Restoring from tapes

S

Sangram

New member
Hi

I am in the process of putting my entire collection of tapes (500+) on to CDs. Way too much time on my hands.

Anyway, I've run into a few tapes that badly need to be cleaned up - not hiss removal, but strabge sounding recordings with the entire top end lost, etc.

I tried my hand at redoing the tapes (I think it's called remastering but I'm not sure what that really is), adding some EQ etc.

I got two files here, one o them is on this post:
 

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  • mastered.mp3
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What I basically did was undo the NAB curve, remove the noise, apply a slightly modified curve to the highs nice and clear above about 3KHz, and add some bass boost to get the same level of thump as the original.

I have a few Qs:

1. Is this legal?
2. Is there an accepted 'best' way of doing this?
3. What do you think of this thing, and is there something obvious I'm missing out? The files are only 8 secs each, and in 96 kbps, but anything larger won't attach.

Thanks in advance

Sang
 
Many bands of the 80's are still making pretty good money today. The reason is that in the 80's not many people had cds, so they bought records. Now that record players and tape players are almost non-existent, people are re-buying those recordings on CDs from the 80s.

I suggest either do this.

OR

www.musiccity.com

There, you can download the ultimate file sharing program and download all the damn songs you want to. Even in mp3 at 128 they will sound ten times better than a recording on tape.
 
Fenix:

Thanks for your reply. I'm not going to get into MP3 versus tape here, butI still like the sound on tapes (hiss apart, which is removable to an extent). I've been on Napster and later audioGalaxy, and have benefitted tremendously from these.

Actually I was looking for an education. Sure I want the songs, and I know there are better ways to do it, but hey, I'm a DIY'er at heart, so...

Any one else?

Sang
 
you want some education? okay dude...I really hesitated on this, but here goes:

I have a couple tapes that aren't on morph or audio galaxy and the tapes have really bad oxidation. What did I do? Here's the part you shouldn't do at home kids.

I took some q-tips and some 99% isopropyl alcohol. I also grabbed a drill. I put a pen in the drill and then put the pen in the tape so that it would turn the wheel things. I dipped the q-tips in the alcohol and pressed down on the tape as the drill fast fowarded the tape from beginning to end. I got new q-tips a couple times because they accumulated so much oxidation.

Then I took out the pen from the tape and put it in the other hole and took a dry q-tip and ran the tape backwards to dry it.

This method is extremely ghetto and I don't recommend it but it did work.

I then recorded the tapes to CDR and converted the tracks to wave format and edited them with t-racks on my computer and then burned back to a cdr.

That's the way I did it.

good luck.
 
Whee!!!

That sounds like fun.

Maybe I should put them on the computer once before I do this, in case it ruins my tapes, right? :)

Thanks man. Any tips on mastering the tapes (Like, what you did in T-racks?)

Sang
 
I can't say I'd recommend this for cassettes but...

I had some reel to reel tapes (radio jingles from 1963-1971) that needed restoration. Several people recommended baking the tapes. I did some reading and decided to try it.

I baked each reel at 200 degrees for about 30 minutes. I let the tapes cool back down, strung them up and got fairly good results. Each time I changed reels, I had to clean off the tape deck, heads, capstans - everything - it was very messy. Not all of the tapes sounded good but everything that was salvageable was saved.

During the process, I just let the tapes roll and recorded them onto the hard drive. The tapes probably won't stand up to a lot of stop and start action. If you go this route, expect one pass per tape - then toss 'em. You might get a second pass but cassettes are so thin and fragile to begin with that broken tapes will probably occur frequently.

Z
 
All I did in t-racks is add some high end. I didn't compress/limit or anything like that. Tape already has a nice compressed sound to it.
 
Also, when you record to hard disc, try running the signal from the tape deck through a sonic maximiser or aural exciter. If there's one thing those things are good at, it's restoring at least a semblance of what old tapes originally had on them.
 
Thanks for all the replies. I have a fairly large collection of tapes, most of them fortunately in very good condition because they weren't played much to begin with, maybe twice or thrice. I had do some modifications on one of the tapes, the others went through fairly well after removing the hiss.

I'll see how it pans out.

Sang
 
You may probably know this but mentioning it can't hurt anyone I guess : demagnetizing the tapeheads regularly is a necessity to play back all the top end that was originally recorded on the tapes... it is also necessary to touch all the metal parts including the capstan... people often forget that and just focus on cleaning the tape head... but not you pros of course ;) Also, the rubber pinch rollers of cassette deks gather a lot of tiny dust/dirt particles, it's not a good idea to use isopropyl alcohol to remove that, better to get rubber cleaner like the one from Teac. Especially when playing old tapes that are not in good condition but contain critical material. Just my $ 0.02...
 
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