Help: Calibrating Tape Restore Live!: Frequency response calibration
This step can be skipped if you are using the original cassette deck and the cassette deck and the tapes are in very good condition.
Older tapes often sound a bit "dull", because the higher frequencies have faded a bit due to tape
wear and age. Also, cassettes don't have a flat frequency response, and especially older or cheaper
tape decks don't offer any functionality to correct for this. Tapes that are played back on a different recorder than the one
on which they were recorded often suffer from similar problems.
This section describes how to calibrate Tape Restore Live! to match your cassette recorder and PC
recording characteristics settings.
When calibrating Tape Restore Live!, it is essential to approach the
real recording and sampling situation as closely as possible. This means
that, if possible, the tape deck on which the original recording was made
should be used to record calibration sounds, and the tape deck that will
be used to digitize the recordings should be used to play it back.
For optimal results, the tape that is used for calibration should approach the
real tapes as closely as possible.
To calibrate Tape Restore Live!, perform the following steps:
Record the sound 'dsp_tape_restore_live - Calibrate frequency response.mp3' on the
cassette deck on which the original recording was made, with Dolby B turned off.
Make sure that the recording volume for the left and right channel is equal.
The file can be found in the Winamp plugins directory,
usually 'C:\Program Files\Winamp\Plugins'.
Play the tape back on the recorder that you will be using to digitize the recording that you want
to restore, with Dolby turned off.
Record the result to the PC.
Hint: Record the sound 'dsp_tape_restore_live - Manual tape head calibration helper sound.mp3'
just before the calibration tone, and use it during playback to calibrate the
tape head.
Open the recording in Winamp.
Enable Tape Restore Live!, turn the Tape Bias filter on.
Play back the recording, and play with the equalizer sliders of in the plugin, until the
orange Dolby input volume meters (center bottom of the screen) show a constant volume for all frequencies,
which is equal for both channels.
The result of this is that the frequency response of tape recordings will be identical to that of the
original sound that was recorded, regardless of tape wear, age and quality - at the cost of some extra high frequency hiss if the high frequencies need to be boosted.
