mine). Any kind of recording faces the same basic problems. Recording from a tape is a little easier than many recording situations since the source is already properly mastered in most cases. You want to use the right outputs and inputs. If your tape players has a line out this would be preferable to a headphone out. If you use line out, you should use the line in input on your computer. If you must use the headphone output, I am not sure which is the best input on the computer. I’d probably still try line in first. You want the volume coming into the computer to be as loud as it can be, without clipping. Cool Edit and most other recording software I’ve seen have some kind of monitor function, or a loopback function that will show you the level of the audio input. You want the max peaks to be right in the -3db to 0db range.
If you’re original is “playing through” the software, it will double up on the recording and screw up the sound. In Audacity this is a simple setting, but I can’t remember where it is. It says something about “software playthrough”… make sure that’s turned off. (Quick fix is to mute your computer speakers or plug in headphones). Other than that it has to be (1) Quality of your line-out, (2) Quality of your line-in, (3) Volume level of source or volume level set in Audacity, or (4) Too much compression. I doubt if it’s number four.
I’ve never used audacity but I converted a lot of tapes to digital audio using Cool Edit (which I this is/was free at some point? I paid for mine). Any kind of recording faces the same basic problems. Recording from a tape is a little easier than many recording situations since the source is already properly mastered in most cases. You want to use the right outputs and inputs. If your tape players has a line out this would be preferable to a headphone out. If you use line out, you should use the line in input on your computer. If you must use the headphone output, I am not sure which is the best input on the computer. I’d probably still try line in first. You want the volume coming into the computer to be as loud as it can be, without clipping. Cool Edit and most other recording software I’ve seen have some kind of monitor function, or a loopback function that will show you the level of the audio input. You want the max peaks to be right in the -3db to 0db range. This is extremely cruc
