Cassettes: better to fetishize than actually deal with

December 5, 2010 7:42 PM

I'm digitizing a bunch of old tracks off of cassettes, and they have that expected cassette muddiness to them. Does anyone have any advice in remixing and remastering them?

I use Apple Logic, if that makes a difference.
posted by umbĂș (2 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

Are you pulling them off 4-track or are the just plain stereo?

Generally the problems are noise and loss of high/low frequencies. There's not much you can do about the hiss without getting a specialized plugin like the Waves X-Noise. There is a denoiser which comes with Logic which you could try though. You can also gate out the hiss in the quiet parts if you want but it might sound a bit weird.

The EQ is simply a matter of cutting the mids (sort of 250Hz to 2KHz but experiment) and putting in a boost for the bass and the top end. However you probably want to roll off everything under about 50Hz and above 10Kz as there is not likely to be much there but noise.

It's possible you might have some warble and phasing but I've no idea if you can do anything about that. I've also had issues with dropouts.
posted by unSane at 5:09 AM on December 6, 2010 [1 favorite]


A belated thanks, unSane. That helps.
posted by umbĂș at 11:18 AM on December 13, 2010


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