Restoring music from cassettes tapes that are muddy

[Gerald Sr.]

I'm trying to restore the music from some cassettes tapes. The music sound muddy. Its not clear. I would like to know how can I make the music sound more crisper or clearer. I have SoundForge and Cool Edit and I cannot find any filter to make the music crisper or clearer. I appreciate some technique to clean up the muddy sound.

Gerald

[Cornucopia]

One person's "muddy" can be another's "boomy" or "ballsy". Terms like that are too subjective. Show us a screencap of a frequency analysis, or better yet, upload a short clip that we can judge for ourselves and be able to give better advice.

Scott

[showtaper]

I'm trying to restore the music from some cassettes tapes. The music sound muddy. Its not clear. I would like to know how can I make the music sound more crisper or clearer. I have SoundForge and Cool Edit and I cannot find any filter to make the music crisper or clearer. I appreciate some technique to clean up the muddy sound.

Gerald

Have you checked these tapes on more than one cassette deck?

Your playback machine may have dirty heads or an alignment problem. As mentioned, please post a sample.

[Hoser Rob]

Agree 100% with trying another deck, though it's not that easy finding a good one in good shape nowadays.

As mentioned, take some isopropyl and qtips to the playback head.

Also, you can't buy pro level recording software expecting to find a simple 'crisp' or 'clear' filter. Pro stuff is made for professionals ... ie. people who know what those terms actually mean in terms of the frequency spectrum, and how eq etc. works. It's a big mistake to assume that pro level tools are going to be easier to use. It's often quite the opposite.

If you find that the problem is actually with the tapes ... quite possible, tape wears ... try searching the frequency spectrum of music. You'll find out what things like boom, crisp, honk, air etc. mean in eq terms.

[Gerald Sr.]

I had clean the heads already. Here is a sample clip of the song.

[classfour]

It almost sounds like the left and right tracks are out of synch.

When I play it back, however, it appears to be recorded in mono, not allowing any balance in volume.

[bigass]

Going over it right now in Audition 1.5
The left and right channels *are* different. The left channel is muddier/darker-sounding than the right. The right has hi-hat that is not audible in the left channel.
The right channel is also a few db louder than the left channel.
These things together suggest to me an alignment problem. If you have the deck the tape was recorded on, try that. I doubt you would have that deck, though.
There seems to be some distortion present. I can't tell whether the distortion is on the tape, or introduced in the playback deck or elsewhere in the signal chain.

I'll attach a quick example here.
I ran it through Audition's channel mixer with the 'full mix' preset - both left and right channels at 100%.
Playing that back, on my monitors, it does not sound muddy. There's some distortion in there, but if tools exist to un-distort portions of the spectrum, I don't know how to use them.
Any chance this was a transfer from a vinyl record to cassette originally?
I've rolled off some of the low-end and cut a little bit around 7k.
Let me know if this sounds any better on your end.

[Gerald Sr.]

The music was recorded from vinyl to cassette, also, it was recorded in stereo. I noticed that both left and right channel was flashing during playback on the cassette deck and in Sony Soundforge. The distortion is on the tape and not on the playback deck. I tried a cassette tape that I had made about ten years and played it in the same deck and it still sound crisp. The music was recorded on Maxell XLII High Bias tape. I assume it was not the deck that is the cause of the distorted or muddy sound.
Can you please explain how you use the Channel Mixer to roll off the low-end and cut the 7k frequency in Adobe Audition? I really appreaciate your time and help. Thanks.


Gerald Sr.

[chowmein]

sounded perfectly fine to me, not my cup of tea but audio was fine

[MOVIEGEEK]

It sounded a little "muddy" to me but that's normal for vinyl to cassette recordings. The graphs below look pretty good for cassette, the drop-off above 10,000Hz is normal. These shots were taken in Audacity so you might try boosting the high end.

[bigass]

Hey, Gerald. If the distortion is on the tape and the tape is a transfer from vinyl, there are a few places the distortion could've come from... and no way that I know of to remove it.

In Adobe Audition (and probably most other digital audio workstations), the channel mixer lets you do various things with the channels -- mix a 50% average of the left and right, or make it mono from the left channel, or right....extract a center channel...invert a channel. Each has its use, sometimes as a special effect, and sometimes as a tool. In this case, I mixed both tracks together at 100%.

I used a 30-band EQ in Audition's 'filters' section and sloped the low end to take out any muddiness or boominess. The spectral view also suggested to me that there was a lot of signal in around the 7khz area. It might've been an impulsive move on my part, but I brought that down by a few db.

Overall, though -- other than the left/right mismatch, which appears to me to be a head alignment issue -- it doesn't sound bad, considering what you have to work with. Didn't sound muddy or weird....just sounded like a record copied to tape 30 years ago...which, I'm guessing, is what it was.