Cassette Archiving - Need Tech Help

[rdnzl88]

First...what is it called when you can hear (during cassette playback), very faintly, what sounds like a 'ghost' image of the audio you are about to hear...sort of like a shadow that precedes the recorded matrial...and how do I remove or reduce it?

I'm using Adobe Audition v. 1.5.

I've tried Noise Reduction, but I don't like the way it sounds. Is it possible to mute audio that drops below a certain decibel level with the Dynamic Processing Tools?

I am archiving some very old cassettes (Old Time Radio Shows) and this 'ghosting' is very distracting.

Thanks for your help.

[Homebrew101]

Originally Posted by rdnzl88

First...what is it called when you can hear (during cassette playback), very faintly, what sounds like a 'ghost' image of the audio you are about to hear...sort of like a shadow that precedes the recorded matrial...and how do I remove or reduce it?

that's called bleed through, but I cannot help with removing/minimizing the effect

[rdnzl88]

Thanks...that's a start...it'll help me simplify my research.

[chinajoe]

are these by chance re-used tapes?

the peeps at tapersection might be of more help

[AAR.oner]

bleed through/print through is nearly impossible to get rid...there is no quick & easy way...you can try to minimize with a noise gate, but usually the effect on the material you want to keep is worse than just leaving the bleed through there

[LeifH12345]

I would just leave it as is and keep the raw transfer, then try to fix it up in the digital realm if possible.

I have some 20 and 30+ year old cassettes that are like that, doesn't really bother me that much. Most of the bleed is only noticeable during the quiet parts, but I guess in your case there may be a lot of quiet parts being radio.

[Audioarchivist]

Yeah, print through like you're describing in an old-time radio show (I'm assuming it's talking mostly, not music) is pretty hard to get rid of - like C.S.I. forensically hard to do!
The only thing I can think of is a noise reduction filter that lets you sample "what the noise is" and then apply that to the spaces between words only. It would take probably thousands of small selections done manually, each time re-sampling "the noise" and applying it to the silences... For example:

If the tape said:
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
but you can hear:
"The quick brown foThe quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.ver the lazy dog"
You would select the first half of the sentence in the noise filter as your noise "profile" and apply it to the pre-print through. Then select the last half of the sentence as noise and apply it to the post-print through. Lots and lots of manual selection labor and countless small patches later, you might clean up a little of the print-through...
I'm just theorizing with this suggestion, and it would be a helluva lotta work! It might not work so well, either, depending on if you can find a noise reducer that lets you make a "noise profile" to tell it exactly what noise you want to remove, and it will probably sound very "artifact-y"...
I think Leif12345 has the right idea - just leave it and "suck it up" in your mind! There's probably not much that can be done to fix it without very long hours of labor...
Sorry to break it to you like this!
Good luck, and if it's totally worth doing and my idea works, let me know!
Cheers!