Cassette Tapes - Noise Removal

[LCoop]

Hello - well I tried to do my duty and search a while for an answer but found nothing directly on point although it may well be here somewhere in this very good and voluminous Forum so sorry if it is and I missed it -

anyway I'm doing a usual project digitizing a bunch of old cassette tapes (still in pretty good condition) - I played around about half a day with the noise removal sliders in audacity 135 beta (for background hiss removal) but I never could find positions that sounded as good to my ear as the simpler noise removal tool of audacity 126 - I would rather use 135 as unlike 126 it can export directly to a (archival) FLAC file - (I am not a tech type and don't really understand what the sliders are doing although I read everything in the noise removal article in the wiki - in the end I can only go by experimenting with slider positions and then "see how THAT sounds....")

so my simple question is just this - can anyone recommend INITIAL "good" noise removal slider POSITIONS that generally should remove most of the background hiss from cassette tapes comparable to audacity 126? I tried what the wiki article said but still didnt sound as good to me as version 126 - maybe someone else can recommend a version 135 sliders "position set" for me - thanks for any responses.

[kozikowski]

Did you read the part where they wrote that 1.3 sliders in a certain position resulted in exactly the noise tool in 1.2? I have not been too successful with the noise tools in 1.2 because good graceful average isn't in the middle. It's smashed right up against one extreme of the control leaving you nothing to mess with.

[searching......]

Here it is. There is no getting around the importance of a good sample. If you can't get a noise profile of five or ten seconds of just tape noise without performance, you're pretty much dead.

After you get the profile, select a short piece of the performance in the middle of the show and apply Noise Reduction 14dB, Smooth 780Hz, Attack/decay 0. As you play the piece you can directly compare the before-after-before. With those settings, changing the Reduction number will have the greatest affect.

I don't like taking all the background out because I think it starts sounding funny if I do that.

Koz

[LCoop]

hello koz thanks for the reply

Did you read the part where they wrote that 1.3 sliders in a certain position resulted in exactly the noise tool in 1.2?

yes tried that but thought I could still detect some kind of background 'echo' or 'wow' or something when I turned up the volume.

.....There is no getting around the importance of a good sample. If you can't get a noise profile of five or ten seconds of just tape noise without performance, you're pretty much dead.

5 or 10 seconds - wow - thought I read somewhere on the audicity site or wiki that a second or two was good enough - maybe not - although for me, with 1.2 I think it still comes out pretty good with just a 2 second sample.

After you get the profile, select a short piece of the performance in the middle of the show and apply Noise Reduction 14dB, Smooth 780Hz, Attack/decay 0. As you play the piece you can directly compare the before-after-before. With those settings, changing the Reduction number will have the greatest affect.

ok thanks, will try to experiment this afternoon starting with those positions.

I don't like taking all the background out because I think it starts sounding funny if I do that.

yes certainly true if one 'overdoes' it - thanks again for your time - overall I've been pretty happy with audacity - and the price is certainly right! - but I do intend to contrib. at least $20 - not much but what I can do for now.

[MDOC]

There is no getting around the importance of a good sample. If you can't get a noise profile of five or ten seconds of just tape noise without performance, you're pretty much dead.

Koz

Sure there is. Use Dolby B or C on your tape deck. If you have it.

[LCoop]

Can anyone offer a few words (as low tech as possible ) on just what each of the sliders in Noise Removal in version 135 mean?