[CJB]

Please can someone advise me. I am converting 30 year old reel-2-reel
tapes into MP3 using Griffin's iMic and Audacity. However I now need
to boost the treble on the recordings. Is there a way of doing this
please? Thank you - Chris Brady.

[Don Pearce]

On Tue, 16 Oct 2007 03:42:01 -0700, CJB wrote:

Please can someone advise me. I am converting 30 year old reel-2-reel
tapes into MP3 using Griffin's iMic and Audacity. However I now need
to boost the treble on the recordings. Is there a way of doing this
please? Thank you - Chris Brady.

Have you not tried? Audacity has a reasonable set of equalization and
general tone controls. Just use those.

Do check, though that there actually is some treble there to boost. It
is quite possible that it is entirely missing from these old
recordings if the azimuth alignment on the original machine did not
match that of the playback machine.

d

--
Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com

[CJB]

Thank you for your suggestions. I'm new to this. I have quite a few
plug-ins; one is a bass boost. But I can't find treble boost. There is
normalisation - is that what I need? Chris Brady


On Oct 16, 11:52 am, (Don Pearce) wrote:
On Tue, 16 Oct 2007 03:42:01 -0700, CJB wrote:
Please can someone advise me. I am converting 30 year old reel-2-reel
tapes into MP3 using Griffin's iMic and Audacity. However I now need
to boost the treble on the recordings. Is there a way of doing this
please? Thank you - Chris Brady.

Have you not tried? Audacity has a reasonable set of equalization and
general tone controls. Just use those.

Do check, though that there actually is some treble there to boost. It
is quite possible that it is entirely missing from these old
recordings if the azimuth alignment on the original machine did not
match that of the playback machine.

d

--
Pearce Consultinghttp://www.pearce.uk.com

[Don Pearce]

On Tue, 16 Oct 2007 04:23:17 -0700, CJB wrote:

Thank you for your suggestions. I'm new to this. I have quite a few
plug-ins; one is a bass boost. But I can't find treble boost. There is
normalisation - is that what I need? Chris Brady

No, you need somebody to sit with you and help. The FFT filter is the
tool of choice here. You effectively "draw" the shape of the filter
you want to use.

Seriously, do find somebody who understands a bit about this to give
you a hand. You are likely to end up in a horrible mess if you just
plough ahead.

d

--
Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com

[CJB]

Ok - thank you very much indeed. Many of the recordings are BBC radio
shows - that even they don't have anymore. Chris Brady.

On Oct 16, 12:30 pm, (Don Pearce) wrote:
On Tue, 16 Oct 2007 04:23:17 -0700, CJB wrote:
Thank you for your suggestions. I'm new to this. I have quite a few
plug-ins; one is a bass boost. But I can't find treble boost. There is
normalisation - is that what I need? Chris Brady

No, you need somebody to sit with you and help. The FFT filter is the
tool of choice here. You effectively "draw" the shape of the filter
you want to use.

Seriously, do find somebody who understands a bit about this to give
you a hand. You are likely to end up in a horrible mess if you just
plough ahead.

d

--
Pearce Consultinghttp://www.pearce.uk.com

[Don Pearce]

On Tue, 16 Oct 2007 04:35:41 -0700, CJB wrote:

Ok - thank you very much indeed. Many of the recordings are BBC radio
shows - that even they don't have anymore. Chris Brady.

Phone them. They are absolutely gagging for this kind of material and
may even pay you money for it.

d

--
Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com

[William Sommerwerck]

"CJB" wrote in message
ps.com...
Please can someone advise me. I am converting 30 year old reel-2-reel
tapes into MP3 using Griffin's iMic and Audacity. However I now need
to boost the treble on the recordings. Is there a way of doing this
please? Thank you - Chris Brady.

Have you confirmed that the heads are properly aligned? If the machine
you're playing the tapes on is not the machine they were made on, the
playback head might be sufficiently misaligned to lose you some treble.

[Scott Dorsey]

CJB wrote:
Please can someone advise me. I am converting 30 year old reel-2-reel
tapes into MP3 using Griffin's iMic and Audacity. However I now need
to boost the treble on the recordings. Is there a way of doing this
please? Thank you - Chris Brady.

Yes, Audacity has a filter. Its under EffectEqualization. However, you'll
do a lot better to tweak the playback EQ settings on the tape deck in a lot
of cases.

You DID set the azimuth correctly on the tape, right?

If you're missing high end, it's probably for a reason, and you are better
off finding what that reason is and correcting it than EQ.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Scott Dorsey]

CJB wrote:
Ok - thank you very much indeed. Many of the recordings are BBC radio
shows - that even they don't have anymore. Chris Brady.

Are they on BBC distribution tapes at 7.5 ips?

Your lack of top end COULD be that you are playing a CCIR tape with a
tape deck set up for NAB equalization. At the slow 7.5 ips speed,
CCIR actually has less treble boost on record than NAB does.

If this is the case you will need to get your tape deck reset for CCIR EQ.
--scott


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

[Arny Krueger]

"CJB" wrote in message
ps.com...

Please can someone advise me. I am converting 30 year old reel-2-reel
tapes into MP3 using Griffin's iMic and Audacity. However I now need
to boost the treble on the recordings. Is there a way of doing this
please? Thank you - Chris Brady.

The most likely cause of treble loss and added noise in your procedure is
simply recording with that POS iMic. The play side of the iMic is OK, but
the record side is poorly designed. Even Creative Labs cheapest USB
record/play interface is worlds better.

The FFT equalizer in Audacity would be my tool of choice for correcting
existing recordings.

AFAIK Audacity uses VST plug-ins, and there are a number of good freebie VST
plug-ins for equalization as well.