how important is soundcard quality? NR settings default

[downonthestreet]

One of my projects at the moment is transferring to CD some old, very poor quality tapes of some 77/78 bands rehearsing their original songs under extremely primitive recording conditions (ie: a single, cheap mike for a whole band, connected to a portable cassette player!). Of course, the quality of sound on the original cassettes is terrible, but I'm finding that the CD versions are sort of tinny by comparison (not good!), though possibly clearer in some ways. Problem is, the clarity comes at a cost - the sound of the bands, drums in particular, are not as "authentic" as on the tapes. There's a sense of processing about them that detracts from the naturalness of the sound, and as I say, the overall sound is tinny and glarey in the tops compared with the original tape recordings.

The remastering to CD has been done by a good mate of mine who uses CEP and knows much more than I about HD recording, but he has a pretty ordinary soundcard. I am vastly ignorant in comparison to him in relation to HD recording, but I have an Audigy Platinum soundcard and module, and I'm thinking of trying out some remasters of the same tapes myself to see if my better quality soundcard makes a discernible difference.

The remastering my friend did was generally basic (at my request) consisting of a simple NR and Normalising - he tried other versions of each song with various tweaks, also, but despite his valiant efforts, the tapes still sound better to my ears.

Apart from the soundcard quality element, I'm wondering if anyone out there has extensive experience in transferring tape to CD, and if so, whether NR and Normalising is the best way to go for accuracy of reproduction off cassette tapes. I'm going to try mixing down without NR, with NR but without Normalising, with Dehissing rather than NR, Amping up to increase dB just short of clipping instead of Normalising etc etc, but would be grateful for any tips in advance. I'd rather not have to attempt to re-invent the wheel if someone already knows what's best for what I am trying to achieve.

Finally, I changed the NR settings in CEP some time ago to the following:

Snapshots in Profile: 4000
Live Update checked
FFT size: 8192 points
Remove Noise checked
Reduce by 40dB
Precision Factor 9
Smoothing Amount 1
Transition Width 0dB
Bypass unchecked

My HD recording friend recommended these settings as optimal. I respect his opinion and recommendations absolutely, but I would like to know CEP's default settings for NR so I can restore them if I choose. Can anyone help with this, please?

Cheers

[downonthestreet]

No response, so I'll cut all the boring detail and get to the guts.

1. How important is soundcard quality in the final CD sound quality?

2. Can someone give me the default NR settings for CEP, please.

Cheers

[treymonfauntre]

i don't like to do plug-in noise reduction at all. i do a lot of vinyl rips and its just too damn hard to make it sound good with any type of noise reduction

[downonthestreet]

Interesting, Treymonfauntre. What about de-hissing for cassestte tape recordings, or do you shy away from anything like that?

[Havoc]

Soundcard is important as long as it doesn't add more noise/distortion than your original already has. For transfers from LP and tape, it is less important than recordings from mic. But having a card that doesn't add noise itself is useful.

Any of the SB's should be treated with caution. They do internal re-sampling to 48kHz and some of the range distort if you go above -6dB input (IIRC that last number).

Amping up to increase dB just short of clipping instead of Normalising

Well...that is what normalising is about, amping up xdB short of clipping.

[BRIEFCASEMANX]

the biggest thing are the digital to analog converters. I have an audigy 2 and it's converters are COMPLETE CRAP. I would not advise doing anything that you want to sound good using a soundblaster.

[Blue Bear Sound]

Originally Posted by downonthestreet

No response, so I'll cut all the boring detail and get to the guts.

1. How important is soundcard quality in the final CD sound quality?

2. Can someone give me the default NR settings for CEP, please.

Cheers

I can't help you with question 2 (I don't use CEP), but for question 1 - soundcard quality is IMMENSELY important if you're using it for the A/D conversion. Digital recording quality is ALL about the quality of the converters - cheap converters = poor sound.

But if you're only using the soundcard as a digital interface (ie, no analog-digital conversion is taking place), then the card itself doesn't matter (since it's only passing along a digital signal and not doing any processing).

[lpdeluxe]

I opened up CEP 2.0 and the settings that came up, which by definition have to be default, were:
FFT Size: 4096 points
Reduce by: 40dB
Precision Factor: 7
Smoothing Amount: 1
Transition Width: 0

[downonthestreet]

Thanks all, for your replies.

[Blue Bear Sound]

Originally Posted by Some fuckwit named Frazier

F--Kin BS dude LOL you sound ridiculous -Frazier

To the moron who neg. rep'd me with this message on my post above: you're clearly quite clueless on recording principles and practices, aren't you?

idiot...

[VSpaceBoy]

LOL, I love it.