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Journeyman
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I have a 25+ year-old cassette tape of music that I should have transferred to digital form earlier.
I'd like to do it now and wonder about the best way to go about it.
Fortunately I can still hear the music quite well.
I need to set the volume level at max on the cassette machine.
I set the EQ to middle position (setting it to highs doesn't really improve the ability to make out the sounds better and also loses the lows). The overall sound is very dull, as can be expected.
Do you just wing it in this situation or is there an acknowledged 'right way' to do this?
TIA
BIABguy
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I was asked to do the same thing by a friend of mine - it was a recording that I wrote 15 years ago. I used Sonic Foundry Sound Forge XP Studio 5. I recorded it into Sound Forge set the all around level once it was recorded and voila... Keep in mind that the digital recording wasn't what you would call perfect... you can still hear the hiss of the tape before the song starts. But once it is playing the music hides it.
Bobby
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I use Audacity regularly to do just what you need. You can clean up the recording to a degree before you finally export it as a .wav file for burning to a CD. By that, I mean that getting rid of rumble is fairly easy, but getting rid of tape hiss is a problem because you also get rid of some of the high frequency notes that give the recording its "life".
tony
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Your biggest problem here could be the tape quality. You didn't say what type of machine it is playing back on. Double cassette, JVC, Sony etc. I'll assume that you have a red/white lineout jacks. I've done this before with a "y" line out cable ending in a mini 1/8 plug. Insert into your sound card line in and record to hard drive through your chosen software. Use cleanup plugins later for tape hiss.
First step though: clean your tape heads of old tape oxide with a q-tip and head cleaner or as some do, rubbing alcohol. Run a few songs and check the heads again to see if you have oxide coming off of the cassette tape. If its bad, you may have may to stop the recording process a couple of times for cleanup. But this will help the fidelity. Also, was the tape recorded using Dolby to this particular cassette player. If the player has a dolby on/off button you may have to determine if the tape sounds better with or without the dolby on.
Think that's about it, I think. Works fine.
Cheers
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Good answers above.
Also consider using a demagnetizer tape before starting the process. You might also have a wand that does the same thing, although you have to know how to use that or you can make things worse (and maybe erase the tape).
I have recovered many old cassettes. I use Adobe Audition, which is particularly known for its noise removal capability. It samples a bit of the tape noise and then subtracts that from the recording. It normally does not remove highs.
In addition to the tape being recorded with Dolby (and there's both Dolby B and the less common Dobly C), there is an outside chance your cassette could have used DBX noise reduction. Whatever it is, you really need a tape deck that supports it in order to decode it correctly.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Journeyman
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Quote:
Your biggest problem here could be the tape quality. You didn't say what type of machine it is playing back on. Double cassette, JVC, Sony etc. I'll assume that you have a red/white lineout jacks. I've done this before with a "y" line out cable ending in a mini 1/8 plug. Insert into your sound card line in and record to hard drive through your chosen software. Use cleanup plugins later for tape hiss.
First step though: clean your tape heads of old tape oxide with a q-tip and head cleaner or as some do, rubbing alcohol. Run a few songs and check the heads...
Cheers
Thanks Ian for your tips!
I recorded the show from CBC radio onto a cheap cassette deck. If I used Dolby, I always found that playing back without Dolby gave the best results.
I'm using a different machine to play back the cassette now, it's a Marantz PMD 221 (3-heads).
It only has single (mono) line in and out jacks, but that's not an issue at all.
I guess the key will be for me to clean the tape heads and demagnetize if possible.
I bought a demagnetizer decades ago but never remember the direction to use it in.
I believe you are supposed to go in a circular motion around the heads, but I don't know if it is clockwise facing the heads or counterclockwise. 
(I'd need to locate the contraption first of course)
It's a cheap early 80's Medifacts tape from Ottawa, designed for medical voice recordings.
BIABguy
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Thanks Matt for your tips too!
BIABguy
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iirc, you start with the wand up close to the face of the head then start moving it in small, tight circles while gradually increasing the size of the circle and moving it away from the head. similar to using a degaussing coil on a crt.
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Be sure to turn the demagnetizing tool on at some considerable distance from the transport, do the dance as Don describes, figure 8s are cool, then move the wand outwards until it is well away from the transport again before switching it off.
By "well away" or "considerable distance" I'm talking about three feet or so.
Seriously, the more you describe that tape, the more it sounds like you won't get much in the way of good sound out of it...
If the tape content is valuable to you, consider sending it to a pro for digital dupe.
--Mac
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P.S. - Not to insult anybody's intell but keep any tapes well away from that demagnetizer when you do the sweep. 
