downonthestreet
New member
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
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