[mcp6453[_2_]]

I discovered some extremely (personally) valuable cassette tapes from 1982. Unfortunately, the recorder on some of them
was running erratically. Is there any software available that will do anything credible towards removing the speed/pitch
variations? Adobe Audition 1.5 has some pitch correction functionality that appears to be dynamic, but the variations
are quite extreme. Thankfully not all tapes are totally bad.

[Don Pearce[_3_]]

On Sun, 19 Oct 2014 12:00:11 -0400, mcp6453 wrote:

I discovered some extremely (personally) valuable cassette tapes from 1982. Unfortunately, the recorder on some of them
was running erratically. Is there any software available that will do anything credible towards removing the speed/pitch
variations? Adobe Audition 1.5 has some pitch correction functionality that appears to be dynamic, but the variations
are quite extreme. Thankfully not all tapes are totally bad.

There is pitch correction software out there that can do a really good
job. It uses residual 50/60Hz hum in the recording as its reference
and applies the correction needed to bring that back to frequency.

I can't remember its name, but it is worth a search.

d

[Scott Dorsey]

mcp6453 wrote:
I discovered some extremely (personally) valuable cassette tapes from 1982. Unfortunately, the recorder on some of them
was running erratically. Is there any software available that will do anything credible towards removing the speed/pitch
variations? Adobe Audition 1.5 has some pitch correction functionality that appears to be dynamic, but the variations
are quite extreme. Thankfully not all tapes are totally bad.

What is the problem and over what range of speed changes is it? Is it a
recorder with slowly dying batteries where the speed is ramping down slowly,
or a recorder with a bad pinch roller where the tape is alternately sticking
and letting go, or a recorder where the pinch roller has not engaged at al
and so the speed is wild and random and mostly very high?

Is there by any chance a constant tone that could be used as a reference?
Like a 60 Hz hum?

Is the job to make music sound good, or to get intelligible voices?

Somehow I am thinking of Jamie Howarth at Plangent... he has never done
anything like this but maybe he'd like to try. The low running speed of
the cassette makes it much harder than with normal tape.
--scott

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

[hank alrich]

Scott Dorsey wrote:

mcp6453 wrote:
I discovered some extremely (personally) valuable cassette tapes from
1982. Unfortunately, the recorder on some of them was running
erratically. Is there any software available that will do anything
credible towards removing the speed/pitch variations? Adobe Audition 1.5
has some pitch correction functionality that appears to be dynamic, but
the variations are quite extreme. Thankfully not all tapes are totally
bad.

What is the problem and over what range of speed changes is it? Is it a
recorder with slowly dying batteries where the speed is ramping down slowly,
or a recorder with a bad pinch roller where the tape is alternately sticking
and letting go, or a recorder where the pinch roller has not engaged at al
and so the speed is wild and random and mostly very high?

Is there by any chance a constant tone that could be used as a reference?
Like a 60 Hz hum?

Is the job to make music sound good, or to get intelligible voices?

Somehow I am thinking of Jamie Howarth at Plangent... he has never done
anything like this but maybe he'd like to try. The low running speed of
the cassette makes it much harder than with normal tape.
--scott

I recently saw mention of a plugin, from a different source, that
pruported to do this, too. Will see if I can recall where I got that
bit.

--
shut up and play your guitar * HankAlrich.Com
HankandShaidriMusic.Com
YouTube.Com/WalkinayMusic

[mcp6453[_2_]]

On 10/19/2014 1:57 PM, Jeff Henig wrote:
hank alrich wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:

mcp6453 wrote:
I discovered some extremely (personally) valuable cassette tapes from
1982. Unfortunately, the recorder on some of them was running
erratically. Is there any software available that will do anything
credible towards removing the speed/pitch variations? Adobe Audition 1.5
has some pitch correction functionality that appears to be dynamic, but
the variations are quite extreme. Thankfully not all tapes are totally
bad.

What is the problem and over what range of speed changes is it? Is it a
recorder with slowly dying batteries where the speed is ramping down slowly,
or a recorder with a bad pinch roller where the tape is alternately sticking
and letting go, or a recorder where the pinch roller has not engaged at al
and so the speed is wild and random and mostly very high?

Is there by any chance a constant tone that could be used as a reference?
Like a 60 Hz hum?

Is the job to make music sound good, or to get intelligible voices?

Somehow I am thinking of Jamie Howarth at Plangent... he has never done
anything like this but maybe he'd like to try. The low running speed of
the cassette makes it much harder than with normal tape.
--scott

I recently saw mention of a plugin, from a different source, that
pruported to do this, too. Will see if I can recall where I got that
bit.

Is this the kind of thing to which you are referring?


https://www.izotope.com/en/products/...r/rx/features/

It looks like "Time & Pitch" may be the function that's needed, but it's part of the $1200 package.

It's all voice. The objective is to cause the voices to be as close to normal as possible. The pitch varies quite a bit.
I don't know what the problem with the deck was. It cleared up by the end of one tape. The machine was dragging while it
was recording. There's probably 60 Hz in there somewhere.

