First let’s list all the steps and then in the next sections go, through them in detail. Vintage records require some special handling, which we’ll get to in Copying Vintage 78s in Copying Vintage 78s. If you don’t know how to hook up your turntable, visit Connecting Legacy Devices to Your Computer in Connecting Legacy Devices to Your Computer first. These are the steps to follow:
Set Audacity’s frame rate to CDDA frames in the Selection toolbar.
Set the project rate to 32-bit float/44.1 or 16/44.1.
Copy your album into Audacity into one long track.
Make any fixes such as removing noise and pops, normalizing, compressing, and deleting unnecessary bits.
Enter metadata.
Export the Audacity tracks to CD-ready audio files.
Use your favorite CD-writing software to copy your songs to a CD.
Pop your new CD into a player and enjoy.
The most time-consuming part is fixing defects. This chapter has some tips for common fixes, and Chapter 12 is devoted entirely to fix-its and cleanups.
I like to record singles a little differently than in step 3: I prefer to record each single into its own track, so it looks like Figure 3-1.
Use the Track menu on each track to enter the song titles as the track names. At export, when all the tracks are exported to CD-ready files, each file will take the track name.
The advantage of using individual Audacity tracks per single is it’s easier to reorder them, and you can normalize volume levels in one operation. When all the songs are in one track, normalization won’t bring the quiet songs up to the same volume as the loud songs. Any variances have to be corrected one song at a time. But when multiple tracks are normalized, all of them are brought up to the same volume level in one step.