Brushing up old recordings

Burnsjethro · 11-17-2018, 05:51 AM

Help please.
Here's another project I have been putting off for years.
I have a CD of a recording me and two other friends made in the late 1970s.
I now remember we recorded them on a reel-to-reel tape.
Two microphones.
Me, on guitar, and the fiddle player standing in front of one mic and the mandolin player /vocalist standing in front of the other. This sometimes changed when I was the vocalist and/or mandolin player.

Anyhow the recordings were whittled down to a cassette format (we did not own the reel-to-reel taper recorder) on which they remained for many years. Then several years back a friend transferred the tracks to a CD, all in one continuous loop.

I imported the track into Audacity several years back and split them up into separate tracks. Fiddled about a bit, to no avail and then forgot about them until I started to get a bit more proficient with Reaper.
Anyhow, today I imported a track into Reaper, split the one track into two and discovered the stereo effect has been retained.

So you can hear me and the guitar starting on the one track and the mandolin and the vocal on the other. As we were all playing at the same time they do bleed into each other but they are definitely separate tracks.

So I would like to hear any ideas you have about making the sound better.
For starters (on the one track I am working on), me and the violin are overwhelming the mandolinist/vocalist so I have adjusted the volume. That has made a bit of a difference.

They are all traditional folk type tunes and songs, with no vocal harmonising. Everything sounds a bit thin, for one thing.

The performance is fairly respectable for a bunch of amateurs. Nothing earth-shattering of course. I have to check but I think the pitch has changed slightly being transferred from tape to cassettes, to CD and then to my computer, unless we were not very careful about being in concert pitch, which is possible I suppose.

Any ideas welcome.

Anton

serr · 11-17-2018, 06:18 AM

Getting your hands on an open reel deck and transferring the original analog tape to 24 bit digital (and HD if possible) would be the biggest bang for the buck thing you could do. Generation loss from a reel to cassette dub on consumer equipment can be a pretty big hit. Same from the cassette to 16/44.1 CD dub would be just as bad if not worse. Eliminating those would be huge.

After that iZotope RX has some mighty powerful tools.

After that, you should be able to mix and work on the instrument balance issues as needed.

Burnsjethro · 11-17-2018, 06:32 AM

Thanks for your prompt reply.
Acquiring a reel-to-reel is out of the question and I don't know what happened to the cassette.

I just wanted to spruce them up.

What kind of tools does iZotope RX have?

serr · 11-17-2018, 08:09 AM

Take a look on Ebay for tape decks. You might be surprised at the shocking low price you can snipe pro decks for nowadays. If it's just really that an important recording anyway.

If that's not gonna happen...
You're working with what could be looked at as an incomplete capture now. You're not going to be able to restore what got missed or distorted in those early transfers but you can at least balance what's left. And perhaps remove some noise artifacts if that's going on.

iZotope RX has the best broadband machine learning algorithm broadband noise reduction and a spectral editor that's kind of a magic tool. It costs more than you'd probably pay for an open reel deck on Ebay too! FYI

Burnsjethro · 11-17-2018, 08:48 AM

Thanks. No, it's really that important. I just thought I would like to clean it up a bit. Take some of the mud out and make it sound less thin.

martifingers · 11-17-2018, 10:06 AM

This may be way off topic but you may be interested in this little anecdote. I was at a talk given by Joe Boyd about the making of The Incredible Sting Band's first album. he was drawing attention to the contribution made by the wonderful bass player Danny Thompson (later of Pentangle, John McLaughlin, John Martyn, Richard Thompson et etc etc.) Anyhow Joe was bemoaning the fact that even on the best equipment the bass was sort of too low in the mix to be really appreciated. This was not a mistake but due to the need at the time with the technology available to produce a viable vinyl master. In reply to a member of the audience about whether that could be fixed with a remix he said no. The reason he gave was that the bass was recorded along with other instruments like guitar and hand drums and so was not available for re-balancing as it would have been on a track of its own. (I think they were operating on 4 track back in 1967!)

I did not feel confident enough to challenge the great producer but it did seem to be that e.g. a modern digital multiband compressor is pretty surgical in its capabilities and it might well be possible with modern technology to do the job.

So I would say go for it with your old tracks. Alternatively (here's a thought) do a Beatles "Real Love" and combine the old tracks with modern overdubs! What an excuse to "get the band" back together assuming you are still in touch, still friendly and hopefully all still here.

Burnsjethro · 11-19-2018, 03:38 AM

Martifingers, sorry for getting back to you a bit late.Some interesting ideas there.
I see Reaper has a multiband compressor. Does anyone have any tips on how to single our vocals, instruments with this tool.

No, your anecdote was very pertinent.

You idea of adding modern overdubs was also a marvellous piece of inspiration.

Thanks a lot for your advice.