Recoding slow speed tapes

[Christine]

Hi,

Short introduction: I am a long time user of Wave Corrector, but this is only my second post on the forum here. While I have been doing records and 20 year old tape recordings of the (wind) band I am in, I actually am a bit of a newbie in the sound processing department compared to the folks here.

OK, here is the question.

Back in the 1960's, my father made some tape recordings of a church service in Africa (I won't bore you with the details). These are recordings on an old reel to reel tape deck. I have a reel to reel tape deck, and it works fine. However, my tape deck doesn't have the very slow speed these tapes were made at. My tape deck only goes down to 3 3/4 while these tapes were made at 1 7/8.

What I have done is to record at 3 3/4 and then digitally halve the playback speed. However, in doing that the frequency response is incorrect. Wrong equalisation, so I have been told. Is there any way to correct this?

Regards, Christine

[citguy]

Hi Christine. I think the simplest solution is to download a free program called "Audacity". It has all kinds of effects like changing pitch without changing speed, changing speed without changing pitch, changing both speed and pitch, etc., etc. It takes a bit of getting use to. You must 'highlight' what ever material you want to edit. Go ahead and make a wave file with WC then use Audacity to modify your wave file for speed then process with WC.
Others may have different solutions.
Stan

[Derek]

Hello

Yes, I'm not very familiar with Audacity but it I'm sure it will do what you require. You need to use the 'change speed' effect (not 'change tempo' or 'change pitch'. This will get the file playing at the correct speed and you will then need to correct the equalisation. You will need to experiment with this but a simple treble cut/lift filter such as the one in Wave Corrector will probably give an acceptable result.

good luck