I’m converting quite a few cassette tapes to digital with Audacity…
Does anyone have any particular settings to try to enhance the sound a bit…???
For example…I’m putting about 6db of Treble…and a moderate amount of Leveler…
Are there anything else I can do to help out the overall sound quality of the cassettes…
The music is mostly old time fiddle…guitar…banjo…vocals…
Many thanks
Noise Reduction, but don’t overdo it - better to have a bit of hiss than horrible metallic noises from over-processing.
A gentle bit of EQ (often just a touch of treble boost, but not too much or it will boost the tape hiss too much.
I would never use “Leveler” because it creates distortion and cassettes have relatively little dynamic range without reducing the dynamic range further.
The Leveller effect is obsolete, so I guess that you are using an obsolete version of Audacity. The current version is Audacity 2.3.3 and is available via the Audacity website: https://www.audacityteam.org/download/windows/
The only thing “universal” would be noise reduction to reduce tape hiss. But, but have to be careful because with noise reduction you can get side effects and “the cure can be worse than the disease.” Noise reduction works best when you have a tiny amount of constant background noise… When you don’t really need it.
Beyond that it’s diagnose first, then treatment. If some treble boost helps, fine. But of course, that also boosts the hiss.
Leveling is up to you, but of course that messes with the normal musical dynamics. Compression and Limiting (usually used with make-up gain) can also even-out the volume. Again (dynamic) compression, reduces the dynamics.
It’s usually a good idea to Normalize as the last step. Normalization is a harmless volume adjustment that will bring the peaks up (or down) to 0dB, which is the “digital maximum”. Audacity safely can go over 0dB “internally” so If treble boost (or other processing) pushes the peaks above 0dB, Normalization will bring the peaks down to 0dB so your exported file doesn’t clip. The Amplify effect will normalize to 0dB by default, or the Normalize effect has a couple of additional features/options. Note that peak levels don’t correlate well with perceived loudness so if you have an album and you want to maintain the original relative volumes between tracks, normalize the album as a whole instead of normalizing one song/track at a time.
The music is mostly old time fiddle…guitar…banjo…vocals…
Solo acoustic instruments are more difficult than “dense & loud” music because the quiet parts make any noise more noticeable.
Thanks guys…good tips…
I started some mild equilazation…and I think it’s better…
Haven’t really tried any noise reduction yet…mostly because I’m not really hearing any tape hiss
the this bunch on cassettes I’m converting…
But I will try it…this…I believe…is the tool that I have to take a small sample of the “noise” in order
for Audacity to reduce it…then I can choose the Db I want to reduce…
Many thanks…