• Audio

  Cassette Tape Print-Through

  Posted by Mary Waitrovich on June 11, 2012 at 1:07 am

  Hello!
  I have decided to digitize a large box of cassette tapes that are mostly around 15 years old. Both of the two I have played so far have a small echo audible which I have now learned is Tape Print-Through. Since these are all personal recordings I plan to go ahead with my project to digitize and just live with the echo unless there is something I can do about it. Since it’s faint, I guess I could apply noise reduction or a noise gate to the recorded wav files to clear the pauses of echos, but all of the audio is going to be slightly distorted by the print-through, isn’t it, and I might as well just live with it rather than lose parts of the signal.

  Anyway, I would appreciate any thoughts you experts can provide.

  Thanks much,
  Mary

  Mary Waitrovich
  Media Plus You, LCC
  http://www.mediaplusyou.com

  Mary Waitrovich replied 14 years, 1 month ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Ty Ford

  June 11, 2012 at 1:44 am

  Hello Mary and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

  Your assessment is spot on.

  A deft control on an expander may help, maybe noise reduction, but the cure may be as bad as the disease.

  Regards,

  Ty Ford
  Cow Audio Forum Leader

  
  Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
  Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog
• 

  Mary Waitrovich

  June 11, 2012 at 2:35 am

  Thank you for the quick reply.
  I’m a frequent participant of the Sony Vegas Cow forum, but I have learned that the other forums are populated by knowledgeable and friendly people.
  Thanks.

  Mary Waitrovich
  Media Plus You, LCC
  http://www.mediaplusyou.com
• 

  Richard Crowley

  June 11, 2012 at 4:42 am

  Another possibility is to try creating another track with the same signal in the opposite polarity. Line it up with the echo and try mixing enough in to cancel the echo signal. It may be more effective than more generic kinds of noise reduction.

  The opposite-phase cancellation is not really available in most kinds of audio repair, but this is one exceptional case where it may be of some value.

  Note that you may have to “slip” your echo track to keep it in sync along the way as print-thru varies from the beginning to the end of the tape.
• 

  Mary Waitrovich

  June 11, 2012 at 9:10 pm

  Thank you for the suggestion, but I don’t know how this would be done. I use Sound Forge 9 – would that work? Do you mean duplicate the track and apply opposite-phase cancellation to one and then merge them? Is opposite-phase cancellation an “effect” or what? This may be beyond me, which is not a problem as the echo effect is not completely maddening.
  Thanks.

  Mary Waitrovich
  Media Plus You, LCC
  http://www.mediaplusyou.com

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