In the following little tutorial I have made some screen shots to show you how you can easily digitize a vertical cut record, such as Diamond Discs or even Pathé's without having to re-wire anything. At the end, you will have a true vertical mono output of the very same quality as you were using a re-wired cartridge.
Although I regularly do use a different (commercial) program, in this tutorial we will use Audacity which is open source and therefore genuine free software.
The following screen shots apply to the 1.3.8 beta version because of some new essential features. Do not use any version prior to 1.3.0 or you may miss some important features.
In case you also would like to record with Audacity, you should ensure that you have appropriate settings made. Click on "Edit" > "Preferences" > "Quality"
Make sure that your setting are made as above. If you prefer a higher sample format, you can set it to 24-bit but be sure that your hardware supports it. Otherwise, just leave it to regular 16-bit which is CD audio standard.
Now, we're ready to work with a stereo file. In this example I am using an already existing stereo file that will be now converted to vertical mono.
To open a .wav file, click on "File" > "Import" > "Audio"
Select your file and click "Open", the .wav file will now appear:
Now, we need to split our stereo file to be able to make changes to one channel seperately. Click on the little drop down button with the Arrow where the file name is, in this case it's "test 1". Then click on "Split Stereo Track":
We now can select a single channel. To do so, click on the format description of one channel (see mouse cursor). It actually does not matter if you select the left or right channel. What matters is, that you just select one of them:
Now click on "Effect" > "Invert" to invert the selected channel:
We will then have to combine both free channels back to a stereo file as we had it before. Click on the drop down button and select "Make Stereo Track":
Both channels are back linked again:
Click now on "Tracks" > "Stereo Track to Mono":
Congrats! You now have a now have a genuine vertical mono file!
To save it, click "File" > "Export":
This naggy tag window will appear, you can ingore it by clicking "OK":
Give it a new name and save it as "WAV (Microsoft) signed 16-bit PCM":
If you are working with 24-bit, you will have a to choose "Other uncompressed files", then "Options" to select your appropriate sample depth:
That's it!
How to digitally switch to vertical cut
- WDC
- Victor IV
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- Joined: Thu Jan 08, 2009 5:07 am