This has been a very much requested tutorial. Hopefully this one breaks it all down for you!:
What’s All Involved to Record a Turntable into a Computer
Most turntables are RCA. They’re those red and white cables that always look outdated and old!
So, simply plug in your power, plug in these RCA cables accordingly (Red is right speaker, White is Left speaker), and if your turntable has the option, select LINE.
On your audio interface’s pre-amps, you should have the option to switch between LINE and INST. Switch this to INST, that way you’ll be able to really dial in the right amount of volume!:
Also note, in my case, my audio interface does not have an RCA input for recording, so I had to use an adapter to go from RCA to TS, that way I could plug it in to record, as well as use my audio interface’s pre-amps!
And for setting up your cables, that’s pretty much all there is to it! Now it’s just a matter of setting it up inside FL Studio!
Some audio interfaces may actually have an option to plug in directly RCA as an input so you can record. If it says OUTPUT by RCA, that is sending audio out to let’s say some speakers, which is not what we want. We want input.
Sidenote – Lots of Adapters!
Just a quick side note, if you think you’ll make music for a long time, it’s nice to purchase a bunch of different adapters to have laying around your studio. Things such as RCA to TS, and TRS to RCA etc.
A website called Monoprice.com offers these for around $1 -/+ for each one. Just bundle up on a bunch of different ones, and cables, too. You’ll be grateful later on!
Recording a Turntable into FL Studio
Edison is such a versatile tool – that’s what I recommend to record your turntable into FL Studio with.
Open up FL Studio, and then open up the mixer. Click on any mixer insert, and open up Edison. (CTRL + E is the shortcut to open up Edison. Otherwise, you’ll have to click one of the slots, hover over Select, and find Edison within that list.)
Next, you’ll have to select what channels to record to! So since my audio interface only has two inputs to record, that will be inputs 1 + 2. If you’re audio interface has more, select accordingly!
This allows FL Studio to see the audio coming through inputs 1 + 2. And since Edison is on that channel, that means our turntable’s audio signal will pass through Edison. If we hit record on Edison and play our turntable, we should now see the audio get recorded in Edison!
Now you can either save this recorded audio to a file with the disk icon, or you can click + drag your recorded audio out of Edison with the top right mouse arrow and file icon in Edison.
And that’s pretty much it! If you have any further questions about setting up your turntable to record into your computer, just leave a comment below!