I have a forty-five minute audio tape of my father which has some
static and difficult to hear. I'd like to find a firm/person to
improve its quality as much as possible.

Greetings Scarsdale:

There are services that enhance audio recordings for law enforcement
and they would probably be happy to assist you in "cleaning up" your
old tape.  I've included two from Canada, one from the UK and a few in
the US.  Because you didn't specify your location, I wanted to provide
you with a few choices.


Graham Newton at http://www.audio-restoration.com/ offers audio
restoration services.  His text reads in part "Most people think in
terms of music recordings, but everything from a baby's first words to
an audio letter for a loved one have been recorded. Many of these
recordings were poor quality to begin with, but over the years they
have been scratched or otherwise damaged.
Just think what they could sound like... no more noise, no more
scratches, clicks or pops. Just you and your favourite recording -
clear and clean."

There is an online contact form at http://66.216.32.4/contact.htm and
his contact information is also listed there as:

Graham Newton
Digital Audio Restoration
P.O Box 672,
Don Mills, Ontario, M3C 2T6
C A N A D A
(416) 444-3444
(10 am to 10 pm Eastern Time only, please)

Another Canadian location is ProFox
(http://profox.homestead.com/Index.html) and their contact info is:

Audio Restoration by Profox
108-2770 Aquitaine Ave.
Mississauga, Ont. 
L5N 3K5 
Canada ontact: Bill Legere  905 813 8719
Email: profox@rogers.com


LP2CD at http://lp2cd.com/formats.htm offers restoration services and
their contact information is email at info@lp2cd.com or phone
toll-free 800-778-9043 or 407-292-1151.  Land address is:

CVC Productions
LP2CD division
2757 Park Royal Drive
Windermere, FL, 34786


Audio Restoration Service at http://sexton.hypermart.net/ offers the
service.  They list a phone number of (909) 338-9994 and their email
address is sextonproducts@hotmail.com.


Forensic Audio Services at
http://www.audiorestoration.com/tacontact.htm states "We specialize in
forensic audio restoration and forensic audio enhancement for the
criminal justice system, the legal community, private investigators,
broadcast and media, as well as private individuals. We clean-up,
enhance, and improve poor quality audio from a wide variety of
sources. We use strictly state-of-the-art analog and digital audio
technology in the audio restoration and audio enhancement process" and
they offer free estimates (see
http://www.audiorestoration.com/index.html).  Their contact info is:

Forensic Audio Services
29 South Erie Street
Toledo, Ohio 43602 
Phone: (419) 243-3000
Fax: (419) 255-2231 
Email: teamaudio@audiorestoration.com 


The Photo Magician (http://www.thephotomagician.com/audio.htm) offers
audio clean-up service.  That website,, states prices as "Cassette or
LP’s – $25.00 (conversion only) / Special enhancement – $25.00 to
remove noise caused by scratches or tape hiss / Audio Restoration:
Present fee only $40.00 per hour * Minimum: 1 hour and then billed at
1/2 hour increments."  The only contact info I found was an email:
audio@thephotomagician.com  There is also a before/after audio example
offered on the site.


MasterDigital (http://www.masterdigital.com/) does audio restoration
and lists other affiliates in the US.  They have an online contact
form at http://www.masterdigital.com/contact/contact.html
 

The firm, ISVR Consulting in the UK
(http://www.isvr.co.uk/legalservices/experts.htm) states on their web
site:

"We have experience of enhancing audio tape recordings to clarify
speech recorded under less than ideal conditions, and of producing
transcripts of difficult recordings.  We can also determine, in some
cases, whether a tape has been edited or interfered with."  Their
contact information is an online form located at
http://www.isvr.co.uk/contacts.htm - other contact info is:

ISVR Consulting, 
University of Southampton,
Highfield, Southampton,
SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom 
Telephone enquiries +44 (0)23 8059 2162
Fax +44 (0)23 8059 2728
E-mail: consultancy@isvr.co.uk 


You may want to consider attempting this process yourself.  If you
have a way to copy the tape to your computer, you might purchase the
product "Audio Cleaning Lab" and clean up the recording with it.  The
price is listed as $19 - see http://floridamusicco.com/itm00239.htm
for specs on the software.  DartPro at http://www.dartpro.com/ also
offers audio restoration software as did a few other places.


I hope the leads I have found for you will result in the right firm to
do your work.  Should you require clarification of any of the
information or links I have provided, please use the "Request A
Clarification" function and I will be happy to respond.


SEARCH STRATEGY:

"enhancing audio tape"
"enhancing audio recording"
"audio restoration"

Thank you very much. I have rarely been so impressed and helped by a service

Since it's obvious that this recording is important to you, you should
make plenty of back up copies before you send it anywhere. Better yet,
keep the original and send the copy out to be restored. I have no
experience with this sort of thing, just thought it might be a good
idea.

An excellent suggestion, sbkirsch-ga, though second, third, etc.
generations of a recording lose some clarity with each re-recording. 
Scarsdale, keep your original and send a second generation copy - just
to be safe.  If the service is a good one, they should be able to
clean up the copy just fine.

Thank you for your rating and comments, Scarsdale!  I aim to please
and I am delighted that you are happy with the research I provided. 
:)