/// The software

Best apps for recording vinyl onto your Mac

There isn’t any native software specialising in vinyl recording on your Mac, so you will need to download a third-party app. A simple ‘vinyl’ search in the Mac App Store will provide two options – Vinylstudio and Vinyl Ripper, both of which are paid-for apps and provide intuitive controls for USB recording. Other alternatives, including the free-to-use Audacity, can be downloaded from the internet. Go to System Preferences>security & Privacy>general to allow this. Here are our three favourite vinyl recording apps…

Audacity Free Audacityteam.org

Of the apps purpose-built for vinyl conversion featured here, Audacity is the only one that’s totally free, and for that reason it is perfectly adequate to use. However, the interface isn’t as simple as it could be, the process of splitting tracks is cumbersome and involves lots of clicking and dragging, and it isn’t really optimised for the latest Mac operating systems. If you want better, you have to pay for it, though…

Vinylstudio £28.99/$28.99 Mac App Store

With an easiest-to-understand interface that is inherently Mac, Vinylstudio starts recording as soon as the needle hits the vinyl and the whole process of recording, splitting tracks and exporting is significantly more structured and flowing than Audacity’s system. Record as many sides as you want (two, four, etc) and then work through the tabs at the top of the interface until the process is complete.

Pure Vinyl Recorder £300/$379 channld.com

If you’re incredibly picky about the sound quality in your vinyl recordings then this premium-priced download was created specifically for creating high-resolution archival quality transcriptions of your vinyl at sample rates of up to 192khz. It features a built-in phono equalisation, so you can feed the turntable’s output straight into your Mac without the need for a phono stage in the signal path. Outstanding.