Hello,

25 years old recording ripped from a cassette. It sounds damp, muddy and masked. I tried using many different tools, Gullfoss, Eq's etc but I just can't make it better.

Could anyone please explain in the laymen terms what plugins are suited to treat this material with what settings ?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

Damp, muddy and masked describes my old ears perfectly. Is this the original cassette version or after your fxfest? It sounds fine to me anyway.

 

Hello, thank you for the response. It's dry unprocessed.

 

Hmm, I don't think it sounds that bad for a 25 year old cassette tape! You should hear my cassettes from the 1985s.....

I did some eq-ing, used Satin and kept the LUFS-I at -14.7 as the original.
Keep in mind that I recorded your soundcloud first in my Audacity and converted it to wav.
When you expect miracles, you probably might hire a professional since I am definitely not one!
But to my ears it indicates it can be improved. The high-hats need some trimming since they are a bit too much but that can be done with a side compress or EQ. As said, I did very quick regular EQ-ing. Oh, and BTW, I only took 1m30 of your song. It is just an example. If you like it, I can do do the whole song.
Link

 

The original sounds pretty good to me. I don't think it needs much more than a few dB of high shelf boost. Possibly a use an exciter (T-Exciter? La Petite Excite?) to bring out further detail in the top.

 

Better than I remember my cassettes! Love the random chicken cry sample, lol.

 

Thanks Paul but it's a complete album with 8 sets so I rather not bother you. As a plus I would learn something in the meantime. Your help is highly appreciated.

 

I used Wavesfactory EQ and did a pretty impressive job, after I fixed the S with Fabfilter DS. Also tried Sooth2 but it ddin't do anything impressive, don't understand all the praise. Maybe I couldn't set the parameters right?

 

It's the true essence of real folk music where they would include the samples in the background to enhance the expression of what singer is singing about. Too bad, culture shifted to Hi-Hop and they don't make this kinda stuff anymore.

Here's one with Gun shots