Remember, this transfer that you (or I) are about to undertake may be the last time (and hopefully the best time) that the original is transferred. Here are some suggestions:
- Make at least two masters and a listening copy. Keep one set of masters off-site.
- Use the best playback equipment you can find. It does make a difference, and world-class equipment is often being sold off at fire-sale prices.
- Check playback azimuth. Wrong azimuth problems can only be partially compensated in downstream processing. The bad azimuth artifacts will stay with the recording for the rest of its life if you don’t get it right the first time.
- If your tapes have tones, align the playback device(s) to the tones (especially Dolby). Record the tones on the digital copy.
- Make sure your noise processing (Dolby, dbx, Telcom) is working properly and is the correct type. There are at least five different versions of Dolby (Pro: A & SR; Consumer: B, C, S) and two of dbx (Pro: Type 1; Consumer: Type 2). There are no software plugins to decode this properly. You must have a properly functioning decoder.
- Be creative in non-invasive ways to optimize playback. For example, a cotton swab can be an auxiliary pressure pad during some rough areas of playback on reel machines that don’t normally have pressure pads.
- Don’t play a tape with sticky-shed or that appears to be losing it oxide without some treatment.
- Make straight transfers before processing. Save these as better noise processing algorithms may be available in the future.
- Save a good portion of the noise footprint on the tape without other signal information for later noise reduction processing.
- At first, worry less about a final product than getting a good, clean transfer with as few artifacts as possible.
- Above all, listen…are you getting the best transfer you think you can?
Comments:
Tom Proctor Posted Mar 14, 2006 2:39 AM
I have been trying to find good information on noise reduction processing using a noise footprint. Does anyone know of a relaible method or filter that can be applied to reduce random noise such as tape hiss? Any suggestions appreciated.
Richard L. Hess Posted Mar 14, 2006 11:36 AM
First, please consider the discussion in this article and generally do not leave the noise-processed copies as the preservation master as this is an area where technology will improve.
With that said, I am a real fan of Algorithmix Noise Free Pro. There are other products to consider: Cedar, Quadriga from Cube-Tec, and probably others. The Dehisser in Samplitude and Algorithmix\’s Sound Laundry are both more limited versions of their big brother. Either can do a good job, it\’s just that NFP does it better and offers more controls.
Tom Proctor Posted Mar 14, 2006 1:25 PM
I am currently trying get information about soundcards. This is primarily in reference to users of PCs that want to transfer recordings with good results but don\’t want to invest in pro equipment. I have had satisfactory results using a 24 bit Soundblaster Audigy 2 ($80), but I see there are a lot of cards out there for a lot more $. Anyone know what makes them better and how much better are they?
Richard L. Hess Posted Mar 14, 2006 1:45 PM
There is an aging resource for this information here. There are, of course, really high-end A-D converters, but there is some consensus about the Digital Audio Labs CardDeluxe as being a good value for money for a PCI-based card.
This is partially discussed here as well and I think that is a better location for ongoing discussions.
Susan Kitchens Posted Mar 27, 2006 9:29 PM
If I may make a small squeak on behalf of MacOS based products… I recently tried out Peak\’s SoundSoap, and it does an okay job. (the demo movie is fantabulous, of course, and your own results vary. But it\’s got a good end-user UI w/o having to go into tons of technicalties) Of course, I do noise reduction on a copy, not the original. Disk storage is cheap.