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dreib
Active member
I compressed, Eq'd, and used a limiter.
Im not sure what you mean, use 2 tracks?...it is summed mono.
I compressed, Eq'd, and used a limiter.
Im not sure what you mean, use 2 tracks?...it is summed mono.
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Tim Gillett
Banned
Yes it's summed to mono, just like I said.
How did you capture it? Did you use a stereo tape machine? Did you capture both tracks? At what stage was it summed to mono?
Summing a stereo or dual mono cassette recording to mono without first adjusting azimuth is a recipe for losing the highs!
BTW nice little track. Good playing and singing.
D
dreib
Active member
Im outta my league here, here was my process.
Put tape in player, armed a track in reaper, hit play on the cassette player and record in my DAW and bingo...done!
Or so I thought.
Aside from the azimuth thing how would you, or anyone for that matter , have done this.
Dumb it down.....im a drummer!
Put tape in player, armed a track in reaper, hit play on the cassette player and record in my DAW and bingo...done!
Or so I thought.
Aside from the azimuth thing how would you, or anyone for that matter , have done this.
Dumb it down.....im a drummer!
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Tim Gillett
Banned
LOL. Stay cool, it doesnt matter. Sorry to complicate it for you.
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dreib
Active member
Dont leave me hangin!! Now im curious!
Lt. Bob
Spread the Daf!
that's pretty much what i would have done or rather ..... that's pretty much what I'm doing right now with dozens and dozens of 25-40 year old cassettes.
Only difference is I use nothing but hardware so I mix the tapes down to my Masterlinks.
I apply EQ as I'm doing it to make the downloaded (burned to CD in my case) end result sound the best I can.
While I'm aware of other considerations such as azimuth and am perfectly capable of doing that adjustment I haven't bothered with it. More effort than I care to go to.
If there was a pattern of everything sounding bad I might but it sounds fine as is so I have other things to do with my time.
While Tim is correct about getting the very best out of it, not everyone is that anal about old live recordings.
If you're getting results you like then don't worry about it.
IF you want the VERY best possible then you should consider sending the tape to someone like Tim and paying them for the transfer.
Otherwise you're doing fine.
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dreib
Active member
Roger that! Im pretty happy as is, I just wanted to make sure i wasnt missing something obvious.
Thanks guys!
Thanks guys!
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Tim Gillett
Banned
Lt. Bob,
You havent worried about adjusting azimuth. Does that mean that anybody who does is anal?
The main reason people dont adjust azimuth is because almost no cassette machines had a user control on the machine. If there was, they'd probably twiddle it, even if they didnt know what it did. They'd soon find out.
In the early days of home video there was always a front panel user "tracking control" so as to manually adjust for the best picture. See attached photo.
Also attached is photo of a Tascam cassette deck, custom modified with a user azimuth control. I made this mod myself as I got sick of fiddling around with a tiny screwdriver on the azimuth screw.
Now it's easy. It takes me all of 5 seconds to adjust the azimuth on a 90 minute tape which I need to get right first time. I dont want to have to spend another 90 minutes doing the job again. That works out at less than 0.1% extra time spent per tape.
Adjusting azimuth is much quicker than manually EQing a muffled recording - muffled because the azimuth was not adjusted...
Worse, EQing can never bring back highs lost by misaligned azimuth.
And cassettes were notorious for misaligned azimuth.
And another thing. If it's a Dolby recording and playback azimuth is just a little bit off, all bets are off for Dolby tracking.
But dont listen to me. I'm anal. Apparently.
To each his own.
Cheers Tim
Attachments
Lt. Bob
Spread the Daf!
dude .... anal is a personality type ..... not an insult. But take it as you wish.
You are pretty ridiculous though.
You're every bit as bad as Beck said you were as far as arguing over nothing. You're always right and if anyone else doesn't follow your instructions it gotta be because they're not smart like you . What a wasted load.
let me add you to my ignore list so I don't have to listen to your argumentative crap anymore..... .
You are pretty ridiculous though.
