Hi.
I have a thirty year old tape recording of a hand bell choir. Probably done on a basic portable cassette recorder. I want to burn a CD, and I've got it to the PC with decent levels. But equalization is the problem.
In the raw recording, the bass and mid octave bells are too quiet, the mids are a bit muddy, and the treble bells too loud and shrill. The presence is pretty good in terms of bright natural reverb. But warmth seems more elusive.
So I tried to EQ (using audacity): tried a sort of flat-topped inverted W on the EQ, rolled off sharply above and below the extreme frequencies. It was a definite improvement. But the bass was then too boomy, the mids got a little muddy, and the treble still shrill, or if I rolled the treble off more, too flat. Bringing up the bass also accentuated the mic noises, perhaps movement by the operator, but I can live with that. I did a noise reduction sample to get out the tape hiss. Any way, additional efforts at tweaking sent me down the rabbit hole. I can live with it as it stands under my first iteration, if I could just pull back a bit of the shrillness to make it more listenable. My goals are modest, just a listenable recording to share among a couple friends.
I do not believe that dolby was used initially, but not certain.
Any generic advice? I've attached a brief mp3 of the raw recording. Thanks.
Thanks.
I have a thirty year old tape recording of a hand bell choir. Probably done on a basic portable cassette recorder. I want to burn a CD, and I've got it to the PC with decent levels. But equalization is the problem.
In the raw recording, the bass and mid octave bells are too quiet, the mids are a bit muddy, and the treble bells too loud and shrill. The presence is pretty good in terms of bright natural reverb. But warmth seems more elusive.
So I tried to EQ (using audacity): tried a sort of flat-topped inverted W on the EQ, rolled off sharply above and below the extreme frequencies. It was a definite improvement. But the bass was then too boomy, the mids got a little muddy, and the treble still shrill, or if I rolled the treble off more, too flat. Bringing up the bass also accentuated the mic noises, perhaps movement by the operator, but I can live with that. I did a noise reduction sample to get out the tape hiss. Any way, additional efforts at tweaking sent me down the rabbit hole. I can live with it as it stands under my first iteration, if I could just pull back a bit of the shrillness to make it more listenable. My goals are modest, just a listenable recording to share among a couple friends.
I do not believe that dolby was used initially, but not certain.
Any generic advice? I've attached a brief mp3 of the raw recording. Thanks.
Thanks.