Digitizing Vinyl Records with Audacity

Another thing to note is that if you're connecting your turntable directly to the computer (rather than through a preamp), you should apply the RIAA preamp filter in Audacity. Audio preamps have circuitry which does this -- it's part of why the "phono" input is special -- but doing it digitally is probably more accurate, and doesn't involve connecting up an extra box. The RIAA filter lowers the amplitude of the higher-frequency components; the idea is that before records are made, the reverse of this filter is applied to the signal; so to play a record accurately, you need to apply this filter. Audacity has it under the "Effect" menu, in "Equalization".