How to Clean up Cassette to Digital, Need Help Options

[cupelix]

Thanks in Advance for any help one of you might offer.


I am far from an Audio Pro, yet have been trying to take some old cassette tapes and restore the sound quality they originally had, and enhance it even. As for this file in particular it seems to have lost its high's and mids. When I run it through a simple EQ plugin I just dont get the clarity I need, it just sounds worse.


Here is the steps I took in recording this tape.

#1 - Used a brand new Sony Tape deck , with preamp mixer and got the sound quality as close to 0 DB as I could (as reccomended by many audio recording sites I have read). I recorded at 44.1 hz, 16 bit through my SBLIVE card. I saw no loss in quality from tape to digital.

#2 - I then loaded Wavlab and watched the spectrum analyser and saw the highs and some mids were very low. I tried to raise this up in value but it just made the sound even more distorted than it already was.


I have many tapes like this I would like to restore, re-master (or whatever the term is). I have attached this file (in original .wav format) and uploaded it to the alt.binaries.sound.mp3 newsgroup. The topic is called:

"Sound Pro's can you give tips on how to fix this Audio File? Email - Trick@lvcm.com"

You can also download the .wav file clip at - http://www.lvcm.com/trick/badwav/badwav.wav


Any help on cleanup (what software/settings to use), examples , web links on fixing this sorta of stuff is GREATLY appreciated!!!! Heck if someone wants to clean it up themselves and email it back with the steps you used to do it, that would even be better.

This advice would be Pricessless, thanks again in advance to anyone who can help this audio newbie.

Email - trick@lvcm.com


Thanks,

Trick


PS - I have read about the CEDAR system, is this hardware based only???

[Pio2001]

24/96 soundcards should bring nothing for recording tapes.

I use to record tapes, and here is my process :

1-I should first unscrew the cassette case and put the tape into a TDK MA case (or another good case), because I've found that my Teac V2030S deck have much less flutter with TDK MA cases than, for example, TDK SA. But I usually skip this. Anyway, the tapes were already recorded with flutter.

2-I know that some of my tapes were recorded on a deck with misaligned heads. I then put off the front of the deck, and screw the playback head while the tape is running until the sound is best (in this case, remember the old position in order to go back when the recording is done).

3 - Find the exact speed at which the tape should be played, looking for CDs with one track that was also recorded on the same cassette recorder at the same time. The speed correction needed to match the wav recorded from the tape and the wav ripped from the CD must be applied on the recording. I use a resampling function for this.
Say that I must set the speed to +2 % in order for the tape recording to have the same pitch as the CD. I resample then all the tapes recordings from the same recorder to 44100/1.03=42816 Hz, then reset the sample rate to 44100 in order to correct the pitch.

4 - I load all wav files in Samplitude 2496, then match volumes of each one (I sometimes need to compress dynamics), then the treble level. I use a parametric equalizer for the treble correction.

5 - I burn.

I never remove the hiss. My old tests with SoundForge noise reduction plugin were disappointing.