Hey, everybody, I have 30+ cassettes from my DJ days back in the '80s. I have recorded them into an mp3 320 now I would like to clean up and brighten the sound as best as possible, I have Audition. Can anybody tell me the steps I need to follow or and is there an online tutorial maybe??
Such a good question and I know that not so long ago Mike was restoring old tapes. I have pinged him your question to check - so hold on tight for reply from him
Personally I would never try to do audio restoration from an mp3 file.
I would re-record them into a .WAV file and start from there.
Audition has loads of noise reduction tools in the audio restoration tab, and some are made specifically for that kind of job.
My fav tool is the adaptive noise reduction, but you can also just start by taking a noise sample from the recording and doing it that way.
Also Izotope RX can give you a free trial, and they have some really good tools on there.
I canāt be more specific, because I canāt hear the exact audio issue you haveā¦
Iād start by saving them in a lossless format as @fubidou mentions. You could go for .wav file but Iād suggest .flac itās a lossless format, is open source and ends up being slightly smaller in filesize than .wav too.
First, keep these original unrestored copies no matter what. You canāt āundoā bad noise reduction and restoration once itās saved out to the file.
Iād start by using Capture Noise Print in Adobe Audition on just the silent part of a tape. Then run the Noise Reduction tool on the recording and tweak settings from there. I really wouldnāt go too crazy with effects to improve cassette tape audio as most of the audio will be acceptable.
If you have any sample recordings feel free to post them here for even more detailed advice