[Steve Munez]

I have been taking old recordings and restoring them for some time
now. I use WAVELAB with the Ozone Izotope Plugin and the WAVES
plugins. However there is just some audio recordings out there I have
not been able to enhance very well.

I am pleading with anyone who loves music to help me here, any advice
that can point me in the right direction would help. I have attached a
small clip to this post and compressed it at 320 CBR in hopes that
someone can play around and see if sound enhancement is possible, and
what you did to fix it. If you do not want to bother trying to fix the
sound, and can just hear the file and offer advice that is fine by me.

I have seen some pretty bad recordings restored by people, and just do
not have the skills I guess. This file does have Noise in it also, but
that usually is not a problem for me, it is the audio clarity I am
looking for. However if you want to offer advice on when to clean the
noise (before or after enhancement) that would be nice because I have
always wondered when is the right time for that step.

Again the file is attached but I will also offer up a link for
downloading in case you cannot retrieve the attachment.

You can get it at:

http://members.cox.net/tanger/dre_dre_mix.zip



Thanks in Advance!


Trick

[Steve Munez]

Well the problem is that it is an old cassette tape of mixes done by
Dr. Dre and sold at a swap meet in california. This is not easy to
come by. These tapes are from the 80's and sound has degraded. So yes,
I am trying to bring out crisp sound again. High's and Lows and get
rid of the muddy sound.


On Sat, 31 Jan 2009 05:40:05 +0100 (CET), Nomen Nescio
wrote:

I have been taking old recordings and restoring them for some time
now. I use WAVELAB with the Ozone Izotope Plugin and the WAVES
plugins. However there is just some audio recordings out there I have
not been able to enhance very well.

Thanks for using the right term 'restoring' or 'transferring' and not
mastering.
Is the enhancement for your own personal edification?
Rule of thumb try to make A (orginal) and B (the digital) copy the same
not enhanced, per se.

I am pleading with anyone who loves music to help me here, any advice

Mongo love music too.

that can point me in the right direction would help. I have attached a
small clip to this post and compressed it at 320 CBR in hopes that
someone can play around and see if sound enhancement is possible, and
what you did to fix it. If you do not want to bother trying to fix the
sound, and can just hear the file and offer advice that is fine by me.

The only anomaly I hear is a dropout at :50 but luckily it is possible
to fix because the sound is repeated about :41 and on therefore just pop
the original file in a digital editor, and replace the dropout with a
like sound that is repeated.

I have seen some pretty bad recordings restored by people, and just do
not have the skills I guess. This file does have Noise in it also, but
that usually is not a problem for me, it is the audio clarity I am
looking for. However if you want to offer advice on when to clean the
noise (before or after enhancement) that would be nice because I have
always wondered when is the right time for that step.

Don't try to get blood out of a turnip yet your copy of the recording
may just be a bad pressing. If you can get a near mint copy of the
recording and it's the same take do it but in terms of enhancing like
bringing out the highs and so forth you may be beating a dead horse. The
only thing that sounded weird was the first ten seconds
sounded muddy but that's hip hop recording for ya.

Again the file is attached but I will also offer up a link for
downloading in case you cannot retrieve the attachment.

You can get it at:

http://members.cox.net/tanger/dre_dre_mix.zip

Happy chinese new year everbody!!!!!

[Mike Rivers]

Steve Munez wrote:
Well the problem is that it is an old cassette tape of mixes done by
Dr. Dre and sold at a swap meet in california. This is not easy to
come by. These tapes are from the 80's and sound has degraded. So yes,
I am trying to bring out crisp sound again. High's and Lows and get
rid of the muddy sound.

You can't put back what's not there unless you record it over again, and
you're not going to do that. If the highs have become partially erased, you
can boost them up, but you'll be boosting noise as well, and then you have
to try to reduce the noise. There are tools for that, but you need to
get the
right balance, which means not just pushing a "make it better, please"
button,
but trying this, that, the other thing, and quite possibly ending up with
something that's overall worse than you started with, so you try again
with a different approach.

Unfortunately there's no good way to listen to what you have and map
out a plan that's guaranteed to work. You may need to do the same
things over, but in a different order, or more of one and less of another.
It's a bit like squeezing a balloon - everything you do affects something
else, and not always in a good way. So you fix something, cause some
damage, repair the damage, which may damage something else (or
what you tried to fix the first time).

Five people will restore the same piece ten different ways and they'll
each sound a little different. Play them for five different people and
you'll get at least three different choices as to which is the best. You're
the boss, unless you're getting paid for someone else, so stop when
you think it's done.



