Cleaning up tape noise

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No How
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2010/07/21 14:57:11 (permalink)

Cleaning up tape noise

I have a few songs I'm importing from cassette and trying to use some of the tracks.
Is there a way to a)  clean up the tape noise? and b) reduce (minimize) the reverb on tracks?
I've already put on the floorfish and some compression which has helped but are there any other tricks to accomplish this restoration process?
 
Thank you.

s o n g s

  – Beauty lodged in a bad hotel has no value.  Raymond Lull
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    Legion
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    Re:Cleaning up tape noise 2010/07/21 15:16:43 (permalink)
    Unless you have some nice expensive plugs you can still do a few things with off line destructive editing. Most audio editors (I think the free Audacity as well) are able to get a noise profile out of a selection. Select a second or something of the tape noise and then remove it from the track. Be careful though as going to hard with this type of noise reduction can give some unpleasant artefacts.

    Sadly very reduced studio equipment as it is... ASUS G750J, 8 gb RAM, Win8, Roland Quad Capture.
    #2
    No How
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    Re:Cleaning up tape noise 2010/07/21 15:35:39 (permalink)
    Legion,    Thanks.  I'll check out Audacity.  I've put about 150-200 envelope dips on a track to cut off the hiss (after every note).   Labor of love to retain a vibe.  Insane.

    s o n g s

      – Beauty lodged in a bad hotel has no value.  Raymond Lull
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    Lemonboy
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    Re:Cleaning up tape noise 2010/07/21 16:29:19 (permalink)
    I've used the noise reduction that came with Sony Soundforge to reasonable effect. Ideally you need 2 or 3 seconds of just tape noise at the start of the recording to capture a 'noise print'  You often get some artifacts, but if you take your time and run it through two or three times rather than try to get rid of all the hiss in one go then that can produce a better result.  

    Don't know if your tape deck has any form of Dolby - mine has Dolby A, B & C and (if the tape is important enough) I'll save it to digital through each of those in turn to see which is best. Due to the way it encodes the Dolby does seem to reduce some of the reverb sometimes as well.  

    I've not got it but I've heard good things about voxengos redunoise http://www.voxengo.com/product/redunoise/

    If you are really stuck I guess you could try an expander or the the de-esser in VC-64

    Andy
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    CJaysMusic
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    Re:Cleaning up tape noise 2010/07/21 20:37:32 (permalink)
    I have noise reduction tools that can make a noise profile of the tape hiss/noise/artifacts and then only remove that noise. But, there is a limit to what these noise reduction techniques can do. Every job is different
    Cj

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    Guitarhacker
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    Re:Cleaning up tape noise 2010/07/21 21:40:42 (permalink)
    to some.... the  hiss adds to the nostalgic aspect of cassette tunes and LP records.

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    Philip
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    Re:Cleaning up tape noise 2010/07/21 23:10:10 (permalink)
    http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/msc/buy.asp is $40 ish.  (Just a thought)
     
    +1 to *LoFi* tape samples. 
     
     I'm certain your stuff is great on tape. 
     
    Methinks some of everybody's stuff could use some funky coloration, imho: tape artifacts, vinyl scratches, telephone, melodyne, bass-suprano-formants, robotic male enhancements, etc.
     
    ... for us macho masculine marine corp drill sargents (if you catch my drift)
     
    ... who are 'publicly uncomfortable' with 'in-the-ear' intimacy
     
    (Also, true men use vocoders, voice-disguisers, and mechanical cheats to get the job done swiftly and on time.  Shhhh!  Don't tell my wife any of this!!!)

    Philip  
    (Isa 5:12 And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but they regard not the work of the LORD)

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    Middleman
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    Re:Cleaning up tape noise 2010/07/21 23:16:37 (permalink)
    You can use the old expansion reduction technique during transfer. This involves EQ boosting above 8k by 6 to 8 db. Use a shelving boost. Then when you have it in the computer reduce the hi end by the same 6 to 8 db with a shelving cut at the same point. This will bring the average track volume up while reducing the the hi end hiss. Poor man's Dolby.

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    #8
    No How
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    Re:Cleaning up tape noise 2010/07/23 10:29:37 (permalink)
    Wow....some great ideas here.
     
    I'm going to explore these options this weekend.
    I'll chime back in and let you know how it's working.
     
    Thank you all!

    s o n g s

      – Beauty lodged in a bad hotel has no value.  Raymond Lull
    #9
    No How
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    Re:Cleaning up tape noise 2010/07/26 14:05:15 (permalink)
    Gentlemen,

    I've employed the Audacity 'noise removal' technique.
    Very interesting results.
    I'll post samples if you're interested but what i got was a much cleaner track with strange digital artifacts at no extra charge.  I went from lo-fi to sci-fi.
    i tried to envelope the artifacts out and did a decent job as i think most of it will be lost in the sea of noise anyway.
    I was not successful in minimizing the reverb.  I know this isn't easy and may not really even be possible but i thought i'd check.
    I'll have to redo most of the tracks but i did salvage a bass, piano and vocal track that i think will enhance the overall production.
     
    I'll post samples tomorrow or whenever i can sneak some time in to get them up.
     
    Thank you all for you input.

    s o n g s

      – Beauty lodged in a bad hotel has no value.  Raymond Lull
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    jasonthurley
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    Re:Cleaning up tape noise 2010/07/26 15:00:43 (permalink)
    See if your noise reduction plug-in has a Noise Bias option... This is in db.. like -20db to +20db

    If you lower it to -20 it will remove "only" the exact waves you selected on capture(Noise Capture) and if you bring it up to +20 will remove "other" stuff so your quality will start to degrade and you will hear those "digital tunnel noises" that happen when you process too much out of it...

    So be careful to ensure the Noise Bias is set correctly....

    Also don't try to remove "All" the hiss.... it will degrade your sound quality.  the idea is to use the noise reduction to lower the hiss and not remove it completely as there are other frequencies/etc that will be removed that you don't want remove.

    The notching techniques only work well when you apply what I would refer to as "Tricking the Compressor"

    A compressor makes loud noises softer and softer noises louder... a trick that is used to remove finger noise on guitar stuff is to boost the frequency you want removed and then heavy compress it.... if done right it will lower the finger noise and bring up the guitar tones underneath.  This is an advanced technique so you might have to play around with it quite a bit to get it right... digital plug-ins sometimes have a hard time doing this also.

    You could always get a Dolby 360 series noise reducer(a vintage, by now, piece of gear that removed hiss from cassettes) for a few bucks... Check ebay
    #11
    jcatena
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    Re:Cleaning up tape noise 2010/07/26 20:14:39 (permalink)
    I digitized some old 4 track recordings long time ago. The Sony noise reduction plugin did a good job reducing the hiss.
    If noise reduction is too high it creates phasing artifacts, but with some practice noise reduction of 10 to 20 dB is possible without noticeable phasing. The key is to have an adequate noise footprint, usually from some silent part during the recording (i.e. containing all the recorded noise, not only the tape hiss). Sometimes you may need to adjust the noise fp envelope manually, which requires some experience and understanding of how it works, to achieve a better noise reduction without phasing artifacts.
    During tape playback, the same dolby nr used when recording should be used. If the tape was recording with dolby and played back without it, you should use a expander to resemble the dolby decoder function, but it is not easy, because the expansion is frequency dependent. A multiband expander may do it, but the best way is splitting the audio in 2 different tracks with the low and high frequency ranges respectively, using an expander in the highs, and then mixing both again. Check specific dolby decoder specs to know the frequency curves, and expansion ratio and threshold.
     

    Jose Catena
    DIGIWAVES, S.L.
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