Help for Drastically Overmodulated Old Cassette Tape Track?

[Merryband1]

I just figured out (finally) how to connect a cassette player to the DAW with my io4. Transferred a song for the Between 1960s-1980s Old Christian Music for Library listing, and on playing back & listening, it's bad. Way overmoduated, & clipping practically the entire track. Could I have set the gain on the interface too high? Not turned the volume control on the player high enough? Is there a fix for this?

Thanks,
Merry

[Len911]

Merry, have you tried listening to the cassette from the cassette deck headphones jack or on monitors from the cassette deck through an amp or io4? you'd get a better idea perhaps if the problem is the cassette, cassette deck or something else.
Most likely it's the aging cassette or else the distortion was from a poorly mixed recording. If the deck has a bias control you might play around with that, also if you have choices of noise control options such as various dolby choices. de-mag and clean heads. you can also very gently manually rewind the cassette, to ensure the tape isn't too loose or wound too tight, though that probably affects wow and flutter more than anything.

[Merryband1]

Thanks, Len. I'll give it a try. Unfortunately, it isn't a cassette deck, but an old boom box with a CD player (which element stopped working not long after we bought it--only piece of bad equipment we ever got from Magnavox). The sound works okay. It does have an equalizer, but no biases. Probably the real problem was I didn't work the controls enough. I also wasn't listening while it uploaded to the DAW. I just let it rip. Mistake! I'll rerecord it and see what happens and let you know! (We do have an ancient cassette deck, but one speaker goes instantly to squealing horribly, so it isn't usable. Not sure why we didn't get rid of it when we moved. It's just taking up space. I guess I keep hoping I can take it apart and fix it. As if.)

Merry

[Merryband1]

Len, you're a genius! It worked.
Now the only problem I have with it (aside from general pitchiness) is a tiny glitch where I messed up, and then fixed it in engineering tonight. I'm going to post it over on Peer to Peer and see if it's good enough to submit.
Thanks!
Merry

[Len911]

happy to hear it worked! But what worked,lol?

[mojobone]

My guess would be proper gain staging.

[Len911]

I've got some old tapes of my aunt and uncle and cousin who died at 19, they were my grandmas. I've got a Denon cassette deck with bias control and several choices of noise control, but I think they were just wore out. they had been duplicated onto cheap cassettes. they had dropouts, distortion, bleed through, I finally gave up.