--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach
me he
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers
)

[[email protected]]

On Jan 31, 2:05 am, Steve Munez wrote:
Well the problem is that it is an old cassette tape of mixes done by
Dr. Dre ... These tapes are from the 80's and sound has degraded. So yes,
I am trying to bring out crisp sound again. High's and Lows and get
rid of the muddy sound.

the problem is you can not get this from your tape as that information
is lost.
the best chance to get the most from the cassette is to use a
nakamichi dragon which has automatic azimuth adjustment. But the odds
are that the tape has lost the magnetic information you seek.

[Scott Dorsey]

Steve Munez wrote:

Well the problem is that it is an old cassette tape of mixes done by
Dr. Dre and sold at a swap meet in california. This is not easy to
come by. These tapes are from the 80's and sound has degraded. So yes,
I am trying to bring out crisp sound again. High's and Lows and get
rid of the muddy sound.

What you have is a multi-generation cassette dub... and every generation
of the cassette was done with the azimuth incorrect, so the top end has
comb filtering on it added with each generation.

When you did the transcription, did you make sure to match the azimuth
of your deck with the tape? That's essential, but since you have already
got several generations here with incorrect azimuth, there is only so
much you can do.

The Aphex Aural Exciter and similar gimmicks can sometimes help add a
fake high end to recordings where the real thing no longer exists. Used
judiciously and in moderation it can be a useful salvage too.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[William Sommerwerck]

There are devices such as the Aphex Aural Exciter.

It also helps to have a deck with easily accessible azimuth adjustment, so
you can align the head to the tape.

[Scott Dorsey]

In article ,
William Sommerwerck wrote:
There are devices such as the Aphex Aural Exciter.

It also helps to have a deck with easily accessible azimuth adjustment, so
you can align the head to the tape.

This is essential. However, what the fellow has appears to be a tape
copied at least a few generations on dual-well cassette decks, so the
high end loss due to azimuth errors and the flutter have been magnified
with each generation.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Steve Munez]

Thanks everyone for the input you gave me. It humbles me there are so
many out there who offer a helping hand.

So far the information I have gathered is I need to re-record this
with Azimuth Adjustment? I am sad to say that the source of this
cassette comes from a person in another country who still had these
rare tapes from back when DR. Dre was selling them on the streets and
at swap meets, before he reached the fame as his has today.

All I was able to get was the recording in .wav format, and wanted to
restore the sound to as close as I could get from how it sounded back
in the day when inserted in the tape deck of a car.


So far the only option that has been suggested is Aphex Aural Exciter
which looks like a piece of hardware that I must purchase. I will
check the local shops and see what I can find, however is there any
software reccomendations out there? I currently use Izotope Ozone and
the WAVES Platinum Plugin pack which was a solid investment, however
if I need an Exciter, is there any software which does this?

Thanks again for all the feedback, you guys are Great!

Trick


On 31 Jan 2009 08:11:58 -0500, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Steve Munez wrote:

Well the problem is that it is an old cassette tape of mixes done by
Dr. Dre and sold at a swap meet in california. This is not easy to
come by. These tapes are from the 80's and sound has degraded. So yes,
I am trying to bring out crisp sound again. High's and Lows and get
rid of the muddy sound.

What you have is a multi-generation cassette dub... and every generation
of the cassette was done with the azimuth incorrect, so the top end has
comb filtering on it added with each generation.

When you did the transcription, did you make sure to match the azimuth
of your deck with the tape? That's essential, but since you have already
got several generations here with incorrect azimuth, there is only so
much you can do.

The Aphex Aural Exciter and similar gimmicks can sometimes help add a
fake high end to recordings where the real thing no longer exists. Used
judiciously and in moderation it can be a useful salvage too.
--scott

[Scott Dorsey]

Steve Munez wrote:

So far the information I have gathered is I need to re-record this
with Azimuth Adjustment?

Every time you play back any cassette ever, you must do it with the
playback azimuth adjusted to match the tape. Not only that, you will
often have to ride the azimuth control as the azimuth drifts from one
end of the tape to the other. Cassettes are just that way... they are
not stable, and they are invariably recorded on misaligned machines.
People don't do a full alignment every morning before they use the
machine, they way they do with professional studio machines. And the
low tape speed and crude guide mechanism doesn't help.

I am sad to say that the source of this
cassette comes from a person in another country who still had these
rare tapes from back when DR. Dre was selling them on the streets and
at swap meets, before he reached the fame as his has today.

And he has give you a dub of HIS cassette. And he did that dub with
incorrect playback azimuth. And that cassette HE has was made as a
dub off of a machine with incorrect azimuth. And every time you go
down a generation, you lose the high end from the azimuth error and
you add flutter.

And that is why the tape you have sounds the way it does.

All I was able to get was the recording in .wav format, and wanted to
restore the sound to as close as I could get from how it sounded back
in the day when inserted in the tape deck of a car.

