Cassettes dubbed from reel-to-reel, backwards. Any ideas on how to recover?

January 13, 2011 1:20 PM

I have some old cassette tapes of African music made by my in-laws who were missionaries the in the 1960s. A friend transferred the reel-to-reel recordings to cassette. Backwards. My in-laws didn't play the tapes until much later, and the original reels were overwritten by then. Any ideas on the easiest way to restore the music?
posted by JParker to Media & Arts (4 answers total)

Best answer: Record them into Audacity (free), or Adobe Audition (my preference, but not free). It will easily reverse them, do noise reduction, make mp3s, etc.
posted by skypieces at 1:22 PM on January 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Recording the tapes onto a computer, then reversing the recording will be trivial. Any audio recording program should be able to handle it. Audacity is free.
posted by zsazsa at 1:23 PM on January 13, 2011

Response by poster: Perfect. I have Audacity and use it all the time. I just had no idea it would allow you to do that. Thanks.
posted by JParker at 1:34 PM on January 13, 2011

...and when you're done, PLEASE share this! It sounds amazing.
posted by mykescipark at 2:27 PM on January 13, 2011 [9 favorites]