Jun 01, 2007 11:43 pm Unfortunately the only useful idea I can come up with is a software solution. Soundsoap2 can be pretty good for that. but hopefully someone can offer some EQ type of solutions.
Best way to remove/reduce hiss from tape
Posted on Jun 01, 2007 10:45 pm
tonyoci
Member Since: Jan 24, 2006
My wife has asked me to transfer some old tapes she's got to the PC (audio cassette's). I've got them transfered but there's a lot of noise.
Any tips on reducing the noise ?
Thanks
T
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Jun 01, 2007 11:43 pm Unfortunately the only useful idea I can come up with is a software solution. Soundsoap2 can be pretty good for that. but hopefully someone can offer some EQ type of solutions.
Jun 02, 2007 02:40 am Tony, I don't know what software you're using, but I use Adobe Audition 1.5, and it has a killing noise profiling feature.
You highlight a section of the noise floor at the beginning or end of the track, get a profile from it, then apply that profile to the rest of the track, and voila! If carefully done, the noise reduction is amazing, with very few noticeable artifacts.
Jun 02, 2007 04:31 am yeah, both audition and wavelab have some good 'sampling' noise reduction tools....otherwise, you can eq some of the highs out, OOooOo another good thing is to make sure your gain staging is optimal when recording to digital....keep it hot!
Jun 02, 2007 10:34 pm Yep, WYD is on to the right thing there. How did you bring the tapes into the PC, as far as signal chain goes?
Jun 02, 2007 11:48 pm There are some free goodies at KVR that are for noise reduction and they work pretty well. I have tried all but a few there and most work pretty well. Not on par with the tools in the likes of SoundForge but they do a very good job.
Otherwise as stated it is possible that some of it may have been introduced coming through a mixer. Possibly using to much pre amp gain could have done it as well. When doing some of the older tapes I will generally bring it in at a pretty modest level and then bring it up to todays volume standards with a good set of compression and maximizing pluggin's.
Jun 03, 2007 01:11 pm I do have sound forge and it did a good enough job.
Funnily enough, showing the modern age, I did not have a tape player in the house and had to buy a $10 walkman thing. I connected using the headphone out to the Toneport line in. The original tape was very noisy as it was a live recording of a speech.
Anyway I got it going. Since it was spoken word the loss of high end eq wasn't too big of a deal.
The Sound Forge correction stuff seemed pretty simplistic though, I didn't find an option for sampling the noise and reverse phasing it or anything ?
Jun 03, 2007 08:14 pm Which version of SF do you have? I'll have to look as I don't remember the name of the plug at the moment.
But one thing that probably added to the noise is the walkman and the headphone output. Odds are the make up gain needed was partly to blame as it boosted the headphone output.
Glad ya got it worked out though in the end.
Jun 03, 2007 08:22 pm Noize is right... Need line out...
Jun 03, 2007 10:43 pm You definitely don't need line out since I just did it with headphone out :)
Jun 03, 2007 10:48 pm OH ya, absolutely not. But the headphone out was not intended to be used that way. Although I have also done it in a pinch, it is not the cleanest way to get the audio. But the biggest part is if it just for the sake of hearing it or salvaging the tape for personal use it is the cheapest and best way. I rarely use my tape machines for personal use anymore but I keep them just for that purpose as well as the customers that still send tapes in for to have them salvaged. But that is a paying job so its worth the extra effort.
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