REPOST: Resurrecting the Dead

[CharlesMiller]

Yay. I recently rediscovered a series of cassette tapes dating back to my old (and short-lived) Pacifica radio program in the early 1980s. I cautiously tried one tape on a trusty Caliphone cassette player, and it seems to be okay---so I'm assuming all the tapes are still pretty flexible... Memorex tape still rules (knock on wood).

ONLY PROBLEM is that I'm hearing a little drift, picking up bleedover from the other side of the cassette tape, so I'm guessing this is either a tape head misalignment or the tape itself has become physically distorted over the long decades of storage.

I would LOVE to transfer this old crap over to CD, retaining as much clarity as possible, before the tapes disintegrate into dust. So, I suppose I'm asking for advice toward realizing this objective... What equipment, what software, to what gods do I pray?

Gracias, mi amigos

 

[up-fiddler]

I cautiously tried one tape on a trusty Caliphone cassette player, and it seems to be okay---so I'm assuming all the tapes are still pretty flexible...

Have you tried the tape on any other cassette machines? I have an old JVC cassette player that was pretty high end when purchased that I keep around just in case a tape emergency crops up. I'm always finding stuff I 'put in a good place' twenty years ago. Dave

 

[rayc]

Tape Restoration & Archiving WAVEREPAIR

Hi,
A program made specifically for tape & LP restoration is Waverepair. Type it into a search engine & then download the trial version. It's only for PC though.
Run a line from you tape machine into your sound card & adjusting the input settings & levels & settings. Waverepair is VERY intuitive.
From the stored waver recording you can split into tracks, take samples (fiingerprints) from quiet noiuse only sections, reduce noise, EQ, amplify, compress, normalise etc etc etc.
It has noise reduction based on samples YOU take from the tape from between songs etc. Very adjustable, lots of options all with optional non destructive runs so you can undo if you didn't like the result.
From there the wave files can be dragged into Nero etc to be archived to CDR etc.
It's about US$30 for the key & well worth it. I've done a couple of hundred LPs & dozens of tapes ranging from mono to stereo. One tape of an LP I recorded in '74 came up really nicely. Another of a live band radio broadcast from '77 made a GREAT CD.
The software author wrote the program to use himself & frequently updates it & the updates are FREE.
Cheers
rayC