advice on tape restoration

[Steve Atwood]

We found a 40+ year old 8" reel-to-reel tape of songs recorded by my mother. I got someone to transfer it to CD, and I've been getting some amazing results using the iZotope RX2 Advanced demo. Its denoiser is much better than the only other program I've used (Audacity), and it has a "Spectral Repair" module where you can "paint" or "lasso" artifacts and even chords that were played too loud and distorted, and remove or soften them.

There's also EQ and a "Deconstruct" module, neither of which I can figure out how to use.

Anyone have experience with this program? Is it the best available?

What other effects would be helpful for this kind of job - compression? low pass filter?

Thanks for any advice on tape restoration. There's a song from the tape here if you'd have time to listen:

https://soundcloud.com/#songsfromhome/t ... mmandments

[Jack Stoner]

I have Goldwave, a shareware audio editor, and have removed pops and clicks from vinyl recordings and some old cassette tapes. I had one old bluegrass album that was very noisy and after using the facilities in Goldwave it took out 90% (or more) and no deterioration of the audio. I've used some others and they caused the audio to sound funny after noise removal.

www.goldwave.com

I haven't used the program you are using, although I use Izotope Ozone 5 for mastering in my recording studio.

[Steve Atwood]

Thanks for your reply Jack. I bought the iZotope RX2 without the advanced features, and it looks like just the EQ is going to be enough soften the harsh sounds and make the songs at least not painful to listen to.

[Ken Lang]

I'm curious. Is it possible with Goldwave to edit MP3 files?
I have some MP3 files that I would like to edit out an instrument, electric guitar. I can do that with Midi of course, but I don't think it possible with MP3. I am grasping at straws to do this, but if it is at all possible.....

[Gary Shepherd]

Waves plugins.