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bekkab51456741
Participant
March 6, 2017
Question

Need Help Restoring an old Microcassette Audio Tape

  • March 6, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 852 views

Hi! I recently purchased Audition because I have an old Microcassette tape that needs to be restored. So, yes, I am new to Audition. My problem is the voice on the tape is hard to hear and hard make out what she is saying clearly. I have removed background noises using the spectral frequency filter (it works very good) and then amplified the voice to make it easier to hear. I was successful at removing the background interference but It is almost like the person is talking too fast. Is there a way to slow the voice down slightly? Or any ideas or tips or steps etc on how I should approach this restoration. I only have a week or so to figure it out. All help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

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    1 reply

    Bob Howes
    Bob Howes
    Inspiring
    March 7, 2017

    Since a lot of micro cassette devices were battery powered, it's entirely possible that the record device was running a bet slow compared to your playback.

    If this is what's happened, it's fairly easily fixed using Effects/Time And Pitch/Stretch and Pitch (process).  This will give you the option of changing the duration, the pitch or both at the same same.  For your purposes I'd guess you want to lock duration and pitch together.  After that, it's just a matter of experimenting with the amount of adjustment in preview until it sounds okay to you.

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    bekkab51456741Author
    Participant
    March 7, 2017

    Unfortunately I haven't been able to get it to work right. So I started back at the beginning. I re-processed the file through noise reduction several times and it improved somewhat. I'm still having a problem with the voice...please see link below. I have attached two sample files to this page so you can hear my problem. Thanks!

    home

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    bekkab51456741Author
    Participant
    March 9, 2017

    Listening to your very brief sample, I think at least part of the problem is too much noise reduction in a single go.  I'd suggest doing it in 4 or 5 passes, each at a different FFT setting.  (Don't worry about what FFT is but you change it on the Advanced menu of the Noise Reduction menu.

    Start with the FFT set at 2048 and the NR slider set to about 15% and the "Reduce By" set to about 10dB.  Grab your noise sample, switch to the entire file the perform the reduction.

    Then switch the FFT to 4096, grab a new noise sample, select the same slider settings, switch to Entire File and do it again.

    Keep doing this, increasing the FFT size between each step.  Hopefully this will get rid of any background hiss without adding the artefacts that make everything sound squeaky.

    At this point I suspect you may still need with that Time and Pitch effect I suggested.

    The final thing you can try is a bit of Equalisation (Effects/Filter and EQ).  If you're not used to this, the 30 band graphic is probably the easiest.  Play with raising the sliders for the lower frequencies and reducing some of the higher (say above about 3000 Hz).  There's no magic setting...you'll just have to go by ear.

    Good luck!


    Thank you Bob! I will follow your advise and see what happens! I will let you know.

    By the way....Thank you very much for taking the time to help me with this.....you have no idea how important this tape is.

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