I'm not an audio guru/engineer, but I had someone give me a piece of advice once that has been helpful, but I'm not sure if the experts here do it or agree with it.
When you have your rig (computer) set up to transfer, use whatever audio software you have to record a minute or so of "dead air", meaning just record with nothing playing (not even the tape deck). Then take that minute of recorded material and amplify it a couple times. You'd be surprised how often there is noise being generated by your computer that can creep into the recording. Could be noise from a fan generating an electrical signal, a bad ground in your system somewhere or maybe you're getting a "dirty" electrical signal that your UPS isn't filtering out (we have that problem in the area I live and my UPS helps but can't cure it), maybe the cables your using...there's different things that can do it. Hopefully you can find the cause and take care of it, but if not you can always use that sample to create a filter so that anytime you record on that computer you just apply that filter in the end to remove/reduce the induced noise.
Along those same lines, you can do the same test on your tape deck. When you have it plugged into your computer hit the play (with no tape in it) then do the same amplification. You can sometimes "see" if there's a problem with the deck motor as you'll see/hear a repeating pattern. The noise can sometimes actually sound a bit like the loop effect that Hendrix used in "Are you experienced"
Some tape decks add quit a bit of noise all on their own to a recording. Same idea on creating a filter based upon that (but in the end don't create two separate filters for the computer and deck....just use one based on your final configuration). Just go gentle using them.
...of course the best action would be to find whatever mechanical/electrical problem there is and fix it...
Feel free to comment-
No members have liked this post.