• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  cleaning up tape hiss

  Posted by Tom Martin on April 19, 2008 at 2:57 pm

  I’m not a computer or techn guy at all, just an old luddite guitar player, and I’d appreciate some advice. I’m in the process of transferring 15 years of “basement tapes”, mostly recorded on my old Tascam Porta One 4-track cassette, into the digital realm for a cd, or posting sound files on a website for download. The sound quality is surprisingly good, but there’s a LOT of tape hiss during the quieter passages. (I never used the DBX on the Tascam, it just took all the life and brilliance out of the acoustic guitar sound, as well as everything else.)
  So, this is what I have to work with…. I just bought a new MacBook Pro to work with. No special programs, just Sound Studio and Garage Band (which I assume is not going to be what I want to use). Also, I have a Boss BR-900CD workstation on loan. Still in the box. I haven’t done anything yet but transfer the tunes from the Tascam to my computer via a Griffin iMic, and burned them to a test cd.

  Keep in mind that I need something REALLY easy to use, and as intuitive as possible. Will the Notebook or the CB-900CD have feature to work for me, or do I need something else, like Soundsoap? (then, Soundsoap 2, or Soundsoap Pro? Dont’ think I could afford Pro at this time anyway) Also, I think I need to learn something about using compression and equalizing volume between tracks. I have not illusions of making this project (or the other projects waiting in line behind it) polished and professional ( in fact, I want to keep a little funk and roughness in the whole thing), but I’d like to make it as listenable as possible. The tape hiss gets pretty distracting at points

  Thanks in advance for any help.

  Lee Berger replied 18 years, 4 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Lee Berger

  April 20, 2008 at 10:33 am

  Audacity at https://audacity.sourceforge.net/ is a free multi-track audio program for OS X and Windows. It has a noise removal filter that allows you to sample a few seconds of noise and filter it out. The Beta 1.3.3 program works quite well on my G-5. Soundtrack Pro also has this feature.

  Lee Berger
  http://www.leebergermedia.com

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