[Studiotalk] analogue cassette to digital transfer

Thu May 24 10:06:07 CDT 2018

Hi James,

At the Kentucky Talking Book Library, we don’t use any cassettes for analog to digital conversion – you are right – the noise floor is too high, and quality can be poor.  We have the original analog reel to reel master tapes of the recordings, and so we are using those to do our A to D conversions.  Once we started baking our reel to reel tapes at low heat to remove moisture, we have had excellent results getting playback without the tape sticking to the play head.

Ideally, when digitizing, it is best to use the master recording, or a copy that has been copied the fewest number of generations.  Each time an analog recording is copied, more noise is added to the recording, so if you try digitizing a cassette tape that would have gone out to patrons, that would probably be a third generation copy.  A master cassette would be better, and the original session master tape would be best of all.

If you do need to use cassettes, the C1 payer is probably going to be your best bet– as you know, cassette TB are played at a tape seed twice as slow as normal tape playback.  I’m not aware of any commercial decks that can do that.  However, I think most of your noise problems are going to come from the cassette copy itself, not from the C1 player (unless that particular player is defective).

Another possible source of noise could be how are you connecting the player to your computer – What audio interface are you using to input the signal to your computer?  The C1 headphone out jack might be a higher level signal than regular line level, so setting levels correctly will keep distortion, hum, and noise from being added at input.  Is the bad hum and noise audible from the C1 when listening by itself on headphones, unconnected from the computer?  If so, the noise is probably coming from the tape itself.  If the tape is fine listening standalone, but noisy when recorded, you might have a signal level mismatch.

If you need to use noise reduction, Adobe Audition has the best noise reduction for taking away tape hiss – Sound Forge also has something similar, but results aren’t quite as good.  Neither will be able to completely erase tape noise, but you can knock it down a good amount – maybe enough to make a terrible recording listenable, if not pleasant.  It is important not to overdo noise reduction – if used too much, it can create artificial artifacts in the audio, making it sound hollow, like talking through a tube.

Brian Bertucci
Kentucky Talking Book Library Studio Coordinator
PO Box 537
300 Coffee Tree Rd.
Frankfort KY 40602 -0537
(502) 564-1790
Brian.bertucci at ky.gov<mailto:Brian.bertucci at ky.gov>

[twitter]<https://twitter.com/KyTBL>[facebook]<https://www.facebook.com/KDLA.KTBL/>

From: studiotalk <studiotalk-bounces at islemail.org> On Behalf Of James Langton
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2018 9:32 AM
To: studiotalk at islemail.org
Subject: Re: [Studiotalk] analogue cassette to digital transfer

A question for any of you who are transferring NLS cassettes from analogue to digital : what are you using for playback of the cassettes?

I tried playing the cassettes on an old NLS cassette player but the sound quality is so awful (with incredible hum and background noise) that I abandoned that immediately.

The solution seems to be an old 4-track cassette recorder or 'mini-studio', but many of them record/playback at DOUBLE speed, so I'm interested to know if there are specific brands/models that others are having success with.

Thanks!

James
--

James Langton| New York Public Library

Manager, Audio Book Studio

Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library

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