Some help with cassette tape recordings (live)

[Rockan0n]

Howdy all!

I'm one lost puppy here... I have tapes as far back as 30 years ago with my original music (live) and have been transferring them to .Wav file in hopes to make a few live albums and singles.

I am that musician who can write music, sing it and even play it, but I just can't quite grasp mixing/mastering it. It's not necessarily the music, although it ranges from Folk Rock to Heavy Metal or Hard Rock. It's the plug-ins and all etc etc, lol.

I'm on a Windows 7 Home Premium (I know, Mac is best for audio/visual)
I'm using a portable version of Audacity 2.2.0.0

I've played around with the software til my head almost explodes and I'm just stuck. Could it be that:

a: It's analog cassette tapes
b: It live (sometimes 1, 2, 3 or 4 of us and many environments)
c: It's a portable version of Audacity (no plug-in shows even after rescanning)
d: I'm just not talented in this area?

Anyway, I'm actually looking for simple instruction and help because I'm confident my music is decent enough (100's of cassette tapes recorded for over a 21 year span) to pitch. On that note, I'm looking for a pro who might like to make some change while helping me out.

I have a DropBox account if I need to give examples (remember, I've got tons in almost every situation, dozens of different gear and setups, environment and so on).

Am I allowed to post links? and would it be annoying to post around 58 songs (and growing) in this forum to get help on each scenario? As I said... just one lost puppy here

[kozikowski]

I am that musician who can write music, sing it and even play it, but I just can't quite grasp mixing/mastering it. It's not necessarily the music, although it ranges from Folk Rock to Heavy Metal or Hard Rock. It's the plug-ins and all etc etc, lol

We never did get a goal in all that.

What's the goal?

People tend to not say "Mastering" and "Cassette Tapes" in the same breath. You might be able to get away with that in the unlikely event all your tapes were recorded to Metal or CrO2 tapes with Dolby C and you're playing them all back on a Dolby C machine. I've seen people do that. That can work very well.

Normal cassette tapes have the permanent curse of tape hiss. We can't effectively take out hiss. This is the same problem that bad or incorrectly operated microphones have. [fffffffffffffffffffffff] Particularly with music, none of the Noise Reduction tricks work very well, so the best Master anyone can produce is always going to sound like a mix tape from 1962. Much worse if you decide to mix songs from several different eras. Tape Hiss prevents us from processing the sound to "even out" the differences between shifts in music fidelities and different microphones.

(I know, Mac is best for audio/visual)

If you know how to drive your computer, it doesn't make the slightest difference. It can get sticky if you're an Audacity and a computer newbie. "I got this new computer to transfer my Vinyl to CD...."

How are you getting between the cassette player and the computer? In Windows-Land that can be a very serious problem. Let's start there. We don't want to cause damage in Step One.

Koz

[Rockan0n]

Hey Koz, thanks for the reply. I can drive most any computer just fine, it's more of an issue in understanding how the mixing works. As for the tapes and tape players being CrO2, Dolby etc or matching the deck and tape, that can be fixed later if I decide to re-transfer the Metal and other type II. I'm not looking for perfection.

I'm running a standard player with mostly standard tapes through a DAK 2800pc to help with some of the hiss and noise.

The "goal" is pretty simple considering I mentioned it already "looking for simple instruction" OR " I'm looking for a pro who might like to make some change while helping me out".

Luckily I just found a charity studio who has offered to mix and "master" the transfers from "tape". We'll see how it goes.

Cheers!