95% of transcription work is getting a good quality dub of the original.
The last 5% is processing after the fact. Anything you lose in the
transcription process cannot be added back again.

So far the only option that has been suggested is Aphex Aural Exciter
which looks like a piece of hardware that I must purchase. I will
check the local shops and see what I can find, however is there any
software reccomendations out there? I currently use Izotope Ozone and
the WAVES Platinum Plugin pack which was a solid investment, however
if I need an Exciter, is there any software which does this?

There is probably some kind of software exciter out there. But do not
consider it a real solution to the problem.

Can you contact the fellow and see if he can make a better quality dub
of the tape he has? Or get someone else with proper equipment to do
it? There's nothing you can do about most of the generational loss but
you can do something about the dub losses.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Mike Rivers]

Steve Munez wrote:

So far the information I have gathered is I need to re-record this
with Azimuth Adjustment? I am sad to say that the source of this
cassette comes from a person in another country who still had these
rare tapes from back when DR. Dre was selling them on the streets and
at swap meets, before he reached the fame as his has today.

All I was able to get was the recording in .wav format, and wanted to
restore the sound to as close as I could get from how it sounded back
in the day when inserted in the tape deck of a car.

Surely this is some underground thing and you have the whole world
at your disposal with the Internet. Perhaps you can find someone else
who has a better copy, or can make you a better copy. Even if you
asked your friend in the other country to re-copy it for you, there's no
assurance that he can do a better job than he did this time. And you
don't know what condition HIS tape is in.

So far the only option that has been suggested is Aphex Aural Exciter
which looks like a piece of hardware that I must purchase.

DOOD! Get a grip! If someone offered you a sofa, would you go out and
buy a
truck to get it home? An Aural Exciter might help the high frequency
loss but it
won't help the azimuth misalignment. Borrow or rent one and give it a
try. There's
no need for you to own it unless you can get it really cheap.




--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach
me he
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers
)

[[email protected]]

On Jan 31, 6:39*pm, Mike Rivers wrote:
Steve Munez wrote:
So far the information I have gathered is I need to re-record this
with Azimuth Adjustment? I am sad to say that the source of this
cassette comes from a person in another country who still had these
rare tapes from back when DR. Dre was selling them on the streets and
at swap meets, before he reached the fame as his has today.
All I was able to get was the recording in .wav format, and wanted to
restore the sound to as close as I could get from how it sounded back
in the day when inserted in the tape deck of a car.

Surely this is some underground thing and you have the whole world
at your disposal with the Internet. Perhaps you can find someone else
who has a better copy, or can make you a better copy. Even if you
asked your friend in the other country to re-copy it for you, there's no
assurance that he can do a better job than he did this time. And you
don't know what condition HIS tape is in.

So far the only option that has been suggested is *Aphex Aural Exciter
which looks like a piece of hardware that I must purchase.

DOOD! *Get a grip! If someone offered you *a sofa, would you go out and
buy a
truck to get it home? *An Aural Exciter might help the high frequency
loss but it
won't help the azimuth misalignment. Borrow or rent one and give it a
try. There's
no need for you to own it unless you can get it really cheap.


or just EQ it

apply a high shelf with 15 dB boost from 10 kHz ot 20 kHz.

see how you like it..
Mark

[Chris Hornbeck]

On Sat, 31 Jan 2009 23:39:38 GMT, Mike Rivers
wrote:

If someone offered you a sofa, would you go out and buy a
truck to get it home?

Not sure exactly how, but this needs to find its way into the
FAQ. It really is so generally useful that it really needs an
acronymn. I'd like to suggest just a verbatim quote of the above,
but maybe one of our poets can punch it up into a catch-phrase-ready
state.

The catch phrase would need to include both an innocence, an
innocent's ignorance, and an (almost...) willful insistence
on remaining innocent/ignorant. It's pure Faulkner, but hey,
everything is.

We all stumble though the world, hoping for the best, and almost
always (if you're an average American anyway) getting it. But
sometimes we get dealt a bad hand. Delivering this news to said
average American *shouldn't* be as hard as it currently seems
to be. Things break; time to fix 'em; thus ends the sermon.

And thus ends the rant. Much thanks for the clarity, as usual,
Chris Hornbeck

[Mike Rivers]

wrote:

apply a high shelf with 15 dB boost from 10 kHz ot 20 kHz.
see how you like it..

Hisssssssssss

--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach
me he
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers
)

[Mike Rivers]

Chris Hornbeck wrote:
On Sat, 31 Jan 2009 23:39:38 GMT, Mike Rivers
wrote:

If someone offered you a sofa, would you go out and buy a
truck to get it home?

