Scratch

I tried converting a few of my cassettes once, but I couldn't get the levels right so I kind of gave up.

I'm no audiophile or anything, but I say it's best to save it to FLAC or some other lossless format, for the sake of conservating the songs as perfectly as possible. But variable rate or 320 kbps MP3 or OGG should sound just as good to anyone.

I can't suggest any specific effect, as I haven't listened to the tracks, but:

- You could try some EQ, at discretion, as you want to restore the track, not remaster it. 

- Perhaps some compressing or limiting if it's a quiet track, with abnormally loud spots.

- Stereo enhancement is fun to play with, but how the song is enhanced really depends on the plugin you're using. You may as well not need it. Can't suggest any good ones, as I haven't used this kind of effect in a while.

- After you're done, normalize it, so it isn't quieter or louder than other tracks in, say, a music playlist.

Last edited by technoguyx (2013-03-03 12:58:18)

I actually just started doing some of this! A couple rather obvious tips:

1. Use the best cassette player possible in your house, etc. In my opinion, the bigger it is, the better it is.
2. Read the manual. My Pioneer deck has some correction thing built in, and it worked great on a cheap tape that was recorded on 30+ years ago.

If you have any questions, I'd be happy to help you! 

Update: In my opinion, Audacity's noise removal (to actually remove the noise) harms audio quality. I used the free 30-day trial of ClickRepair and it was good for my needs. (Please note: I am not associated with the developer in any way.)

Last edited by IHeartGaming (2013-03-03 14:56:12)

veggieman001 wrote:

IHeartGaming wrote:

I actually just started doing some of this! A couple rather obvious tips:

1. Use the best cassette player possible in your house, etc. In my opinion, the bigger it is, the better it is.
2. Read the manual. My Pioneer deck has some correction thing built in, and it worked great on a cheap tape that was recorded on 30+ years ago.

If you have any questions, I'd be happy to help you! 

Update: In my opinion, Audacity's noise removal (to actually remove the noise) harms audio quality. I used the free 30-day trial of ClickRepair and it was good for my needs. (Please note: I am not associated with the developer in any way.)

2. Are you talking about Dolby noise reduction? My stereo's got various options for that, but one of its tape players is dead and the other distorts the sound 

I don't use Dolby unless it was marked on the tape or the tape's case. My deck has something called FLEX. It's a Pioneer deck. You can see the details of this FLEX thingy on page 8 of the manual.

@scimonster: What brand are those tapes?

Edit: One other tip - when you plug the tape player into your computer, use a "line in" jack if you can. I've heard that the "microphone" ones can distort the sound a little bit.

Last edited by IHeartGaming (2013-03-03 15:52:16)

Plus, when you use line in, you can hear it when it's recording in (at least on Windows XP if you turn the line in volume up; I dunno about other stuff) which is swagaliciously cooleriffic.

But yeah anyway my main reason for asking if it's like a four track or high bias or something is that you want to make sure you're getting everything. (Though I'd assume you'd easily be able to figure that out if you weren't so that's probably not an issue.)

Also, how old are the tapes? It's interesting that the one has deteriorated where the others haven't. Is each on a different type of tape?

veggieman001 wrote:

Also, when encoding to MP3, make sure you do it at a decent bitrate (320 or V0) or just use FLAC because it's amazinggggg

+1 Use Losslessssss.

Also, if some of the demos are quite similar to the final recording, try loading all of them to one audacity project, then overdubbing the final recording with the demos in areas that have been damaged, but make sure it's not full opacity, just a slight blend.

jji7skyline wrote:

Another Tip

You can make the cassette tapes temporarily sound like brand new (especially if they've stretched), by placing them in the freezer for about an hour.

That sounds interesting although I've never tried it. Do you have proof it, like, works?

Either that or you just made it up :p

^ haha
@sci, sorry, I don't have any experience in converting tapes to computer audio but everything veggie and techno said sounds correct to me. :p

slinger wrote:

^ haha
@sci, sorry, I don't have any experience in converting tapes to computer audio but everything veggie and techno said sounds correct to me. :p

I got no experience in that either; just in music production in general 

scimonster wrote:

Not sure exactly what line-in is, but i used a white/red audio cable, connected to a piece of hardware called the VIDBOX, used for conversion. I was able to listen to it as it converted.

Line in is a port on your computer, assuming you're using a Windows desktop (/some laptops)

I've never heard of this VIDBOX thing, but I'm assuming you're doing RCA out from the tape player into it and then it sent it via USB or something to a computer? I couldn't find anything about it by goooooogling.

scimonster wrote:

tape1 says D90 and IECI/TYPEI.
tape2: HF and TYPEI NORMAL BIAS 120 [thingy that looks like a u]s EQ.
tape3: HF and TYPEI NORMAL BIAS.

Tape 1 is probably a TDK D90 according to my Google search. (The IECI gave it away.)
Tapes 2 and 3 are probably Sony tapes, according to another Google search that I just did.

In my experience with tapes that I've converted, those are decent tapes. I had a KMart tape that was bad, and I've heard that the below tape is awful:

I just wanted to make sure that you didn't have some awful thing to try to salvage the quality of.