Changing Sermon Tapes to MP3s

[ChristFirst]

Hey everyone,

We got an Ion Tape 2 PC machine that changes tapes to MP3s, and we have some old sermon tapes that I've been trying to restore into MP3 format. I'm not having problems with making it an MP3 but with making the audio sound crisp and clear. I'm using audacity to bring it into the computer. I tried levelator out which makes the voice sound better, but there is still a lot of background noise.

Also the whole process just for one 1-hour message took a long time. Is there a more efficient way of doing this? I am a novice with all of this, this is my first day "on the job" but I'm willing to learn and I want to do a good job with these tapes and feel it would be useful for the Lord's people.

Any suggestions about software, improved workflow, or ANYTHING relevant to this whole subject would be so very appreciated!

In Christ,
Silas

Proverbs 22:9
Do you see a man skilled in his work?He will stand before kings;He will not stand before obscure men

[jeremyb503]

Try googling:

Tech Tip 105 - Cleaning Up Audio Files with Audacity By Scott Nesbitt
or
cleaning up background noise with audacity

There are some great articles there that will help you with this.

[pdc]

Originally Posted by ChristFirst

Is there a more efficient way of doing this?

No. If you want the best results, you will have to spend time on it. There are lots of companies selling audio restoration applications, but most of them are not as good as adjusting EQ, compression, gating, etc manually. Most of them leave digital processing artifacts as well.

The problem with tape is it is a poor source to begin with. The ratio of signal to noise is low. If these are old tapes, the binder (glue that holds the particles on to the mylar) can dry up and loose particles. If these were speech grade tapes, they are very limited bandwidth and noisy by themselves. Speech grade tapes were either cheaply made or from the end of the spool where consistency was iffy. The beginning of the spool was generally the best and went to the higher end brands. The middle was the stuff that the general public might use for music. Speech tapes were often recycled tape that was bulk erased. In addition to having to deal with tape, you will have to deal with the ambient room noise, microphone and technique of that day, etc.

When you push the top end to make it brighter, you will have to experiment so that you do not boost the noise of the tape. I would start with a high-pass filter of around 100 to 125Hz and a low-pass around 6kHz. By placing a low-pass there, you will have an inherent bumping of those frequencies which will contribute to more pronounced sibilance. Try boosting a tad at 4kHz to see if that works for you. You will need to pay attention to the 1kHz to 3kHz range. There is a tendency to be an emphasis there which makes the vocal a bit hony and harsh.

Just play and see what works. What will work for one tape will not work for the next.

[tedanderson]

If you want the best results, you will have to spend time on it.

Ditto. You will also want to listen to the recording from start to finish while you are dumping it or afterwards so that you can cut out long periods of dead space (e.g. when the speaker stops to give the congregation time to find scriptures in the bible, etc.) and smooth over any glitches.

In addition to improving the audio quality, you will want to improve the overall quality of the finished product itself. So that will also take some editing to remove places where the pastor unnecessarily repeats himself, makes a mistake and corrects it or starts talking about something that can only be visually appreciated. One instance that I used to deal with is situations where the pastor took a question from the audience or he might have been engaging in some sort of dialogue that didn't make it on the tape because the audience member did not have a microphone.

[ChristFirst]

Wow, thank you everyone for your responses so far. They have been very helpful. I think this is going to prove to be a much more daunting task then I anticipated, because there are literally hundreds of hours of sermon tapes to go through.

The tapes are old, yes. Some are from the 80's and others from the 90's, so we're dealing with 20-30 year old tapes, and they obviously were not recorded with care either.

Perhaps I'll try to post one of the messages on the internet so that everyone can hear the sound quality and maybe that will help with proper diagnosis.

pdc said: When you push the top end to make it brighter, you will have to experiment so that you do not boost the noise of the tape. I would start with a high-pass filter of around 100 to 125Hz and a low-pass around 6kHz. By placing a low-pass there, you will have an inherent bumping of those frequencies which will contribute to more pronounced sibilance. Try boosting a tad at 4kHz to see if that works for you. You will need to pay attention to the 1kHz to 3kHz range. There is a tendency to be an emphasis there which makes the vocal a bit hony and harsh.

How do you apply those filters? Can you do it through audacity? How do you boost the tad?

I thank all of you again in the Lord,
Silas

[pdc]

Originally Posted by ChristFirst

Wow, thank you everyone for your responses so far. They have been very helpful. I think this is going to prove to be a much more daunting task then I anticipated, because there are literally hundreds of hours of sermon tapes to go through.

The tapes are old, yes. Some are from the 80's and others from the 90's, so we're dealing with 20-30 year old tapes, and they obviously were not recorded with care either.

Perhaps I'll try to post one of the messages on the internet so that everyone can hear the sound quality and maybe that will help with proper diagnosis.



How do you apply those filters? Can you do it through audacity? How do you boost the tad?

I thank all of you again in the Lord,
Silas

I don't use Audacity. It is too quirky. I use ProTools HD. You could start with Reaper. It takes a bit to learn, but it has plenty of processing for what you need to do. There are plenty of tools to see what is going on graphically too.

www.reaper.fm

[jeremyb503]

How about renting a Cedar and running the tapes through that. they are kind of the gold standard in audio restoration. So people who deal with recordings of old time radio use them to restore their audio.

http://www.cedaraudio.com/

[ChristFirst]

Jeremy,

I looked up Cedar Audio and called them up -- all of their software seems to be in the thousands of dollars -- a little above my budget -- It sounds like a great product though.

pdc,

Is this product considerably more useful than audacity? It would be an investment but I'm willing to make it if it really is a superior product that will help with this restoration. What is your experience in it's superiority to audacity?

[jeremyb503]

I think they used to rent cedars but I may be wrong. If the rental fee was nominal it would be worth doing.

[wutwuzdat]

I've found the easiest way to do this is to use the wizard in Nero Soundtrax. It does a good job with minimal effort. If you do not have the Mp3 Pro plugin for Nero, export the file in something uncompressed, and then pull it into audacity... then to Mp3

[Nathan Smith]

Just wondering - other than taking a while for the recording process, how is the ION Tape 2 PC working for you?

We have a bunch of old cassettes that we need to convert to digital audio, but online reviews didn't make the product look promising.

[ChristFirst]

I still haven't got into the project too much yet of converting over our tapes, but the actual transfer process is pretty easy. You just put in the tape in the machine and it'll bring it right into itunes, audacity, or any other editing program too I suppose. Downside is that it doesn't automatically turn off when you are done recording a side of a tape, which makes for remembering to be there at the end of the tape or editing out long periods of silence. I can't personally testify to the longevity of the product, as I've still not used it much.

Does this help at all Vanassembly? Let me know if you have any more questions .

-John 15:4-5-