Mixing Software

I have some cassette tapes of my bands music which I want to upload to pc and remaster. I could do this by just using the mixed version and trying to clean it up and lose the hissing or I could upload each seperate track and try to improve/alter them to create a different sounding song. I might try both.

I know there are loads of music mixing software available for the PC(Cakewalk and Cubase to mention 2). I have uploaded some FREE ones such as Microsoft Windows Audacity and Kristal but not had a chance to do anything with them. One thing I know is if I import a music file to Cakewalk Music Studio it sounds terrible with click sounds every few seconds. God knows why?

I was just wondering which one might be best, for a novice whos after something thats relatively simple without bells and whistles (maybe a 8 track mixer), to use. Any comments or recommendations are warmly welcome.

I attempted to do something like this recently. using old four-track cassettes. the problem with tape is that it bends and stretches and is terribly inconsistent. trying to record each track individually, tally up tempos and intros or comp material was quite tricky. I was lucky to have a four-track mixer that could output through a multichannel firewire audio interface and then record the individual tracks separately in logic - but (most importantly) in one pass. which helped. I think I actually ended up with four times as much hiss though. if I was you, I'd start with the stereo mixes and see how far you get with that.

regarding your audio popping: initially that sounds like you've just recorded at too high a volume. [whereas tape distorts sometimes pleasantly at overload level - digital just cuts and pops] - although if that's not the case then I'd check your hardware's alright.

Try Adobe Audition :)

Facsimile wrote: I attempted to do something like this recently. using old four-track cassettes. the problem with tape is that it bends and stretches and is terribly inconsistent. trying to record each track individually, tally up tempos and intros or comp material was quite tricky. I was lucky to have a four-track mixer that could output through a multichannel firewire audio interface and then record the individual tracks separately in logic - but (most importantly) in one pass. which helped. I think I actually ended up with four times as much hiss though. if I was you, I'd start with the stereo mixes and see how far you get with that.

regarding your audio popping: initially that sounds like you've just recorded at too high a volume. [whereas tape distorts sometimes pleasantly at overload level - digital just cuts and pops] - although if that's not the case then I'd check your hardware's alright.

Cheers for that. I suppose one way to reduce hiss and bending would be to upload a segment of each track from 4 track cassette player and copy and paste it throughout the song. It could work? Im a complete novice at this type of thing though. Was just hoping to use a simple mixing application (I heard Krysal was easy and good). Oh and I'm not paying for any Adobe or other.

Ill try and import a track at lower volume onto Cakewalk (quite how you do this is another thing!).

Ditto to what Will said. There is a trick you can use to eliminate SOME of the tape problems. If you still have a 4-track tape machine, and a soundcard with 4 inputs, lift all 4 tracks at once. If not, you'll have to lift 1 and 2, flip the tape, lift 3 and 4, then reverse them. DO NOT, and I mean that, use "auto reverse" to play tracks 3 and 4, take the tape out and turn it over. Auto-reverse throws an extra gear into the power transmission from the motor and the machiine will run at a different speed going backwards, giving you a major arse-pain.

As for hiss, Mikey-boy's suggestion of Adobe Audition may well be the smart one. Audition used to be CoolEditPro, which had a KILLER noise reduction.....all you needed to do was "teach" it what the noise on that particular tape sounded like by playing a "silent" (ie, hiss only) portion of it. It then did a damned good job of cleaning it up for you. If that feature has persisted into Audition, whoopy-do. If not, you'd be best to think about stealing Waves X-hiss X-Noise and X-Click.

Oh.....if the 4 track used DbX noise reduction, forget playing the tapes in a standard cassette deck, they'll sound horrid, DbX is a law unto itself, much better than all domestic Dolby systems, and utterly incompatible with them (the two sides of their respective compansion curves don't match, and DbX has a few tricks beyond mere compansion, just like Dolby-S does)

EDIT.....lifting it at lower volume will give you more noise not less. Also, instead of cutting and pasting.....why not lift each "segemt" (if that's how you're doing it), into a sample player, and keytrigger them in, I've done this with quite a few vocals and so on lifted from 4 track. The problem with cutting and pasting is that errors are cumulative, if your segment is long or short by a few milliseconds, it doesn't take two many loops of it before it's half a beat out with cakewalk's time. I know nothing of Cakewalk, but assume it can run Dx Plugins, so those Waves one will load into it.

thanks for the comments guys. just looking for something basic really. too much termology here i cant fatham. a starting point.

found a great package fro my guitar. plug my guitar into pc and it can tune it. then use effects like distortion, phaser, chorus, echo. saves buying a Zoom effects pedal.

Settled upon Audacity. Theres loads of plug ins, forums, and help guides. Takes time to suss it all out mind.

NO Regret wrote: Settled upon Audacity. Theres loads of plug ins, forums, and help guides. Takes time to suss it all out mind.

Audacity does all you need. Don't be conned into shelling out shitloads of dosh unecessarily.

Given up on Audacity. It keeps crashing. No wonder its free. Gonna try Cakewalk Home Studio 2.