Cassette Repair

We accept Credit Cards (Visa, Master Card, American Express), Money Orders and Checks and even Pay Pal. If sending a Money Order, your package will ship upon receipt of the money order. Checks must clear before we ship product.

Your credit card is only charged after we complete work, right before we ship your order. Once the project is complete, we will send you a final invoice with instructions on making payment.

They will be very, very safe. Your recordings will be handled with extreme care at our studio.

If you are in any way uncomfortable about shipping, then we suggest you get a professional to pack your recordings.

Every day we handle many rare and hard to find recordings. Your recordings will be returned to their original shipping container once repaired and/or duplicated and then stored in our secure storage area until your project is finished.

Our process does not alter the original recording in any way. You will actually receive your record back cleaner than when you sent it. Normally, we only play your recording one time and it would only be played again if there was a problem with the initial transfer to digital. Even in this case, we would generally only play the "problem" section again.

Generally, about two weeks. This is based on an average work-load. If your order is very simple, it may take less time to complete. If we receive a number of orders that is way above average, it will take longer to complete your order.

Very large orders (40 recordings or more), will take longer. Very complex orders (very noisy recordings, multiple source recordings, custom restorations) and "special requests" orders will take longer. Very complex restoration jobs may take several months to complete in some cases Recordings that need to be repaired before they can be played back will add a few weeks to the processing time. Peak ordering times (October-January), weeks preceding Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day and other holidays will lengthen our processing time to three, four, five or more weeks. Please remember to add to that the shipping time, which varies depending on the shipping method you select.

Can all types of problems be fixed?

No. Listed below are some of the limitations. We want our customers to be informed. Please familiarize yourself with these limitations and write or call us if you have any questions. The quality of our work is 100% guaranteed, but this guarantee does not apply to defects that are impossible to fix, such as those described below:
	Unplayable disks: Please do not send disks that are cracked, warped, or otherwise unplayable.
	Off-center hole: Some LP's have the center hole slightly off-center. These records will play with the pitch varying slightly at each revolution.
	Skips: If the record "skips" on your machine, it may "skip" on our machines. If the needle skips forward we will continue processing. If the record skips in place we will push the needle gently into the next groove. We will repeat this a few times until the needle will track again. Some discontinuity may be noticed. We may not detect if the needle has skipped only a few times and then continued. If any of these conditions are not acceptable, please do not submit records that skip.
	Severe scratches: We routinely eliminate 50,000 to 100,000 clicks, pops and scratches per record. Most clicks are completely eliminated, however, if the scratch is very severe (the underlying music is gone for a considerable amount of time) there will be a trace of a "pop" in the restored version.
	Distortion: There are many types of distortion and possible causes: over modulation at recording, defective microphones or recording equipment, faulty stamping or quality control when the record was pressed, playing the record with a worn needle or with improper tracking force. A distortion becomes part of the sound. The computer and filtering software can not detect what is distorted and what is not. Therefore, if your source recording is distorted, the restored copy will also be distorted only the sound will be "cleaner".
	Trade-offs: 1) Intense computer processing of very degraded signals may result in music that sounds somewhat muted. It is a much more enjoyable experience to listen to a clean sounding recording, but somewhat muted, as opposed to a recording with severe hiss, crackles and pops. 2) There are cases when a recording sounds clean for the most part, and needs a less drastic approach in restoration in order to preserve the "liveliness" of the original recording. In this case it is more desirable to apply less severe processing, which may leave some occasional imperfections more audible. We would like our customers to be aware of these trade-offs.
	No pause between tracks: Please note that there must be few seconds of actual pause (silence) between the songs in order for us to be able to accurately assign tracks. If the original material does not contain a few seconds of silence between the songs, and timings are not provided we will try to guess where the tracks should begin, but may not exactly match the tracks of the original. This happens frequently with "live recording" albums, medleys, opera and sometimes with compilation tapes. If our "guessing" is not acceptable, please do not submit recordings without a few seconds of silence between songs.
	Inferior quality home or commercial recording: Some customers prefer to record their vinyl or shellac records onto a cassette, and send us the cassette for processing. Please be aware that if the cassette is recorded with inferior equipment (noisy turntable or cassette recorder) the resulting CD will also be of inferior quality. It is impossible to make a perfect CD out of a technically inferior recording. This also applies to inferior commercial recordings (recordings with metallic, tiny sound, recordings with bad sibilants, recordings badly mixed). We can not create frequencies that have never been recorded and can not re-mix a recording since we do not have the multi-track master.

No. There are many thousands of pops and clicks on each recording. When we restore a record we have to decide how severe the pops and clicks are, and how much correction to apply to the music with our software. See Trade-offs above.

"Hand removal" of pops and clicks is not possible at our standard pricing. If you know that certain songs/tracks require extra restoration work, please let us know and we will do the work on a hourly basis.

Audio-Restorations.com values its customers and respects privacy. All customer information is considered confidential. We do not release information to third parties. We do not place "cookies" or hidden files on our client's computers. And we do not use email or mailing addresses for solicitation purposes. Our audio restoration services are intended for individuals who have purchased audio recordings (vinyl records or tapes) and wish to transfer them to compact disc (CD).

Copyright laws allow individuals who have purchased audio recorded music in one format to transfer it to a different format as long as it is for personal use and is not re-sold.