Mailbag: Help With Audio Restoration?

Never forget. The media we use to preserve our memories of friends and family is VERY temporary.

Thank You for posting on you tube. I have been attempting to clean up some horrible audio. These are from some cassettes that were recorded 35+ years ago. They are from relatives talking about life and family history. The sound is either blaring or not there, it sounds like they were either attempting to swallow the mike or put it across the room. I am using audacity to 'record' it onto my pc. Is there anywhere you are aware of that I may get some help? Thank You.
-Al G

This stuff gets tricky, doubly so because you're working with content which is so personal. The basics here, make sure you're using the best possible tape deck you can get your hands on. Anything you can do to make sure the tapes aren't physically damaged in any way.

If possible record using good cables into an interface which will record at least 24 bit / 96KHz wav files. As you try to correct some of the poor recordings, the more information you have in the recordings, the more likely it'll be you can push your salvage tools a little further.

While working in Audacity, you should be able to see loud and quiet fairly easily. Audacity's built in volume tools should allow you to balance out some of those inconsistencies, but you'll most likely be doing a significant amount of that adjustment by hand. After you've balanced that out a bit, you can look at noise reduction and EQ plugins to help take some of the edge off the poor recordings.

As for help, you might be able to hit up a local recording studio to see if they can transfer the audio to a digital format for you. You might also be able to hire a company which specializes in media transferring, but I've never used a service like that personally, so I wouldn't know who to recommend.

For my readers, are there any other tips or tricks to help Al out?
Is there a service you've used which handled your media with care?
Please leave us a comment below!