Cassette tape noise clean-up on wav file

  • Thread starter Thread starter Eric Altizer
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Eric Altizer

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What is the most effective way to reduce tape noise on a wav file with a voice recording without distorting the audio sound? I am trying to make professional sounding cds from reel-to-reel and cassette tape recordings. I am using Audacity for sound editing and I have been trying to use the noise reduction feature with little success so far. It seems to erase everything accept for a few strange sounding noises. I will keep trying. Is Sound Forge more effective for tape noise reduction? What techniques do you pros use for tape noise reduction? I have heard that this can reduce the quality of the sound recording.
 
Re: tape restoration

Glen,
How much would you charge to do all that? :) I have several hundred tapes to restore in my spare time. Hey nobody said it would be easy right? That was a fantastic thread and very informative thank you. Looks like I will be spending alot of time on this one. You ARE the man!
 
I'm not sure what you mean by "all that". :)

It totally depends upon the size and difficulty of the job. It can cost on average anywhere from five bucks per minute of material (small jobs of just a few minutes length or especially difficult restoration circumstances) to a buck and a quarter per minute of material (large jobs with little or no special circumstances).

Nixon's 18 minutes would cost a couple of million. :D

G.
 
I've had good results with Virtos Noise Wizard. Nice bit of software, effective and pretty cheap.
 
That would be an especially "deep" restoration circumstance. I'll check my collection.
 
i find the noise and hiss reduction on cooledit to be very nice.
 
And records? (and Feynman??)

I am transfering some records to CD. On some I just leave them as they are, because they are not damaged and a bit of that noise just makes it even better. But I want to restore this cool Coltrane record that has a lot of schkschkschkschk... Anybody knows a good new plugin/software to reduce the scratchy noise?
Thanks, and Glen, I share your admiration for Dr. Feynman and I always stopped at that picture in his physics book and chuckled...
Thanks for the memory! ;)
 
My favorites are A Love Supreme and The Ultimate Blue Train. Hey I was wondering about that picture so thanks for shedding some light on the subject.

I tried again to use the noise reduction in Audacity tonight with absolutely no results. I tried everything I could think of to make it work. Forget about it. Thus I am movin on as per all of your great suggestions! Many thanks.
 
Record a bit of just tape noise, then play with the EQ and filters to see what settings will remove it. You need to isolate whatever the noise is in order to remove it.
 
eq and filters

Dani,
First I select a short piece of the offending tape noise signal without any of the recording on it, then I select "noise removal" from the effects menu, then I select "get noise profile", then I select "remove noise". I have also tried sliding the levels bar more to the left side ("less") which helped a little but not very much.

Can you please elaborate further on what you mean by "play with the EQ and filters to see what settings will move it". I would appreciate it thanks.

By the way, just for the record I really do like Audacity very much as a sound editing tool. I have had great luck with it for the most part. This is the only problem encountered thus far which is probably my fault anyway for lack of experience. :)
 
Coltrane, OM

I am trying to restore "OM" by Coltrane, seems to be quite exclusive, so I'll keep trying!
 
Samplitude

Actually, I recall using a noise reduction tool in Samplitude which was quite good. You selected a piece of noise without music and the algorithm would "substract" it from the rest. You could also set how much it would act.
:)
 
Om

"The sound that is not made by two things striking together" or the "unstruck sound". Have any of you heard this? Joseph Campbell describes it as the unheard hummings of atoms and molecules. Maybe there is sound in space afterall.
 
NERO software has Hiss Suppression in the burning stage of audio files
Too bad, you couldn't output to another file, or edit the file with options below

A few other features
Normailzer
Equalizer ( default pre-sets and ability to save custom ones )
Track Fade In and Fade Out
Karaoke ( remove vocals. Doesn't really work )
Echo
 
cyclo said:
Actually, I recall using a noise reduction tool in Samplitude which was quite good. You selected a piece of noise without music and the algorithm would "substract" it from the rest. You could also set how much it would act.
:)
Click to expand...
Sony's Noise Reduction 2.0 works much the same, and I've gotten some very good results with it. The key is in getting a really steady and consistant noiseprint. You can also tweak individual frequencies to help reduce artifacts.
 
Magix Audio Cleaning Lab 10

Hey everyone! Check this out. I just downloaded a free demo of MAGIX AUDIO CLEANING LAB 10 and wowwwww this is really great software. It allows you to clean and master a track while listening to the audio in your headphones! This is a comprehensive package with sophisticated tools and studio effects. I was able to clean up a really noisy cassette recording and master it without to much manual forensics involved with pretty darn good results. The price....30 bucks!

Can someone with some experience please tell me what they think of this software please? I think I might just be dreaming.

Did I mention that I really do like this software :) :)
 
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Magix = good

I would have their Samplitude if I didn't already have Cubase SX
 
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