Audition--record from my LP player and NOT from the microphone?

Report · Jul 31, 2020

HI, I'm using Audition/Creative Suite 2020. I'm trying to record some LP's directly into Audition. My turntable only has RCA hookups, so I'm using a VIDBOX converter to connect it to my comnputer via USB. However, Audition is recording the audio through the microphone, not the USB. I'm fairly positive my iMac does NOT have a "line in" connection. IS there a way for me to hook this up and have Audition recognize it? Right now I'm recording it with the VIDBOX app and importing it, but if possible I'd like to eliminate that step.

Report · Jul 31, 2020

The correct solution rather depends upon what signal actually comes out of the turntable RCA connectors. Is it a proper line level signal, or is it straight from the cartridge, requiring an RIAA preamp to get the level up and EQ it? If it's line level, then go to Amazon and do a search using the term 'External Sound Cards' and you'll find a range of cheap ones that plug into your USB port and let you record directly into Audition. I'm not surprised that you are having trouble with the Vidbox - they really aren't intended for digitising audio on their own.

Report · Aug 04, 2020

That's odd; I never got an e-mail saying you answered this...which is why I asked again here, LOL. Sorry about that. My turntable needs a pre-amp; my tape deck does not. But in both cases, I have RCA outputs on those devices and USB imports on my Mac. Will one of these do the job?

Report · Aug 04, 2020

The tape deck will feed directly to one of those, and so will the output of the preamp for the record deck, yes. How good the quality will be though, I don't know although it gets generally good reviews. Apparently whatever manual it comes with isn't in English, but I don't really think that matters very much with a device that simple.

Report · Aug 08, 2020

Well, it "mostly" works. It now records directly into Audition; I just can't hear it while it's recording. I'm guessing it's either a settings issue in Audition or it's to prevent feedback. Either way, it plays back just fine and the audio is exactly what I'd expect from a cassette. Depending on the source, I may "flesh out" the sound a bit, but otherwise it works fine.

Report · Aug 08, 2020

You could probably persuade Audition to let you monitor what's being recorded if you record in Multitrack, but you won't be able to in Waveform. It's not the norm though - with a normal sound device, you'd have a straight-through monitoring option in the box so there wasn't any latency. That doesn't matter if you're recording from a cassette, though you need to remember to turn it off after you've finished using it - the delay it introduces into a mic recording makes it unusable for that as a rule. And yes, there will be a processing delay between starting playback and actually hearing anything, yes.

If you go to Edit>Preferences>Multitrack and put a check in the box that says Enable Smart Monitoring, you'll get it going.