Regarding remastering cassette tapes

[rwa1977]

Hey Folks. I am totally new to all of this and I have a question. I am digitizing my demos on cassette to audacity. These are just me and my guitar and voice recording on an old radio shack tape recorder, using the internal mic. I am wondering if there is a page or if someone might recommend some settings in Audacity to clean up and make the recordings sound really good. I've used things like equalizer and noise removal, but I have trouble understanding the settings. Can anyone recommend some settings. Thanks a bunch and Happy Halloween!!!!

[kozikowski]

Audacity to clean up and make the recordings sound really good.

Digitize a typical sample of one tape and post it. Include a second or two of silence. Export FLAC instead of WAV or use a really high quality (320) MP3.

http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 49&t=72887

Koz

[waxcylinder]

This page from the Wiki may be useful to you: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Recor ... m_Cassette

WC

[rwa1977]

Hey guys. Here is a small sample of audio from the cassette I am trying to clean up. I am not expecting anything miraculous, but I would just like to use all of the tools available to clean it up as good as possible. Any suggestions of settings and different editing effects would be greatly appreciated!!! Thanks again!! Richard Avena

[WayneP]

If you’re mainly trying to get rid of background noise like hiss or hum, just highlight a few seconds of a silent passage (where there is no music or talking), then select “Effect” from the menu bar. Scroll down and click on “Noise Removal.” When the box opens, click the “Get Noise Profile” button. This “tells” the Noise Removal effect what noise you want to eliminate.

The box will close when you click the “Get Noise Profile” button, but select “Effect” and open it up again. This time, go to Step 2 and now you can remove the noise from your recording. If you want it done globally, then highlight the whole track. This is probably the best tact with something that has a sporadic signal, like talking, where the background noise is there all the time. If there is music, it usually drowns out the noise, so you might just want to “treat” the silent passages between songs.

The trick now is to take out the noise without taking out stuff you don’t want taken out. This is mainly done by selecting how severely the noise reduction is accomplished – i.e., how many dB of noise reduction is applied. For instance, if a song fades away, employing severe reduction will “choke it out” prematurely. You’ll hear that it doesn’t sound natural. So, experiment with different dB levels to see where it works best. You might also play with the Sensitivity, Frequency smoothing etc. controls to see how they work.

Another trick, if you have a song that fades out, is to figure out at what point it “disappears” into the background noise, and then use the “Fade Out” feature to fade it out before that point.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Wayne