You're every bit as bad as Beck said you were as far as arguing over nothing. You're always right and if anyone else doesn't follow your instructions it gotta be because they're not smart like you . What a wasted load.
let me add you to my ignore list so I don't have to listen to your argumentative crap anymore..... .
Lt. Bob
Spread the Daf!
ahhh . that's better.
Dude ..... you know exactly nothing about recording I don't know ..... I've spent many times the hours you have in studios and I'm not interested in another circular arguer who just goes on and on and on and on with no end ever.
Dude ..... you know exactly nothing about recording I don't know ..... I've spent many times the hours you have in studios and I'm not interested in another circular arguer who just goes on and on and on and on with no end ever.
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Tim Gillett
Banned
Just show me where I'm wrong.
That's all you have to do.
You, Beck or anyone.
It doesnt matter who.
And I'll thank you for it.
Tim
That's all you have to do.
You, Beck or anyone.
It doesnt matter who.
And I'll thank you for it.
Tim
rayc
retroreprobate
Be careful with noise cleaning programs - when you sample the noise & use the program to remove it you have to be aware that not only the noise is removed but also that set of sounds (for want of a better term) from the muisc content. The degreee of noise removal can be adjusted in many such programs (I use Waverepair for LP & cassette dig/restos) & in some instances can be set to do so based on the amount of music content is available (such as cleaning the quiet passages gently, the loud passage almost not at all & the gaps inbetween music very heavilty - poorly done this can also lead to an almost compressor like pumping which is pretty awful).
I use a good couple of cassette players; I clean the heads & capstan before each session and, when doing old 4 tracks use the same machine where possible & same model when the former isn't.
The biggest issue I've found is the quality of the original recording - many folk weren't inlcined to clean heads etc in the 70's - I frequently find that chanel balance is off as well.
As for NR - everyone's right - many folk used to record with Dolby for playback in the car on a non dolby unit so that the signal could compete with car/road noise.
If I recall Dolby etc boosted selected EQ to "fill" the tape - many folk quite liked the sound on playback with non compatible units - a bit like the preferred EQ settings on an MP3 player I suppose.
I use a good couple of cassette players; I clean the heads & capstan before each session and, when doing old 4 tracks use the same machine where possible & same model when the former isn't.
The biggest issue I've found is the quality of the original recording - many folk weren't inlcined to clean heads etc in the 70's - I frequently find that chanel balance is off as well.
As for NR - everyone's right - many folk used to record with Dolby for playback in the car on a non dolby unit so that the signal could compete with car/road noise.
If I recall Dolby etc boosted selected EQ to "fill" the tape - many folk quite liked the sound on playback with non compatible units - a bit like the preferred EQ settings on an MP3 player I suppose.
B
bluzgtr
New member
50 year restoration project
I just finished a project involving digitizing and restoring analog tapes going back to 1962, covering the full career of a name-brand singer - sorry, no names. When I signed on, I expected I was going to have a bunch of professionally recorded tapes. WHat I got included some of those, but also included a lot of "Throw the cassette player on the front of the stage" type recordings. I had every kind of problem you can imagine, from tapes recorded at way too low a volume, to seriously overloaded and clipped tapes to tapes damaged after the fact by strong magnetic fields. I even had two with constantly changing azimuth, caused by a serious build-up of tape residue on the capstan wheel, which makes the tape ride up and down enough to override the guides.I don't know what your software budget is like, or whether you can justify the expense, but I'll offer the following. I started out using a lot of different plug-ins, including a bunch from Waves, Voxengo, Cakewalk, etc. By about halfway through the project, and through to the end, I was using just two. Izotope's RX2 Advanced and Ozone 4.
The procedure of getting a noise profile and removing the noise, being careful not to remove program material, has been described by prior posters. But with RX2, you can do that, then go in and remove individual sounds, like a tapping foot on the stage, or an audience cell phone. And the Declipper function flat-out amazes me every time I use it. You can take a badly clipped digital recording that a couple if years ago would have been destined for the trash, and turn it into a usable recording. Astounding! Ozone is a mastering plug-in, and I'm not a mastering engineer, but even in my hands it does a creditable job restoring the sparkle to old, muddy recordings. It's not going to create something that isn't there, but if it has a thread of something you want still present, Ozone will bring it out.
