[mbself]

I know now that baking a tape before transfering it to digital is considered a good practice on tapes of a certain age or newer tapes stored in poorly regualated climates.

But, my question is this:

What exactly does it do? I have older cassettes that have a weird, slow "wooshing" sound. Almost a phaser effect where highs seeme to come and go. The sound will be good and then slip out for a few seconds and then slip back in to the good.

Is this the type of thing that baking will correct, or is that just the sound of a tape FUBAR'd and baking would do nothing for it? I know that in a very strict sense the purpose of baking is to simply allow the tape to hold together during playback without disentegrating in the playback mechanism and gumming up the transport.


I could experiment, but if someone knows.......