Archiving

CD's

If you want to archive audio CD's on Mac, use XLD[6]. It has all the features you need and just rips CD's perfectly. Highly recommend it.

Ripping physical audio

This is for mediums that aren't just data you can rip (CD's), like cassette tapes, vinyl records, etc.

Software

If your goal is doing it quick and cheap, just use Audacity[1] (v3 is classic and just works but is clunky; v4 is new and better I've heard, but I haven't tried it yet). It's free, open source, and doesn't do much, which is great.

Alternatively, you can use ocenAudio[4] which is also free and with a bit nicer of a UI.

If you want realtime effects and other features a normal DAW would have, use Reaper[5], which technically costs $75 to use but is extremely generous in it's trial period (forever). If you use it significantly, pay them because it is great software.

Hardware

Any audio interface will do, as long as it's stereo (assuming you're only trying to record two tracks at a time). The Focusrite Scarlett series is pretty great sounding, clear, and pretty inexpensive.

The quality of audio cables really doesn't matter, assuming you didn't get them from a literal trash can. Don't believe people if they tell you that certain cables "sound better"[2,3].

Method

Set up the audio device to record from (record player, tape player, etc.). Try to find one that has direct line outputs (e.g. RCA cables) instead of just headphone outputs. If that's all you have, it will work, but the output may be too hot and sound kinda wack.
Verify audio is coming from your device by listening to it how you normally would (headphones, etc.).
Set up your computer with your audio interface and software up and running.
Verify audio is coming from your audio interface by running some audio through it (e.g. add an existing audio track to the software and run it so the output is routed through the interface).
Connect the audio device's output to the interface's input. Play the audio device and make sure you can see input coming through your device through the onboard level meters (or software meters if none exist).
Play the audio. On your interface, ensure that the output doesn't go above 12-15db. We want headroom in case there is an unforeseen spike and to avoid digital clipping (which is awful).
Make some tracks in your interface (enough to catch the amount of channels you are saving) and assign the audio inputs from your interface to the channels you made. In Audacity, you can't assign tracks, so just select the number of tracks to record so that it catches your audio (e.g. my audio comes in on tracks 3 and 4, so I record 4 tracks at a time). Start your audio and start recording to verify audio is being recorded. Listen back to make sure it sounds right.
If everything is good, start your archiving!
When finished recording, do any final audio processing necessary. I like to normalize the recorded audio so it's highest peak is at -0.1 to avoid digital clipping, then add a soft long-term leveling compressor followed by a really transparent limiter, aiming for -14 LUFS integrated[7], just to bring things up to a listening level without clipping it on the input.
When finished, export everything.
- If you are using Reaper, you can set markers at every starting point and name them. Then when you go to render, you can render programmatically using the markers and name them using wildcards (e.g. $projectname - $markernumber - $markername).
Optional last step, if you are going to be doing a bunch of transfers, save the project you made and call it "TEMPLATE". Then you can just copy that file/folder and reuse it for all following recordings and save setup time.

References

Last modified: 202610110325