[Scott Dorsey]

mcp6453 wrote:

It looks like "Time & Pitch" may be the function that's needed, but it's part of the $1200 package.

It's all voice. The objective is to cause the voices to be as close to normal as possible. The pitch varies quite a bit.
I don't know what the problem with the deck was. It cleared up by the end of one tape. The machine was dragging while it
was recording. There's probably 60 Hz in there somewhere.

If there is 60 Hz, you can lock to it with resolver software and get the
speed pretty constant. You might ask Wes Dooley; he certainly has the
software for the job as well as the skills. He'll charge something but
I doubt it'll be anything like $1200.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Mike Rivers[_2_]]

On 10/19/2014 9:00 AM, mcp6453 wrote:
I discovered some extremely (personally) valuable cassette tapes from 1982. Unfortunately, the recorder on some of them
was running erratically. Is there any software available that will do anything credible towards removing the speed/pitch
variations?

No magic bullets for this. Since the recordings are personally valuable
to you, you should just be patient and take the time to work through
them section by section. Once you start looking and listening closely,
you'll probably get a better idea of what's happening (it may not be
completely random) and it'll go faster as you gain experience.


--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be operated without
a passing knowledge of computing, although it seems that it can be
operated without a passing knowledge of audio" - John Watkinson

Drop by http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com now and then

[Peter Larsen[_3_]]

"Mike Rivers" skrev i en meddelelse
...

On 10/19/2014 9:00 AM, mcp6453 wrote:
I discovered some extremely (personally) valuable cassette tapes from
1982. Unfortunately, the recorder on some of them
was running erratically. Is there any software available that will do
anything credible towards removing the speed/pitch
variations?

No magic bullets for this.

Not correct as long as it is recorder drift we are talking of, it is trivial
but possibly tedious and AA1.5 will do all that is needed out of the
shrinkwrap.

Kind regards

Peter Larsen

[Mike Rivers[_2_]]

On 10/20/2014 8:37 AM, Peter Larsen wrote:
Not correct as long as it is recorder drift we are talking of, it is trivial
but possibly tedious and AA1.5 will do all that is needed out of the
shrinkwrap.

By "no magic bullet" I meant that there wasn't a one-click solution. You
need to find a section that's off speed and put it back on speed. If
it's constantly drifting, you'll need to do it in small chunks.

Tedious indeed.

--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be operated without
a passing knowledge of computing, although it seems that it can be
operated without a passing knowledge of audio" - John Watkinson

Drop by http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com now and then

[Peter Larsen[_3_]]

"Mike Rivers" skrev i en meddelelse
...

On 10/20/2014 8:37 AM, Peter Larsen wrote:
Not correct as long as it is recorder drift we are talking of, it is
trivial
but possibly tedious and AA1.5 will do all that is needed out of the
shrinkwrap.

By "no magic bullet" I meant that there wasn't a one-click solution. You
need to find a section that's off speed and put it back on speed. If it's
constantly drifting, you'll need to do it in small chunks.

Mike I have have done this with several analog tapes, it is my default
procedure to check for speed variations, usually they are reasonably linear
over a reel and AA allows a gliding stretch. So I tend to end up with 1 to 3
chunks for a reel, often just the entire reel. AA in various incarnations
has a linearly changing stretch and the standard variation of a reel to reel
is close enough to linear to make the audio fit well into narrow notch
filters. Such tend to always be relevant.

Tedious indeed.

Yes, but not that bad once the workflow for a given tape has been learned.
Here is an short example from a meeting recorded in 1956, speech only, I
think this is the general type of audio asked about by the OP:

http://www.muyiovatki.dk/alarsen/mp3...0_baand-id.mp3

It is a recording of a meeting in 1956 serially copied for listening to at
local meetings, probably of the pulpit microphone, not the original tape and
I do not know how many generations there was on the way to the digitized
copy. It also illustrates the limitations of DIY recovery ...

Kind regards

Peter Larsen

[Peter Larsen[_3_]]

"mcp6453" skrev i en meddelelse
...

I discovered some extremely (personally) valuable cassette tapes from 1982.
Unfortunately, the recorder on some of them
was running erratically. Is there any software available that will do
anything credible towards removing the speed/pitch
variations? Adobe Audition 1.5 has some pitch correction functionality
that appears to be dynamic, but the variations
are quite extreme. Thankfully not all tapes are totally bad.

Hum is your saviour, Audition can probably fix it if you divide it in
segments, it can do alter the speed with a linear variation, if in segments
it is likely to be close enough and there is almost always hum enough on an
analog tape recording for the speed variations to be documented.

Use FFT analysis to determine the hum frequency on the tape and adjust speed
until it gets correct. You have to do it to apply any kind of EQ or notch
filtering anyway.

I would prefer to sample at 96 kHz for such drastic work and then probably
downsample to 48 or 44.1 for general fixitology when the speed issues are
fixed.

