I have a small collection of mainly 1980's pre-recorded tapes from my childhood but almost all sound disappointingly poor, to the point that I don't listen to them. I wonder if it's possible to improve the sound quality by re-recording them from CD copies that I have? My thinking here is that the tape duplication used at the time wasn't great and this approach may help. Has anyone tried doing this before?
I haven’t done this but just because I don’t want to alter my old tapes, but yes, it can be done and if you have a decent deck (preferably a 3-head) you can get much higher quality. I have done this a few times with some of my own mixtapes that I recorded in the 80s, just to improve the quality, And even though they were reasonably fine then, there’s an improvement now.
Thanks for the reply Hugo, I'm going to try it out on the worst one. I've currently only got a Sony D6C to make the recording but the recordings I've made so far are very listenable and certainly better than my old tapes. Getting the track lengths to be the same will be fun!
Personally if you have the CD’s, why not just listen to the CD’s and if you feel you need to re-record them then do it on a fresh new cassette. I would never record over my pre-recorded, I don’t even re-record over my own recordings. Once it’s done it’s done.
Thanks for your reply but there's a few reasons why I listen to tapes more than CD's. It's mostly because I use a Walkman with earphones, a Discman isn't practical, skips and doesn't fit in my pocket. It also sounds a bit clinical. I like the cassette media and artwork. I also like the cassette sound. I spent a lot of effort getting my Walkmans to sound good so why not try getting my old tapes to sound as good as I can? These pre-recorded tapes haven't been listened to much because they don't sound good. If I can successfully restore them, I see that as a good thing
I would check the pressure pads in the cassettes. If your results still aren't good and you are feeling adventurous you could actually replace the tape in the cassette. That will be more difficult if your cassettes have welded cases, but you could splice some new tape in. That is actually how they were made in the first place, staring off as C Zeros. Hopefully you won't have the problem with a pre-recorded cassette I bought recently which refused to play in several players. Fast Forward and Rewind were fine so I can only think that the tape had got sticky so there was too much friction as it went over the head. After trying the tape in a new case with the same results that one ended up in the bin. Good luck.
It looks like someone has already successfully done this http://www.tapeheads.net/showthread.php?t=38203 I would skip to page 3 where he actually starts doing it rather than talking about it.
There was quite a lot of debate on the first two pages as to why he wanted to do it and whether it was worthwhile. Seeing the publishing dates of 1981 and 1982 printed on the shell and reading about him buying the Abba tape on the first day it was on sale in Norway made me understand why. I also like his signature which seems to indicate he is not a Spotify fan. I do wonder whether teenagers today will be reminiscing about the first time they listened to Ed Sheeran or Drake on Spotify in forty years time. It isn't quite the same as going to a shop and spending your money on the one album you have decided to buy that month / quarter / year (delete as applicable). Off topic but an amusing thought; people in the USA would probably put Level 42 in the category of "New Wave". Very "Old Wave" these days. Mark King has just turned 62.
I Re-record Pre-recorded cassettes pretty often (now) and I did back in the day for my friends. I remember only one Pre-recorded cassette which sounded so good it wasn't worth to try to improve the sound
I do quite a few on my D6C and only once has the result been poor. That was a terrible Beatles cassette which I suspect the tape had degraded to such an extent there was no real improvement. One thing I did find is that your D6C must be running at verified speed. If its slightly fast you get a surprise when your recording of the same tracks doesn't fit on the cassette. That had me scratching my head until I checked the speed on the DC6 and it was slightly over on a 3000Hz test tape!
I doubt a D6C would do a better job than the commercial duplicator, also what is your source? If you are recording from a mediocre source, guess what garbage in garbage out.
Source is generally a CD from a D350 or vinyl in other cases. The D6C I use is a version 1 unit with the desirable head. Given the age of the tape in these stock cassettes the result I get for a type 1 cassette sounds reasonable with better MOL than you get on most pre records. Of course I often keep the case and art work record onto a type IV cassette and discard the original when the shells are not secured by screws. That obviously gives a far better result.
That is very interesting because you keep the shell but greatly improve the tape. However, the alignment and azimuth issues probably stay but it's all fun to do. Thanks for sharing!
Sometimes your player can be too good, a high end unit will really bring out the lower quality in the pre-recorded tapes, while mid-level units might smooth it out. I have the same problem with MP3s, if I run them through my big Marantz, all the flaws are front and center, with my little Kenwood, it makes them more listenable. Although some of my first generation MP3s are really hard to listen to on any equipment. I have a few hundred tapes from the 80's and I'll pull them out from time to time to check the quality and see if new belts are working in decks I'm working on. Some of the tapes are generally junk, 3M Scotch never seemed to be good and still sound bad. Other than that, they've aged well but like Longman said, those pressure pads are starting to fall off more often on mine, that will kill the sound.
