[EvanAnderson]

For anybody who is into this this is a a good excuse to share a presentation from Vintage Computer Fest West 2020 re: magnetic tape restoration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKvwjYwvN2U

The presentation explores using software-defined signal processing analyze a digitized version of the analog signal generated from the flux transitions. It's basically moving the digital portion of the tape drive into software (a lot like software-defined radio). This is also very similar to efforts in floppy disk preservation. Floppies are amazingly like tape drives, just with tiny circular tapes.

[Kneesnap]

OP here! Yes I'd highly recommend this video, I stumbled across it early on when trying to familiarize myself with what the options were-- and it's a good video!