A couple of pages/months ago, I explained that the NAD uses Vinyl Studio, which has a no-cost tier (called "VS Lite") as well as one with a price tag. The free version digitizes the LP and allows you to split up and save the raw tracks WAV. To reiterate, you can also clean up the pops and clicks, but you can't save the fully cleaned-up albums unless you spring for the software.

Interestingly enough, the August issue of Stereophile arrived today, and it has a review of an audio company called Channel D's new "Pure Vinyl" LP recording and editing software and a couple of its phono preamps. Both the program and the preamps are pretty pricey ($299 for the software; $3799 or $1599 for the gear). Channel D isn't a name I'm familiar with, so even though I haven't read the piece yet, I'm obviously curious about it; it's about 5000 words or so.

Audacity will allow you to break up the tracks individually but I chose not to just for convenience. I didn't want to spend a lot of time copying and pasting tracks to individual files and then renaming them. Audacity saves its files in a proprietary format that most programs won't open, but it lets you convert those files to either WAV or MP3 formats once you have cleaned them up. I was able to make most of the vinyl I converted almost as quiet as a CD. I figure for $35 you can't beat it.

"Copying and pasting tracks to individual files and then renaming them"? Wow, that does sound labored. Vinyl Studio has windows to enter the names and times of the tracks in the album sequence before (or during) digitizing. After recording is finished, breaking the tracks is simple; you just go into the sound file (it's rendered as a waveform graph like you might have seen in GarageBand) and use your cursor to edit or break it. Sometimes I've altered the playback to my liking, by giving more or less space between tracks.

Btw, I just finished that Stereophile piece, and the gist of it seems to be that many of these programs are great once you get the hang of them, but for most non-techies they're also really clunky and non-intuitive, so there's always a learning curve. I actually didn't find that to be the case with Vinyl Studio. On the other hand, the author of the Stereophile article, Michael Fremer, seems to have experienced all kinds of speed bumps before getting into the Pure Vinyl program, whose stated aim is to make the digitized file sound better than analog with the help of 24-bit/192kHz resolution capability and a RIAA equalization curve option. If any Outlaws wanna try it themselves, "Pure Vinyl" is available for a 15-day free trial at channld.com/pure-vinyl.html.

Audacity has the capability to add a label track for song titles, lyrics and notes but it is too much work just to listen to albums I have had for 40 years. Thank goodness I always kept them in great condition because they sound as good today as they did when I was a kid.