Not sure exactly how, but this needs to find its way into the
FAQ. It really is so generally useful that it really needs an
acronymn. I'd like to suggest just a verbatim quote of the above,

This does bring to mind a friend who, about a dozen years ago decided that
he wanted to start building up his metalworking shop (which rapidly took
over his garage). One of his purchases was a full sized Bridgeport milling
machine (through an eBay auction). Knowing how it was going to be
delivered,
he decided that he would need a fork lift to unload it from the truck,
move it up
the driveway, and into the shop. So he started looking on eBay for a fork
lift.

Fortunately, he came to his senses and rented one that came with
an operator, but he was bemoaning the fact that he could have bought one
for not much more than the cost of the rental - but it probably would
have suffered the
same fate as the milling machine, which was immediately disassembled and
ten years later is still apart and has never been functional in his shop.


--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach
me he
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers
)

[Steve Munez]

Sounds like most the people here are hardcore. I appreciate the help
and guess I am simply screwed in my quest to restore a dubbed
recording.

I was basically looking for the best option to fix this .wav file
recorded from a tapedeck with some sort of Audio Restoration software.
I will look and see if there is any Exciter software out there, that
can be used for the PC and give it my best shot. I will probably just
EQ it, grab the hiss and remove it, and hope for some sort of results.

Thanks for all the input

Trick




On Sun, 01 Feb 2009 12:14:01 GMT, Mike Rivers
wrote:

Chris Hornbeck wrote:
On Sat, 31 Jan 2009 23:39:38 GMT, Mike Rivers
wrote:

If someone offered you a sofa, would you go out and buy a
truck to get it home?

Not sure exactly how, but this needs to find its way into the
FAQ. It really is so generally useful that it really needs an
acronymn. I'd like to suggest just a verbatim quote of the above,

This does bring to mind a friend who, about a dozen years ago decided that
he wanted to start building up his metalworking shop (which rapidly took
over his garage). One of his purchases was a full sized Bridgeport milling
machine (through an eBay auction). Knowing how it was going to be
delivered,
he decided that he would need a fork lift to unload it from the truck,
move it up
the driveway, and into the shop. So he started looking on eBay for a fork
lift.

Fortunately, he came to his senses and rented one that came with
an operator, but he was bemoaning the fact that he could have bought one
for not much more than the cost of the rental - but it probably would
have suffered the
same fate as the milling machine, which was immediately disassembled and
ten years later is still apart and has never been functional in his shop.

[Laurence Payne[_2_]]

On Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:11:21 -0800, Steve Munez
wrote:

Sounds like most the people here are hardcore. I appreciate the help
and guess I am simply screwed in my quest to restore a dubbed
recording.

I was basically looking for the best option to fix this .wav file
recorded from a tapedeck with some sort of Audio Restoration software.
I will look and see if there is any Exciter software out there, that
can be used for the PC and give it my best shot. I will probably just
EQ it, grab the hiss and remove it, and hope for some sort of results.

Thanks for all the input

Don't worry! It's much more fun telling you all the wrong things
people did to cause the problem and how your attempts are doomed to
failure than suggesting ways to make the best of what you've got!

I forget - do you still have the cassette tape? If you're happy to
play with the azimuth setting on your player you might be able to
retrieve a bit more information from it. But make sure you're
equipped to re-align it for other tapes, else you'll have ruined the
player for future use.

Once you've got the best transfer possible, save a copy. Most of your
attempts at restoration will make things worse! Make sure you aren't
messing up your only copy.

Then start playing around with it. Have you yet posted a sample on a
web site somewhere we can find it? A 15 sec. wav file would be
interesting to hear and might get you some useful suggestions.

[Mike Rivers]

Steve Munez wrote:
Sounds like most the people here are hardcore. I appreciate the help
and guess I am simply screwed in my quest to restore a dubbed
recording.

"Hardcore" is relative. You have a problem without a clearly defined
solution (other than to
start working from a better copy). What you have is a collection of
things that might help
or might not. You just have to try. But in order to give them a good
try, you need to develop
some skills, both in using the available tools and in listening to
evaluate the results.

But there are some things wrong with the source that you're working with
that simply are beyond any
reasonable hope of fixing good-as-new. In the field of forensic audio
(of which what you're trying
to do is a subset) the goal is not to make the listening experience
enjoyable. It's to extract some
information from the recording. It doesn't matter if the background
noise increases if that makes
the words more intelligible because you're focusing on the content, not
a musical experience.

When trying to restore music, you need to be concerned with many things,
some of which have
conflicting results, and you have to juggle the good with the bad, for
each process or tool that you
have available. If that's "hardcore" then so be it. Only you can judge
when you've done enough, and
when you've spent enough money on tools and enough time trying to learn
to use them.

Come back to us in six months and let us know how it went.


--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach
me he
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers
)