Old tape recording restoration
Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2018 8:12 am
Hi,
Some years ago, while still being owner of a 4 track cassette recorder, I transmitted my old 1980's recordings into digital .wav files.
And those recordings are far from excellent, in technical sense. Beside hum and lack of presence, there is one dominant constant - distortion, like when the recording is too loud.
What confuses me is the fact that visually, there are no clippings in the recordings. All the peaks are healthy, with no visibly typical "platforms".
I would like to improve the recordings. So I'm in search for possible cause of the situation so I can decide what strategy to use.
Is it possible that the distortion is happening below visible peaks, that it was created on some of the quiet tracks, so it's lost somewhere inside the "body" of the audio wave?
I still have original tapes but I don't have tape recorder I used to create the recordings.
What is the nature of distortion? I know it happens as result of loss of signal. So, you don't REMOVE the distortion, but you have to RESTORE the missing signal.
Is that possible with some nowadays magic audio tool?
Thank you, all, I wish you a good day!
Some years ago, while still being owner of a 4 track cassette recorder, I transmitted my old 1980's recordings into digital .wav files.
And those recordings are far from excellent, in technical sense. Beside hum and lack of presence, there is one dominant constant - distortion, like when the recording is too loud.
What confuses me is the fact that visually, there are no clippings in the recordings. All the peaks are healthy, with no visibly typical "platforms".
I would like to improve the recordings. So I'm in search for possible cause of the situation so I can decide what strategy to use.
Is it possible that the distortion is happening below visible peaks, that it was created on some of the quiet tracks, so it's lost somewhere inside the "body" of the audio wave?
I still have original tapes but I don't have tape recorder I used to create the recordings.
What is the nature of distortion? I know it happens as result of loss of signal. So, you don't REMOVE the distortion, but you have to RESTORE the missing signal.
Is that possible with some nowadays magic audio tool?
Thank you, all, I wish you a good day!