Kind regards

Peter Larsen

[flatfish+++[_3_]]

On Sun, 19 Oct 2014 12:00:11 -0400, mcp6453 wrote:

I discovered some extremely (personally) valuable cassette tapes from 1982. Unfortunately, the recorder on some of them
was running erratically. Is there any software available that will do anything credible towards removing the speed/pitch
variations? Adobe Audition 1.5 has some pitch correction functionality that appears to be dynamic, but the variations
are quite extreme. Thankfully not all tapes are totally bad.

The software you are looking for is called "Capstan" by Celemony.

http://www.celemony.com/en/capstan

I used it on some solo piano work that had been recorded on a Tascam
with severe wow and flutter problems and it cleaned up 90 percent or
more of it in "fix it all" mode.

The difference between source and repaired was like night and day.

Worth looking into.

It doesn't run under Linux BTW.
Just thought I would mention that



--
flatfish+++

Linux: The Operating System That Put The City Of Munich Out Of
Business.
Before Switching To Linux Read This:
http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/why.linux...current.htm l

[mcp6453[_2_]]

On 10/20/2014 7:54 PM, flatfish+++ wrote:
On Sun, 19 Oct 2014 12:00:11 -0400, mcp6453 wrote:

I discovered some extremely (personally) valuable cassette tapes from 1982. Unfortunately, the recorder on some of them
was running erratically. Is there any software available that will do anything credible towards removing the speed/pitch
variations? Adobe Audition 1.5 has some pitch correction functionality that appears to be dynamic, but the variations
are quite extreme. Thankfully not all tapes are totally bad.

The software you are looking for is called "Capstan" by Celemony.

http://www.celemony.com/en/capstan

I used it on some solo piano work that had been recorded on a Tascam
with severe wow and flutter problems and it cleaned up 90 percent or
more of it in "fix it all" mode.

The difference between source and repaired was like night and day.

Worth looking into.

It doesn't run under Linux BTW.
Just thought I would mention that

It's $4,458. That's a little much. Do you have it?

[Sean Conolly]

"mcp6453" wrote in message
news
On 10/20/2014 7:54 PM, flatfish+++ wrote:
On Sun, 19 Oct 2014 12:00:11 -0400, mcp6453 wrote:

I discovered some extremely (personally) valuable cassette tapes from
1982. Unfortunately, the recorder on some of them
was running erratically. Is there any software available that will do
anything credible towards removing the speed/pitch
variations? Adobe Audition 1.5 has some pitch correction functionality
that appears to be dynamic, but the variations
are quite extreme. Thankfully not all tapes are totally bad.

The software you are looking for is called "Capstan" by Celemony.

http://www.celemony.com/en/capstan

I used it on some solo piano work that had been recorded on a Tascam
with severe wow and flutter problems and it cleaned up 90 percent or
more of it in "fix it all" mode.

The difference between source and repaired was like night and day.

Worth looking into.

It doesn't run under Linux BTW.
Just thought I would mention that

It's $4,458. That's a little much. Do you have it?


There is a 'rental' version - 1 week for $200. Still not cheap but for audio
with personal value (say tapes from a deceased family member) it's a
bargain.

Sean

[Mike Rivers[_2_]]

On 10/22/2014 9:40 AM, Sean Conolly wrote:

The software you are looking for is called "Capstan" by Celemony.

There is a 'rental' version - 1 week for $200. Still not cheap but for audio
with personal value (say tapes from a deceased family member) it's a
bargain.

Better plan on two weeks, one to use it and one to figure out how to use
it.


--
For a good time, visit http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com

[Peter Larsen[_3_]]

"Mike Rivers" skrev i en meddelelse
...

On 10/22/2014 9:40 AM, Sean Conolly wrote:

The software you are looking for is called "Capstan" by Celemony.

There is a 'rental' version - 1 week for $200. Still not cheap but for
audio
with personal value (say tapes from a deceased family member) it's a
bargain.

Better plan on two weeks, one to use it and one to figure out how to use
it.

Mike, do you recall any actual explanation of what the problem is, other
than "extreme speed variation"? - my thought when I read that was a portable
cassette recorder with low battery voltage loosing speed, I did some sonic
repair on such a tape back in the analog age using the (limited) varispeed
option of a Sony 510 and did at least get it slowed down so much that a
transcript became humanly possible, albeit at a noise-cost.

Capstan by Celemony no doubt is a fabulous product, but the point has not -
as I recall this thread - been made that it is relevant for the problem that
needs solving.

Kind regards

Peter Larsen

[geoff]

On 23/10/2014 4:03 a.m., Mike Rivers wrote:
On 10/22/2014 9:40 AM, Sean Conolly wrote:

The software you are looking for is called "Capstan" by Celemony.

There is a 'rental' version - 1 week for $200. Still not cheap but for
audio
with personal value (say tapes from a deceased family member) it's a
bargain.

Better plan on two weeks, one to use it and one to figure out how to use
it.




..... hopefully not in that order .

geoff

[hank alrich]

flatfish+++ wrote:

The software you are looking for is called "Capstan" by Celemony.

Thank you. That's the one I was tryng to remember. Saw it while looking
at other stuff at their site.

--
shut up and play your guitar * HankAlrich.Com
HankandShaidriMusic.Com
YouTube.Com/WalkinayMusic