Tape Digitizer (if different from Tape Owner):
Digitization/Processing Set-up:
Played on the Luxman K-100, y-adapter connection into a Creative SB X-fi sound card, Recorded into Adobe Audition as a 16-bit .wav, normalized the audio to 100%, converted from .wav to a 320 kps CBR .mp3 created Adobe Audition
Optimizing this tape for jtapes for tough. We’ve been lucky so far in that all of the tapes we’ve published have had good to excellent reception; key to recording a jungle tape off the radio. In a couple of instances, the recordings we had were so poor they were unlistenable, but this was rare. If a tape had real bad reception it was usually scarified without much thought to make a new recording.
This tape occupied that middle space, too good to be tossed but too shitty to publish as is. When we first digitized it, in the background playing on speakers, it wasn’t apparent that the recording had quality issues. It wasn’t until we were trimming and making the final cut that we noticed that it had major reception issues; uncanny hiss and crackle that made the tape almost unlistenable with headphones.
So we ran a test, we found a short clip of audio with no talking or music (really rare for a fast paced jungle tape) and created a noise print. A section of audio that was as close to 100% static and noise as we could find. Then we took that noise print and ran noise reduction, taking everything from the audio that sounded like our noise print and reducing it by 40db effectively eliminating it from the recording.
Running a noise print has potential major consequences. Part of the appeal of tape and shit recorded off the radio is a subtle bit of hum and noise. It’s that white noise that’s omnipresent in all analogue recordings that gives the recordings a bit of ‘life’. In past experiments, removing noise from a digitized recording created a weird effect called artifacing. It’s a unique digital form of signal degradation. If you look at a JPEG that’s been saved and resaved too many times you’ll see it; this subtle blocky, watery distortion to the image that gets worse every time you edit and save it.
In audio, when articfacing happens the sound quality goes down. The audio sounds almost as if it’s been saved at a lower bit rate creating the same kind of watery effect you’d experience with JPEGs going through the same thing. It’s because any attempt to remove data, even if it’s been filtered to just take out so-called ‘bad data’, is going to remove some of the shit you don’t want it to take, hence the arifacing effect. It’s as if something that was supposed to be there has been taken away along with the bad stuff and it’s softer and less sharp as a result.
Anyways, we took a chance on a super short noise print and ran the whole tape through it. The results surprised even us. Except for a couple of 4 or 5 second clips where you can almost hear some artifacing, the overall effect has resulted in a poor quality tape elevated to an average-good tape. What was once unlistenable on headphones is now, dare-we –say-it, a pleasant recording where the music, muffin and mixing shines through to an acceptable level of shanty-town ghetto funk.
