Can you backward normalize to eliminate noise floor????

[FZfile]

I mean can you normalise a file down to eliminate the noise floor.

The reason i ask is because I am transferring some 4trk tapes to to Cool Edit, and the programs showing a -60 to -65dB noise floor with nothing playing.

What is a good noise floor to shoot for running a portastudio thru a little light compression (Composer Pro) and some Eq(digital) massaging into an Audiowork2 soundcard?????

thanks

-mike

 

[TexRoadkill]

Compression will only raise your noise floor. The only way to lower the noise floor is with Expansion. It is basically the opposite of compression and takes any signal above the threshold and raises it by the ratio amount. In this case you would set the threshold right above the noise floor. That will only really affect the hiss you hear during the fade outs and breaks.

-65db sounds a touch high but that is pretty average for casette tape. About the best you could hope for is around -75-80db. Use the best deck possible and clean the heads for best results.

You can remove a little bit of the hiss you hear while music is playing with noise reduction programs on your DAW software but you can only reduce a slight amount before it starts to ruin your high end. You can make casette sound a little better but it will never sound like an original digital recording.

 

[FZfile]

That makes sense now...

I was approaching it from the wrong end.

I screwed around with the gating and that tightens it up (to about -78dB).

thanks.

-mike