Old Audio Tape Rescue- Audacity 

Thank you Philip, for this wonderful video. I am working on restoring two digitized reel-to-reel tapes of organ music from my uncle's college recital in 1961. The music was sounding muffled, and the bottom had a rumble. The tips you showed here made all the difference. We will be using his music at his memorial service, and I can't thank you enough for helping me to make it sound great. You are my angel today!

I found my father old tapes recorded songs yesterday. Today I set up the equipment SW & HW and search from RU-vid a tutorial that fits my needs and your video was the first I looked. I have a rule in case I need to learn some information. Check at least three sources. Your tutorial was quite enough to save my father songs. Thanks!

Thank you for posting this tutorial. I have been working on a lot of tape transfers recently. I bought a TsirTech little walkman looking tape player on Amazon that plugs in to the computer to do this, but it is pretty cheaply made and doesn't seem to be doing a very good job. It slows and speeds up and makes the sound record funny. grrr. After watching your tutorial I figured out #1 I could have saved the $20 and just used a cord I already owned and my old cassette player that is a good one, and hook it directly to the computer. #2 I learned how to use Audacity! Thank you Thank you! Bad news is after watching your tutorial I wanna do it all over again, now that I know what I'm doing!

Thank you for the video. Being new to Audacity, I was mainly fighting the new User Interface which is bit different from the video editors I am used to. I take the actual audio "cleanup" as the "possibilities" and am not hung up on the actual changes you performed. Obviously tape hiss and mechanism rumble has to be removed carefully, not to remove the actual source spectrum. Kudos and thank you!

Thank you Philip for your clear and relaxed instructions.

Hello Phillip - I am trying to record from a tape player similar to what you did. However I cannot control the volume input. In minute 3 you discussed this but I did not see how I was to keep the volume out of the red. Other videos show turning down the "microphone" volume but since I am not using a microphone that options does nothing to the volume. Actually the microphone can be set at zero and it does nothing. I understand if I was using a microphone I could use that standard tool to adjust the volume. Any tips?

Thanks! I wasn't looking for cassette transfer, but your video was actually really good on navigating Audacity, and lots of helpful goodies that I didn't know were possible.

Great knowledge shared on working with Audacity! Keep up with the good work and make more great videos like this :)

This is incredibly helpful! Thank you very much!

I dont know if your doing videos of audio anymore . but i have many tapes that go loud and quite with different freckancys and it sounds horrable but i cant repalce then cause they are songs i did when it was a kit and old radio mixes i cant get anywhere. please help!!!! i have audacity.. diamond cut audio 10 and nero wave editor. can i do it with any of thosse? sorry for the bad spelling, i suck at spelling and my keyboard sticks and sucks

Thanks, just what I was looking for

4 year old video but still very relevant!!! Thank you!!!

I got tons of casettes in my car still working from 20+ years ago. For me the point of cassette is about having music on them not on some digital media. The lack of skipping tracks, repeat, shuffle, makes listening to music much more of a experience.

A really useful video with great info. Thank you.

Can I inquire as to what is the name of your piano audio your playing?

Any ideas on how to clean up pitch drift?

Ive been doing this with my old minidiscs,although it was at a reasonable level one recording was still sounding distorted but not crackly.I think its probably the recording was captured like that as opposed to audacity not capturing properly.

I have a super bad wave to the cassettes. How do I fix it?

Oyyy, *compressing* a cassette track even further?!?! Nuts...

i have have a bad popping / bopping sound coming through my recording and having a lot of trouble removing it

that 0.1 V information saved me. thanks!

That Panasonic stereo system looks just like my old one (SA-AK230) that I donated because they are no longer read the disk. still, a very helpful video and it's should work the same on a dedicated cassette deck also.

Excellent vid

I was excited to learn how to convert my cassettes....but this seems really complicated! I am not a tech-savvy person. Is there a company or someone I can pay to convert it for me properly?? Also why do the strips? in the cassettes become deactivated and lose their songs or skip the music?? Is there a way to restore that??

Hi, one question, when the mic setting has been selected on Audacity does any thing need to be changed on a laptop that uses the horrible combined mic /hp, port? I haven't got Audacity at the moment (have had in the past) so can't do the obvious and just try, and I don't like downloads , usually a last resort ,quite often seems to upset things, thanks ,Chris.

So where the hell was Biggles, when you needed him last Saturday....

Thank you this helped me a lot

thanks for a new video! for information, they sell a new walkman type cassette player with a usb connector, its pretty cheap, if you find you dont have a player or a pc with the right connections, and using batteries will prevent a lot of hum noises

Your video seems so good, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I have the earphone output of the cassette recorder connected to my stereo boxes that are connected to the one and only hole of my laptop for "loudspeakers" or "headset". The stereo boxes have an a audio/mic input which I normally use for the headset when Skyping etc. On the stereo boxes, there's another hole with a "musical note" - that is precisely where I've now put my cassette recorder output and I can hear it through my laptop-headphones! But it wouldn't record on audacity! I've also alternatively connected my cassette recorder output straight to that single laptop hole (it is a combined input, and not USB). Do you have any suggestions? I gave you a like anyway, because it's a great video.

thumbs up!

The audio track from your video is noisy, which is ironic because you are making a video on how to handle that... However, thank you for the video. I'm restoring recorded lectures from the 50's and 60's and this tutorial is pure gold for that purpose!

I've a bunch of cassette tapes in my collection. Toney T. Isaiah.

G'day Philip, thank-you very much for this video tutorial. I'll put it to use very soon. Cheers, b.

Does this work with death metal? I'm going to try

Alternatively you can use Audacity to record anything and everything off of the internet by changing the way your computer sound system works. Simply set it up if your computer allows it and mine is an 4 year old laptop so nothing special, play ANY piece of music from any Website and it'll will record it perfectly. Obviously you want to get the best quality hd recording if possible. This means you can get a clean track of any song in your collection without having to do the restoration stuff. This is legal as far as I am aware so long as you already own the music and in any case it totally untraceable say like a torrent music download.

Thx

We have a lot of VHS tapes to transfer also.

Very interesting explanation but your recording is too noisy

My God! Guess you don't care about quality. Jeez... A Boom Box? Really!? Ya know there are still in 2020 some very nice cassette deck available. WOW!