I have a few demo tracks on cassettes from the 90s from a certain band I was in at that time. I would like to document them and transfer to my PC to get digital versions of the tracks.

What a good, cheap way to the tracks from cassette to PC, bearinf in mind I own no cassette players of any kind at present.

Cheers!

 

You could try to find a used cassette player at a thrift store (charity shop) or ask around friends, neighbors, etc if they have one laying around in the garage etc...........connect the line out or the headphone jack to your interface and record it that way. Quality might not be great but at least you would have a digital record in case the cassette tape suffers the dreaded tangle mess !

Or maybe something like this plug and play usb convertor on amazon. Price isnt bad either...



I guess this site doesnt let me link to Amazon.....there are lots on there just searh for
"Portable USB Cassette Tape Deck to PC Converter"

 

Coming soon: http://elbow.co.nf

 

Hey Bunford
Im assuming when you say old demo tapes your saying a stereo mix down, not a 4 track demo? If it's former then pretty easy job.

As already mentioned you can pick up old tape players pretty darn cheap and use line out, headphone jack etc and they will do a pretty reasonable job. If this is a once off thing you and you dont see yourself using it again you can also use a copying service there's plenty around that take analogue A/V sources to digital, VHS, super 8, adat, r2r and cassate to digital file. I recently did some old tapes at a place in my home town done under and paid 50 bucks for 4 SA90s. Which I thought was darn reasonable. Considering i was going to spend close to that anyway. One tape might cost you 20 or so, but you will get it coming of a well maintained pro deck with a good AD conversion.

No doubt if its been sitting in draw for 20 odd years there will be some degrading of the tape.


Once you get it there's plenty of apps around to help reduce tape hiss, rumble, artifacts with good noise reduction algorithims . Izotope is one, or if dont have access to that audicity is free and has some darn good tools.
There's never a free lunch as they say with restoring but a light touch with processing can get some good results without kills the highs.

 

And once you have restored your transferred material near to perfection, there's plenty of plugins around to help re-inject tape hiss, rumble, artifacts with good noise addition algorithms...

You wouldn't want to lose all the "warmth" of your original analog recordings, don't you?

 

hi Bunford,
depending where in wales you are and how many tracks on how many tapes you have, i may be able to help you out in the rw, if you're not in too much of a hurry.
if you're interested, chuck us a pm and i can tell you what i've got, where i am and so on.
if not, that's perfectly fine too.

cheers

 

Haha nice call Rev

 

Never understand when people want to record audio to tape, then restore. What for? You want to kill what you are looking for? It's like "let's break this ferrari to fucking death, then restore what we can". It is only Russians can repair stuff, such as gear/tv sets/etc, by further breaking and destruction. If you want to record to tape, so use extremely excellent dac, wires, tape machines, tapes, Dolby noise reduction systems, and hit the tape before proper working of recording process (calibration, cleaning of tape machines and other), then goodest Adc.

O yee. Cassettes to Pc. Good Adc, yo tapes and very good/top cassette player/recorder with its equalizer to adjust audio before playback to adc. Watch levels etc. 44100/24 is usually more than enough. Remastering with plugins and digital apps such as rx is your taste. Very minimal info for you. First clean (rx, acon restore, Wavelab, sound forge, wave arts restore, sonic Oxford, etc), then processing like eq, minimal limiting... Better manual declicking before denoisers. Because after overall denoising your clicks may be transformed from ts into tf, pf, chic, k, but manual editing is always better because small bad stuff is better to find out on sonograms / ears than auto learning and processing all small and big clicks with one setting. And manual declicking is more accurate, you see the click, zoom in, select with free selection type (time-frequency) and gain it down how you want, without making black holes and silence in your audio. Sonogram editing and with manual workflow is something like surgical killing of all stuff you want without touching audio at all.
Usually I digitize and remaster, and have two versions, restored one and original not processed. My old Sony cassette tape player / recorder is still fucking good.

 

That is awesome!

But what bothers me with all devices like that, be it fancy like elbow or cheapo like one beth mentioned: we're kinda serious about audio here, supposedly have semi-useful ad-da converters but should nevertheless use all-in-one devices with (also supposedly) bad converters, compared to the ones we have in the studio? Not to mention inferior tape transport... It doesn't make sense to me. Why not buy a used tape deck, Nakamichi, Akai, Onkyo integra or Sony ES off ebay and don't compromise on quality? Or if not that, at least find a guy who has this kind of equipment and who does it for you?

 

This is probably what I will do. I have a MOTU 828 which is a pretty good audio interface. I might try to pick up or lend a decent cassette deck and run through the balanced inputs of my MOTU into Studio One and if need be, 'fix' in the using its mastering window.

 

Last edited: May 12, 2017

I have a similar thing to do. I borrowed a semi pro technics cassette player (nobody wants it back, hehe..) and noticed a couple of things that seem important to me.

- the head alignment (azimuth). The demos were probably recorded on a pretty much fresh unit. Now you will buy something second hand and even if it's in good condition, as we are talking mechanic parts, you should check it. There is simple software that can help you - just record something at 1 kHz and adjust the azimuth screw on the head. (gggle for software, can't remember)

- my unit has 2 decks and I immediately noticed they were not running at the same speed. I knew the key of the music piece and chose the one that was almost perfect. I think you can do nothing simple here to remedy this (other than changing rubber bands,..) but if you have the opportunity you can check this too

Then you can do all the RX software magic.. but here, other than a good A/D conv., "less is more"

 

I've done this for myself and other musicians. Here's what I've learned from experience:

Be as picky as you can about selecting a cassette deck. Look for big-name brands like Sony, Nakamichi, Denon, Marantz (we're going back as far as the '80s, mind you). A deck designed to provide consistent speed in the tape transport is what you want. You should find one which has been well-maintained or gently-used.
Look for a deck which features the same noise-reduction (i.e, Dolby B or C; dbx) as the deck onto which the tapes had been recorded - and play them back with that same N/R, or the frequencies will be all-off (and not necessarily remediable by EQ, esp. in the case of db or Dobly C).
There is also the matter of azimuth adjustment – the positioning of the playback head to align with the tracks without crosstalk, though it might be impossible to get it exact, and maybe not worth your time (nor expense).
Record from the line-outs on the back of the deck, not from the headphone jack.
Do a flat-transfer of the recording, without any EQ, and give the signal respectful headroom, to avoid clipping and digital distortion. You may want to do a "24/48" or "24/96" rip, to have as much information to work with as possible in processing and cleaning-up the audio. Keep the original rip and save processed copies. Don't discard the cassettes, either.

 

I bought a new USB tape player/recorder for $15.....worked perfectly!

 

yep, I'd say that's your comfiest bet for diy.

and it'll keep your unicorn happy.