Recording/listening to a vinyl mix from your laptop?

[GregWhelan]

I was recently gifted a new mixer from my family. Although I've had my Technics 1210s for 20 years now my usage has been minimal in the last decade due to marriage, job, starting a family.

Anyway, I am keen to start recording my vinyl mixes to my laptop but I'm unsure how to do this. The mixer comes with a USB cable that goes from the mixer to my laptop. I plugged that in and rather naively thought that something would 'load' on the laptop, but nothing has happened.

Any advice please. I am not fussed about any kind of DJ tool software where I can edit tracks etc. It is very much 2 record decks and mixer - no other equipment.

[thebanned1]

Re: Recording/listening to a vinyl mix from your laptop?

Plug in the USB and run something like soundforge or maybe even https://www.audacityteam.org/ which is free, go into options for recording and select the option for the USB input, hit record and start recording...should be as simple as that...watch your levels though as you might blow the card

best advice is to record at -6 db and the run it through the normalizer

[GregWhelan]

Re: Recording/listening to a vinyl mix from your laptop?

Thanks.

I will download audacity.

When you say 'run it through the normaliser' what do you mean specifically please?

[thebanned1]

Re: Recording/listening to a vinyl mix from your laptop?

Thanks.

I will download audacity.

When you say 'run it through the normaliser' what do you mean specifically please?

it's a volume plugin. it should normalize the volume to 0db

[diegoff]

Re: Recording/listening to a vinyl mix from your laptop?

soundforge does it without a plugin.
itīs in the tools/process menu

[GregWhelan]

Re: Recording/listening to a vinyl mix from your laptop?

I had a good 2 hour session on Saturday night playing some old tracks and recording the set. When I went to listen to it back, the sound was very very distorted so there must have been an input mistake somewhere. I should have just played 2-3 minutes of a track and then played it back to ensure the quality was ok, but you live and learn! Must say it was good to get back on the decks!

[barski]

Re: Recording/listening to a vinyl mix from your laptop?

You most likely recorded too loud. Make sure that you use the Line-In input of your laptop, not the Mic input, and make sure the rec level is not too high. If you have realtek soundchips and software, setting the line-in volume level at 60 is a good start.

Personally I would record straight to WAV without any plugins, and save it as 44.100 Hz. 16Bit, Stereo.
You can always normalize or amplify later. Good luck!