ideas for sprucing up old (poorly mixed!) cassettes?

[malgovert]

Something I am just trying to do for fun: I have an old tape of a band I used to be in - it's just a cassette so obviously the mix is fixed - but I am going to tape it to hard disk and then burn to cd. I am wondering what i can do to make it sound its best - I have steinberg Clean!, and I thought of perhaps a noise gate using wavelab or sound forge, maybe a touch of eq - any other tips or effects I could use to optimize its sound quality before burning to cd??? - there are a lot of glasses clinking and people talking - no we weren't that great - and frankly neither was our engineer - so the mix itself isn't superb, and the vocals sometimes get lost. I know it's probably a stupid idea but I thought it might be kinda fun to give to some of my old mates and if it was possible I would like to make it sound good... Cheers - Malgo.

 

[Track Rat]

CoolEditPro or SoundForge 4.5. Both have hiss reduction plug ins that will do an amazing job of removing hiss. And of course they both have EQ. As good as they both are remember; garbage in, garbage(not as hissy) out.

 

[Guest]

Yo Malgovert - A - ROONIE:

yOU Can't do too much to change things except to add some warmth with a reverb unit.

Now, I just got a CD from a fellow musician, a very good bass player, and whoever mixed this CD in a PAY-ME-NOW studio had wooden ears. The CD was as flat as a Martian Pancake.

I put a couple of tracks of the CD into my MD-8 and then ran it back to tape using some reverb and my friend was amazed at the "warmth" I added. They cut this at a live performance in a large stage-theater setting and the person who mixed the recording put them in a sterile room on Mars.

Well, that's what my ears told me anyway.

Soooo, about all you can do is remove some hiss with the right gear; and, you can add some warmth with reverb and tweaking the EQ may give you more pleasing results; you can't do too much because whatever you tweak you're tweaking the entire mix rather than a track.

Good Luck and experiment like Ben Frankling did.

Green Hornet

 

[malgovert]

Lovely - I must be doing something right then - funnily enough these are the very things I have been doing - I have soundforge and managed to get hold of the noise reduction plug-in - they were doing a free 7-day trial - course I did my usual - downloaded it - registered it then went away and forgot about it for 6 days - anyway what i saw of it it seemed pretty good - clean! also does the trick although it sometimes corrupts the files too, so they won't open once I try and access them again with sound forge. Anyway I was messing with eq and reverb too - the 'unplugged' and 'club' presets in particular seem, as you suggest, to have added some warmth. Thanks for the ideas - it's encouraging to know i am using the proper tools for the circumstances - as you say when you're tweaking a whole song instead of just a track it can drive you a bit crazy - what's good on one bit messes up another etc. Still - all good practice eh? Cheers - Malgo

 

[Guest]

Yo Malgo:

Saw that you were a TEACHER, college prep, in Saudi!!!

I just took an early out after 30 years of teaching college freshman English Composition.

Are you working for the Saudis? Well, anyway, keep the sand out of your gear.


Green Hornet

 

[malgovert]

After 30 yrs of freshman composition you probably deserve an early out Mine's english lang/lit - for the government oil company - aramco - also has a headquarters in Houston - our guys go to u.s. to study after they finish their spell with us. Love it here - but you can't always get the gear you want - as for the sand - no probs with that - but all my guitars seem to warp - i think it is the air conditionning and there seems to be nothing I can do - the answer - i guess stick to cheap guitars for now - altho I have heard talk of a guitar humidifier. Don't know if they really work though. regards Malgo.