Ripping Vinyl to Flac....Help!

[barnsleydave]

Hope this is the right forum but here goes.

BACKGROUND

I buy CD's which I rip to flac files using dbpoweramp on my windows laptop. I then listen to them via Sonos. Either via the one plugged directly into my amp and speakers in the living room or the one in the study (converted bedroom) upstairs .

I have a collection (not large) of old vinyl records which i would like to listen to via the same system so I want to rip the vinyl to flac (or apple lossless) and copy the files to my external hard drive (where dbpoweramp puts them and sonos can acces them).

I wont make much use of the turntable after ripping them so after much debate I plumped for a audio-technica AT-LP120-USB as this had a built in phono pre-amp and a USB connection not to mention lots of good reviews for the cash.

I set it up, installed Audacity on the mac and connected it to the apple mac in the study.

Its fairly straight forward and I ripped a few tracks (using Audacity), exported them to flac files and copied them to the hard drive that sonos uses.

However the sound is....dissapointing. Its about half as quiet as exactly the same track ripped from CD using dbpoweramp.

Ive messed around with the settings but to no avail.

OBJECTIVE

So Im trying to find out how to improve the sound.

Anyone got any ideas?

 

[philbirch]

If its just the volume of the recording it might be worth investigating the ReplyGain tag in the FLAC metadata. Not every player supports it but it allows the gain to changed to normalise play back levels.

 

[Paul.]

The output of your turntable apears to be lower than line level. You can adjust this in Audacity using the Amplify tool, have a read of this..,

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Amplify_and_Normalize

 

[Paul.]

Also, check page 4 on here...

http://eu.audio-technica.com/en/resources/p52120_01_at_lp120_usb_om.pdf

There is a switch next to the USB socket which allows you to change the line level voltage, check it's set to line not Phono. If it's on phono, it is bypassing the built in phonostage.

 

[barnsleydave]

Thanks for the replies. I accidentally posted this twice. It was user error. I wasnt normalising.

Like most blokes user manuals are a last resort :type:

I'm pretty much there now. Thanks again.