Transferring old cassette tapes to digital - suggestions for EQ?

octoruss

octoruss

New member
Hello all,
I'm undertaking an ambitious project to take some of my old --in some cases 20 years old -- 4 track and demo cassette tapes (remember those things?) and transfer them to my DAW for posterity.

Can anyone suggest the best FX and/or EQ settings to clean up the sound and ensure I get the best quality? This is a new project for me and I'm not very good with EQ, so I don't really trust my own ears in this case...

Thanks!
 
Use good converters and transfer them as clean as possible, getting the best signal to noise ratio you can. Don't do any processing during the transfer, you can do all that later once the audio is digital. The key is to use the best converters you can, and to focus on getting a pristine transfer with good levels.
 
Adjusting EQ (that results in making a song sound better, instead of worse) has been about the hardest thing for me.

When I started using a 4-track cassette about 10 years ago I consistantly set both the bass and treble at 3 O'clock (12 O'clock was center, no boost or cut)...I was using my eyes instead of my ears...most of those (mixed-down to cassette) songs came out sounding like they had a layer of fog/dullness laying over them. It took me years to figure out how much damage I was doing to the sound by abusing EQ in the recording stage. If your original songs (on cassette) already sound good that will help a lot in "mastering" your completed songs (after you get them transferred to your computer).

Over the years I have had EQ "aha" moments. I've gone through different stages...I tryed (for a time) fighting the dullness by boosting the highs (this has often been the case with songs that I have transferred from cassette to computer), but then (after many months) I would conclude that the music had a too "shrill" quality (and it still might have the overlying "dull film" quality).

Finally I got the concept (from reading on this site) of cutting frequencies (in addition to boosting)...and (about 2 years ago) I got some decent monitors, have listened to a lot of "professional" music through those monitors, and have developed more of a "gut" (actually "ear") feeling when the EQ is off in a song. Now, when I hear that something is wrong (too dull, or too shrill) I can often make the song sound better (using EQ), and, I expect, that I will continue to have "break-throughs" when it comes to EQ.

I suggest that you spend some time listening to commercial music that sounds good to you (training your ear to what a well-EQed song sounds like), and experimenting with the EQ you have (I've been using a 10-band EQ), getting a feel for how various adjustments affect the sound and have the goal (of course) of improving the overall sound of the song (when EQing a completed/mixed down song, one adjustment might benefit one part of the song, but be detrimental to another, so sometimes a compromise is needed to benefit the song overall). I have found that if the song already sounds good that it may need no more than a tweak in the EQ (a slight adjustment on one or two bands) and possible a hint of FX (maybe a little reverb over a song that was recorded dry).
 
I agree with Al on the clean xfer path and on the do not process until after you xfer to the PC (xfer raw).

I also agree with Benny on the Waves restoration software for attacking tape hiss.

In between those two, though, I'd look into a dynamic range expander. If tape hiss is not too awful, and you can use an expander to push the noise down away from the meat of the signal at all before you run any hiss reduction, it can greatly improve the efficiency of the hiss reduction and reduce artifacting.

After taking care of the hiss the best you can, you may need to try and recover some high end on those old tapes. This can be tough to do well. One trick is to use a parametric sweep to ID something in the high mids that sounds like a fundamental or subharmonic of the stuff like cymbals, hi-hats, sibilants, etc., and boost that frequency's first few harmonics. Then add a bit of high pass - not too much - with a gentle slope above 4k or so. Expiriment with this to taste.

And most important, IMHO: Don't try to get the recordings to sound like something they're not. You're there to restore them, not try to re-make them. They will only be pushed so far before they start to sound like crap in different ways than they did originally. Just work with what they give you and accept that the results will not be perfect. That will sound better than results where you try to force perfection.

G.
 
If you have tapes and dont know it dolby was used when recorded, what setting should be used.
My deck has Dolby B, C, S, and HX-Pro.
 
timboZ said:
If you have tapes and dont know it dolby was used when recorded, what setting should be used.
My deck has Dolby B, C, S, and HX-Pro.
Click to expand...
The one that sounds the best. :) This can change for tape to tape; just flip through the playback settings and select the one that gives the best overall combination of best high-end response and low high-end noise or distortion. On 20-yr old tapes that are rusting on the reel, often times there is so much high-end loss that the best setting is to have NR turned off altogether. But be your own judge; it depends upon the source.

G.
 
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