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Simulate cassette tape audio profiles using FFmpeg

95 pointsby xterminalyesterday at 8:02 PM42 commentsview on HN

Comments

massagedpelicanyesterday at 9:44 PM

How would one go about determining what effect to add for each cassette type? I don't know much about cassettes, I'm curious if this was something that could be done by ear or if these are commonly held opinions about the sound of each tape.

Again knowing nothing about tape, if I were tasked with this I would probably try to record the same audio to each of the tapes and then compare it with the original.

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gwbas1cyesterday at 10:00 PM

Has anyone come across a Dolby B (or similar) encode / decode program?

I've been wanting to experiment with quantizing Dolby (or similar) encoded audio to 8 bits, and then unencoding to see how well it can sound.

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omar_altyesterday at 11:27 PM

This is interesting as I would assume multiple passes from each output would result in further multi generational loss akin to tape trading of band demos, soundclashes and dj mixes from pirate radio

flyingcapabaratoday at 3:06 AM

This is awesome and very useful for one of my projects !! Thank you so much

JSR_FDEDtoday at 12:36 AM

I’m wondering besides the hiss and wow/flutter, what is the frequency range of cassette tape? Is there an “eq” to tape where certain frequencies are rendered more strongly than others? And how does it compare with records?

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isiahltoday at 12:04 AM

Would be interested to see something like this to simulate VHS effects

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_defyesterday at 9:39 PM

What is "wow"?

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tom_yesterday at 11:21 PM

Well, rather your ears than mine.

westurneryesterday at 9:59 PM

Can this be modeled with Neural Amp Modeler (open source) and Tone 3000 like a Space or a Pedal or an Outboard? https://www.tone3000.com/amalgamaudio

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AmazingEveryDayyesterday at 8:30 PM

Interesting! What tape simulation do you find yourself favoriting?

brcmthrowawayyesterday at 11:33 PM

I read that audio engineers actually use specialized and very expensive ripoff hardware in their signal processing chain to replicate the effect of the electromagnetics (hysteresis?) of tape systems on the audio.

To me, this seems like wasted effort. Any such filter can be implemented using DSP.

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atoavyesterday at 10:09 PM

To which analog gain would 0 dBFS be mapped?

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dcltoday at 1:11 AM

vaporwave fans rejoice

secretsatanyesterday at 11:18 PM

Well i would say wow and flutter is a property of the device playing the tape, not of the tape itself

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