1-Record the record through your soundcard. This will turn the analog waveform generated by the record into a digital equivalent.No matter what kind of record you are playing, record one side at a time, so that you will wind up with two large .wav files stored in some folder.
2-Start Cool-Edit and press File/Open and navigate to the folder where the .wav files are stored. Double-click on one of the files and wait while Cool-Edit reads it and generates a waveform display. At this point you should see something like this:
Note that the waveforms do not fill the entire display, and that they do not have truncated flattened tops. In contrast, if you see something like the following waveform, your recording volume is too high:
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Also, note that you can generally see where the tracks begin and end. Of course, there are uncommon instances where you cannot tell because 2 tracks are recorded running together without any silence in-between. You will not try to separate the waveform into individual tracks at this time.
3-The first thing you will do is eliminate any 60 cycle hum present in the waveform. Go to Effects/Filters/Notch Filter. In the "Presets" box, click on "60Hz + Harmonics." The notch width box should be set to "super narrow." Click "OK" and the notch filter will remove any 6o cycle hum present. (The filter actually very selectively removes 60 cycle hum + its harmonics, 120, 180, 240, etc.). The frequency ranges filtered out in this step are so narrow that the loss will not be audible. If you are in a country that uses 50 cycle AC current, instead of the "60Hz + Harmonics" preset selection, choose "50Hz + Harmonics." If you are sure there is no AC hum present in your waveform, you can forego this step.
4-The next step is to filter out disc noise--that is, overall ambient hum generated by your equipment + the noise that the stylus makes in the groove when there is no music playing. The "signature" or wave print that this noise makes will vary from disk to disk; also, it can and does vary from side to side of the same disk. First, select a portion of your total waveform where no music, lead-in, or fade-out is audible. This will normally occur at the beginning of a record after the stylus has audibly entered the groove but before the music starts, or in-between tracks after the fade-out has ended but before the next track starts. I will now separate this step into several sub-steps:
a-Select a segment where you are likely to find pure disc noise--either at the beginning of the record before the music starts; after the music stops at the end of the waveform; or, most commonly, in between two tracks. Use the normal windows process of holding down the left mouse-button while dragging the cursor to the right or the left. This segment may overlap into music on either side (don't try to cut it too fine):
b-zoom into this selected segment by clicking the "zoom to selection" button
c-Now listen to this segment and select a portion where the residual fade-out has ceased and before the subsequent track has started. The results should now look something like this:
Listen to this selected section by clicking the "play" arrow and verify that it contains only disk noise, and not any faint sounds from a fade-out or a fade-in. Then proceed to sub-step d.
d-Click: Effects/Noise Reduction/Noise Reduction. The following noise reduction control box will appear:
Now click on the "get profile from selection" button in the upper right. Leave all of the other settings at their default values. You will now see a noise profile that looks something like this:
e- This is the noise profile we will use to filter the entire waveform, but first we must get the whole waveform back in the viewing window. And so, press the "close" button in the noise reduction control box (the box closes, but our noise "fingerprint" will stay in memory), and click the "zoom out full both axis" button. Click anywhere on the waveform to get rid of the white selected portion.
f-Now reopen the noise reduction box by again clicking effects/noise reduction/noise reduction. The noise fingerprint you made previously should reappear. Now just click "OK" and the software will filter out the noise in the entire waveform.
We are now ready to proceed to procedure 2. Or,