... losing quality when slowing it down. I do not have access to another machine, and having someone with a studio convert it for me being too costly.
I'm faced with the following problem.
Transferring the files straight to a PC is OK. Problem is, slowing the files down to normal speed.
The application I use mainly is Cool Edit Pro 2.0, simply because it's the one I've heard of first, and it's perfect for multi-track recording, mixing, and other such things I do from time to time. I've given Audacity a try some time ago as well, however, I was using Windows 98 at the time, and I was left with a corrupt harddrive shortly after running it [good job Microsoft]. With Cool Edit Pro [and with any other cheap Winamp plugins that I tried using on the files to slow them down], after slowing them down as much as I need, the audio seems to sound... muddy, and a bit digitized, as compared to my recollection of the original, or playback on a 3 3/4 machine [which, in the end, I do have, but the mechanical assembly is much too worn out/unstable for lengthy usage and the audio part much too low-fi for an accurate transfer]. Any of you have any idea what causes this, and if there's any ways around it, or any ways to slow it down without losing quality?
Thanks.

slowing down on the computer is only viable if you record at twice the sampling rate you want to end up with (and even then it's iffy as to whether the head on your deck can hack all those extra-high frequencies and send them correctly to your sound-card).

my advice is to get a sound card capable of 96khz samplerate, and then in cool edit use "adjust sample rate" (NOT "convert sample rate") to set it to 48khz.

buying a decent sound card that can handle 96k would _probably_ be a fair bit cheaper than getting the reel/s done professionally.

if possible, you should either get the 3 3/4 ips deck fixed or somehow rig the 7.5 ips deck to play 3 3/4.