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Journeyman
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I just wanted to give an update on my recording situation and ask another question.
First off, I have successfully recorded the tape using Reaper software.
I didn't do anything fancy. I just cleaned the cassette player's heads and boosted the recording levels in Reaper approx. 20 dB.
It sounds fine inside the program and I am now trying to get .wav files rendered to disk.
When I try to play the .wav files my players (GOM, Media Player) refuse saying a codec or something else is missing.
I was able to render the files to .mp3's
but that obviously doesn't do justice to the music.
Anyone know what might be causing the problem?
BIABguy
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Most players can only deal with wav files of 16/44.1 -- maybe that's it.
Hey-- raw .wav files aren't going to play as a CD -- you must use a CD burning program to convert to CD Audio as the disk is made.
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Quote:
Hey-- raw .wav files aren't going to play as a CD -- you must use a CD burning program to convert to CD Audio as the disk is made.
Yes of course you are right Mac!
I solved the problem by going ahead and saving the files as .wav's, even though I couldn't play them in my players.
Next I opened up ACID and brought the .wav files into it.
And finally I burned each track, one at a time onto a CD, using ACID.
I would have done it in Reaper, only I couldn't find out how to burn more than one track.
A happy ending!
BIABguy
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Below is a web site for a program that I have used with good success. I like the feature that makes CD tracks; it measures the time and volume between sounds and if it appears to be too long it will flag a new track. You can accept or reject the tracks, delete the sounds between tracks, etc. All those family "jams" and children's and grandchildren's vocals were a snap to edit for a dump to a cd. www.acoustica.com/spinitagainDennis
There are only 3 kinds of musicians: those that can count, and those that can't!
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Reaper 4.77, BIAB2018, PTPA12, RB2018, Roland VS-880 DAW
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A bunch of good suggestions were made already. From the "Let's Get Ridiculous About It" department:
If you're really a stickler about getting the best possible sound quality out of an old cassette, you might consider looking around for a Nakamichi Dragon cassette deck. If you can beg, borrow, or steal one in good condition. Reason is, this cassette deck had a servo mechanism to adjust the azumuth of the play head to best match the recorded signal on the tape, and indeed, it will continually adjust the azimuth as the tape plays, which will give you the best high-frequency response possible out of any given tape. Plus, this deck's level of quality in the playback preamps will give you the best S/N ratio, too.
If you can't find a Dragon, some cassette decks allow you to adjust the azumuth of the play head manually, i.e. with a small screw on one side of the play head. If you listen carefully using headphones, you can sometimes get a big improvement in the highs in the playback, as you slowly adjust the azimuth screw. Don't turn it too far, or you can encounter what's called a "side peak", a small peak which is not the maximum. For old-time analog tape recorder geeks only. And I qualify, since I still have a set of reel-to-reel MRL calibration tapes buried somewhere around here. :-)
Once you get the best possible quality signal from your cassette deck, it's mainly a matter of keeping levels in your signal chain as high as possible before distortion, for the best S/N ratio, up to and including your A/D converter. I would use a minimum of 24-bit, 48 kHz for the digital conversion. You can always downsample/dither it later for transfer to CD or whatever.
Regards,
Doug
Visit the Elegance Music page on MySpace for samples of my current work.
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Dr. Nakamichi's Dragon was perhaps design epitomy, but even that great machine is not likely to do too well considering the source tape: Quote:
I recorded the show from CBC radio onto a cheap cassette deck.
IIRC, he goes on to inform us of a few other things as this thread progressed, that the tape itself was a cheap medical transcription cassette, which means it most likely is the cheapest ferrite for voice reproduction one could imagine, that the tape is also mono, which means that head azimuth is very likely to make little difference in playback, etc. etc. etc.
Head azimuth is very likely to be the least of the problems encountered here.
--Mac
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I know it's late in the process, but I find it hard to believe that a name-brand three-head deck has only mono in and out. Are those RCA jacks, with only one in and out? If so, you're right, it's mono. But if there are mini-phone (1/8") jacks, I suspect they're stereo. Try a known stereo tape and a cord with 1/8" stereo plug to whatever adapters are needed at the remote end to find out. Or you might try coming out of the headphone jack, which would almost certainly be stereo, with a 1/4" stereo plug.
R.
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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PMD-221 is indeed a MONO recorder. http://martelelectronics.com/Merchant2/4.24/00000001/catalog/c22.html Likely designed for onlocation video, film and ENG work, the design concept at the time was based on the fact that a single mono track was wider on the tape and thus they could gain slight audio spec increase... --Mac
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