Anyone familiar with cassette tapes?

[Jagwah]

I have some older much adored tapes, mostly dj mixes of friends on cassette tapes.

The problem is after so many years the sound can get quite bad, sounding like it's running through a phaser, and the levels go up and down, sometimes higher frequencies are very loud when the lower ones are much lower.

I used to work with 9 and 21 track tapes doing data recovery of very old tapes. We would use heat treatment on the tapes which I no longer have access to, and also clean the reading head with isopropyl alcohol which I have done on my stereo but the tapes have still lost much of their original quality.

I'm wanting to transfer these to digital format but before I do can anyone offer any suggestions in regards to the lost quality?

[Chizmata]

well whats lost is lost, but you could do some eqing on it

[normen]

If you played them already the info is probably lost. Restoration studios do a few things to ensure best quality for old tapes: First they bake them (like literally in an oven) and then they make sure they record the very first playback directly because just playing the tape will make it degrade if the tape is very old.

[Dante]

Have you tried any azymuth adjustment on them ?

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Recor ... st_azimuth

[gak]

Hipsters!

[MarkTarlton]

I have a feeling it's your tape deck.

[phasys]

I have a feeling it's your tape deck.

Seconded. Make sure you get a GOOD (preferrably single) tapedeck. I've done a few recoveries myself recently with a quality TEAC deck, recorded it using Balance and it sounds fantastic.

[Jagwah]

Thanks guys, these tapes haven't been sitting in storage over the years they have been played many times. I think my best bet is to first try another stereo I have access to and hopefully I can get a decent transfer to digital format from there.

[Bonkhead]

I have a feeling it's your tape deck.

thirded

[selig]

Cassette tapes don't suffer from shedding and should not be baked.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky-shed_syndrome


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[gak]

Man. I don't get it. And I've seen it elsewhere, and I don't get it.

Couldn't move away for cassettes fast enough frankly.

VHS? BETA? Reel to reel? Two inch tape? Sure, that is fine. Cassette? My gawd, I'm paralyzed with fear about that hipster trend!

[phasys]

Man. I don't get it. And I've seen it elsewhere, and I don't get it.

Couldn't move away for cassettes fast enough frankly.

VHS? BETA? Reel to reel? Two inch tape? Sure, that is fine. Cassette? My gawd, I'm paralyzed with fear about that hipster trend!

We're talking about recovering old tapes. With music and/or mixes that can't easily be replicated. We're not talking about releasing new music on tape.