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Old 2009-06-19, 09:50 PM
dude87 dude87 is offline
 
Join Date: Aug 2005
Re: Old Live Cassette Tapes??!!!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Five View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by LeifH12345 View Post
I strongly agree with GRC.
me, too
Some reel-to-reel tapes from the 70s suffer from a poor formulation - careful "baking" is required to get any sort of playback off of them without severe problems. Not to mention that tapes that aren't stored with some degree of care (i.e., don't leave them sitting on your dashboard during the heat of summer) will deteriorate and become unplayable.

No medium is perfect. Old cassettes don't have the highest fidelity (lower frequency response and poor S/N ratio, especially if NR is used inproperly as was often the case). And then, of course, there's generational hiss that's created. If the cassettes are masters I'd recommend transferring to digital using *good* equipment, preferably at 24 bit word size (higher sampling frequency isn't as key since the frequency response of cassettes isn't that high, but it doesn't hurt). Then put the cassettes away someplace safe where you can reasonably control heat and humidity. Then spread the recordings like crazy - massive parallel backups are still the best way to go.
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