Disclaimer: I don't work for Izotope, and I don't receive any financial remuneration from them for recommending their products, although they gave me a free t-shirt once.
I just finished a project involving digitizing and restoring analog tapes going back to 1962, covering the full career of a name-brand singer - sorry, no names. When I signed on, I expected I was going to have a bunch of professionally recorded tapes. WHat I got included some of those, but also included a lot of "Throw the cassette player on the front of the stage" type recordings. I had every kind of problem you can imagine, from tapes recorded at way too low a volume, to seriously overloaded and clipped tapes to tapes damaged after the fact by strong magnetic fields. I even had two with constantly changing azimuth, caused by a serious build-up of tape residue on the capstan wheel, which makes the tape ride up and down enough to override the guides.I don't know what your software budget is like, or whether you can justify the expense, but I'll offer the following. I started out using a lot of different plug-ins, including a bunch from Waves, Voxengo, Cakewalk, etc. By about halfway through the project, and through to the end, I was using just two. Izotope's RX2 Advanced and Ozone 4.
The procedure of getting a noise profile and removing the noise, being careful not to remove program material, has been described by prior posters. But with RX2, you can do that, then go in and remove individual sounds, like a tapping foot on the stage, or an audience cell phone. And the Declipper function flat-out amazes me every time I use it. You can take a badly clipped digital recording that a couple if years ago would have been destined for the trash, and turn it into a usable recording. Astounding! Ozone is a mastering plug-in, and I'm not a mastering engineer, but even in my hands it does a creditable job restoring the sparkle to old, muddy recordings. It's not going to create something that isn't there, but if it has a thread of something you want still present, Ozone will bring it out.
Disclaimer: I don't work for Izotope, and I don't receive any financial remuneration from them for recommending their products, although they gave me a free t-shirt once.
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Tim Gillett
Banned
Why not upload us some demo mp3 files of before and after. Then we can actually hear the difference.
Tim
Tim
C
chakravarthy
New member
Dreib,
Have you tried noise reduction. I use Adobe 2 audition and have had reasonable success with this. Initially
I used the available fft s and found that I killed many frequencies later I got better results with sampling the noise, if you still have a few inches of run ins to sample or gaps between numbers. Recently I found that we can identify the noise in a 30 band equalizer and selectively cut off the noise. Having collected a few with this done and saved each time I later Did a mixdown importing all into a multitrack.
I worked on songs recorded 50 -60 years ago, stored badly and were nearly lost to the world .I am 64 yrs of age and so found it rewarding when I heard the songs as I had in the theatres as a child. It is Very time consuming though.
Hope this helps.
Chakravarthy.
Have you tried noise reduction. I use Adobe 2 audition and have had reasonable success with this. Initially
I used the available fft s and found that I killed many frequencies later I got better results with sampling the noise, if you still have a few inches of run ins to sample or gaps between numbers. Recently I found that we can identify the noise in a 30 band equalizer and selectively cut off the noise. Having collected a few with this done and saved each time I later Did a mixdown importing all into a multitrack.
I worked on songs recorded 50 -60 years ago, stored badly and were nearly lost to the world .I am 64 yrs of age and so found it rewarding when I heard the songs as I had in the theatres as a child. It is Very time consuming though.
Hope this helps.
Chakravarthy.
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dreib
Active member
I had one hell of a busy weekend with the family and this week is nuts as well so im not even sure I will have time to mess with it. I did upload 2 songs last week that I messed with so feel free to check em out over at the mp3 thread and leave comments there also.
Peace & Laundry
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Tim Gillett
Banned
Sure, I've listened to your tracks but I was referring to bluzgtr (above my post).
Cheers Tim
Cheers Tim