Recording from Cassette Tape

[james0tucson]

from cassette??
Probably has Dolby B processing on the recordings. (pumped and compressed HF information) this stuff *never* tracked properly!
If you want to -recover- the sound do what ouroboros suggested and try to use whatever Dolby DE-coding was used (there were 2 flavors, just to confuse you)

What about playing the tape back as clean as possible, Dolby encoding and all, and then applying the Dolby noise reduction in software? I have no idea if any software does this, but it would HAVE to be better than the NR on a consumer tape deck.

[aMUSEd]

Is there Dolby NR software?

[james0tucson]

Is there Dolby NR software?

I would assume that's the kind of benefit you take for granted when you buy the high end expensive audio software that's supposed to be all that. The Dolby processes were more a matter of patent royalties than technological problems.
It has been 20 years since I last used a cassette deck, let alone Dolby B.
So that tells me any patent restrictions on Dolby B are long gone, and it's just a trademark issue now.

I cannot imagine that there is no software that encodes/decodes Dolby B or C, and if you tell me it's not a feature that's routinely included in the really expensive high-end production stuff that people drool about, I'm going to laugh hard.

[deaf dunderkwac]

start laughing hard...

[aMUSEd]

Just out of perversity I did another search for the stuff I'm recording just in case finally somethings been brought out while I was recording these tracks - all I found was this:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/archive/e ... /39844.php

Finally got round to it then

[deaf dunderkwac]

oh, and I was hoping whatever playback machine being used has these decoding options. (there was dolby b and c and some other thing used, but dolby were the most popular encoders)
I personally would try to recreate it with something like
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=72521

[Shane Sanders]

If you want to send me a disc or upload the .wavs somewhere, I'll have a whack at it with Adobe Audition. The NR allows one to take a noise profile from the silence between tracks and apply it. Works great and with a tiny bit of EQ or aural excitation on the post side, it'll probably sound really good.

[james0tucson]

start laughing hard...

You are serious!

Well, someone else posted about Audition. I use it's sampled-noise reduction feature all the time (since, sadly, almost everything I record takes the form of lectures and interviews, very boring.)

[deaf dunderkwac]

Some where in the cobwebbed portions of my memory one could buy the Dolby decoder plug-ins for Protools. never looked into it tho.
A search about the process and recreate the thing.
(gotta get back to work )

[aMUSEd]

If you want to send me a disc or upload the .wavs somewhere, I'll have a whack at it with Adobe Audition. The NR allows one to take a noise profile from the silence between tracks and apply it. Works great and with a tiny bit of EQ or aural excitation on the post side, it'll probably sound really good.

Thanks - I'll see how I get on with Audacity's version and my Scope mastering tools first (Scope has a good exciter plugin) but if that fails I'll get back to you though the files are big as I recorded 32 bit.

[Shane Sanders]

If you want to send me a disc or upload the .wavs somewhere, I'll have a whack at it with Adobe Audition. The NR allows one to take a noise profile from the silence between tracks and apply it. Works great and with a tiny bit of EQ or aural excitation on the post side, it'll probably sound really good.

Thanks - I'll see how I get on with Audacity's version and my Scope mastering tools first (Scope has a good exciter plugin) but if that fails I'll get back to you though the files are big as I recorded 32 bit.

Good luck with it. My server could handle a gig or so if we did a transfer that way. And there's always one of the lossless audio zip formats.

[ugo]

another bit of software to check out is virtos noise wizard.

[Chuck E. Jesus]

Ah well! Been there, done that.
Back then I used Sonic Foundry's NR plugin, when I had access to it (never bought it myself).
But (!!!): These days it seems you can do such things for free! Audacity has a "noise reduction" which is based on "fingerprints" - seems to be exactly what the SF thingy did.
What you need to do is have it analyze a portion of some "hiss only" material. Never tried with Audacity, but I'd bet that after that process, you could adjust the amount of reduction you need.
In case you're losing too much high frequency information, you *may* get some of it back using a plain EQ or some sort of enhancer/exciter.
And that's the good thing about a plugin based solution (Audacity is doing it destructively, from what it seems): You could just chain, say, an NR plugin, an EQ and an exciter before commiting any actual edits. At least that's what I did back then.

However, I'd say check out Audacity.

i'm not an expert on this, but i think this post is right on the money...there are always trade-offs, the goal (i think) is to produce the most listenable result, try the methods and find a happy medium....


the answer is never "no"....

[aMUSEd]

Yes this is the approach I've gone for - reduced noise lightly and then used Scope PsyQ - seems to be working well so far.

[spacedad]

another bit of software to check out is virtos noise wizard.

never seen that one before,is it any good?

2 more;
voxengo redunoise?

kn0ck0ut