Tape Wobble

[Craig Maier]

No Reference signal, no correction FM Correction possible

Yes, the problem with correcting wow and flutter is finding a solid reference signal on the source material. Without that, it is impossible to wrap a control loop around the system in order to correct.

There was a protracted discussion about this topic about a year ago initiated by a person who claimed to have figured out how to correct this kind of problem.

The issue was that the genteleman advocated a process which violated all of the laws of physics and mathematics that I am aware of, and thus could not have possibly worked, (except in the deep cravices of his mind).

[sus4chord]

I think the problem with pitch correction software (which I've used to good success before) is that it generally wants a solo melodic line. It can match your voice or a single instrument against the target frequency and bring it in line, but throw a chord or a while orchestra at it, and it's just going to get really confused.

[DJBohn]

I've always wondered if a high end pitch correction program, such as like professional singers would use, could be set up to correct tape flutter of a wide band recording. I've heard some non-streched tape recordings that had simply awful flutter, such as done on an old & cheap portable rim drive R2R.

[Dan McDonald]

With shrunken/stretched tapes, or those recorded with dying batteries, he can use the speed change to fix them up. I've used that fairly often. With dying batteries, sometimes it's a linear change and sometimes it's nonlinear. I usually just get the best estimates as to how far off it is at the beginning and how far off it is at the end, and see if a linear change works, then make alterations after that if there were other problems.

Dan

[sus4chord]

Hi, Craig -

I'm pretty sure he means wow and flutter, possible stretched or shrunk tape over time, as well as in some cases, cassette tapes that were eaten partially by tape players, but still have content on them. He received a bunch of tapes from a relative and is interested in trying to get them to sound right.

Thanks for the feedback. I didn't think there was a good solution for this type of thing, but I thought I would ask the question.

[Craig Maier]

I am not familiar with the term "wobble". I know of speed shift, wow, flutter, and dropouts associated with cassettes. Diamond Cut can deal with speed shift and dropouts, but not wow or flutter.

[sus4chord]

Over on another forum I frequent, a person asked:

Does anyone know ( Particularly Mac ) of any software
that can remove wobble from a music cassette ? I've got quite a lot of tapes, many are in poor shape.

Is this something DC7 can do, and if so, what are the basics for accomplishing this?