OBSOLETE AUDIO MEDIA FORMAT RESTORATION & PRESERVATION WORKFLOW

with XML METADATA

Your at-risk audio media is acclimatized for 24-hours in an STP static-free, temperature and humidity-controlled, positive-pressure clean room with no access to sunlight. Your media and cases are then photographed and logged using Structured XML Metadata, documenting their journey toward restoration, digitization, and preservation.

MANUAL MEDIA INSPECTION & REPAIR

Your audio media is carefully inspected for evidence of sticky-shed syndrome, bad splices, scratches, tears, rips, and mold. If your audio media’s reel, shell, or cartridge is warped or damaged, we can remove the inner take-up and supply reels and place them inside new enclosures. We keep a large supply of replacement reels, flanges, shells, and cartridges for all audio formats, ensuring your irreplaceable, at-risk media is successfully recovered.

REVERSING STICKY-SHED SYNDROME

As magnetic tapes age, the binders holding the oxide particles deteriorate causing Sticky-Shed Syndrome. As oxide flakes off, signals can become unrecoverable. Our engineers can scientifically reverse the effects of Sticky-Shed Syndrome through Reverse Hydrolysis. This involves slowly heating your tapes in a Laboratory Vacuum Furnace, while controlling the temperature to within 1° degree. Humidity is carefully monitored, as is the Curie Point of your media’s particular magnetic particle formulation. After many hours or days of such treatments, your media regains many of its youthful properties and successful digitization can occur.

STRUCTURED XML METADATA LOGGING

For every project, we create metadata following DCMI, Dublin Core. We also use LMER & PREMIS Data Models as well as NIEM and Library of Congress ANSI/NISO Z39.8 standards for descriptive, structural, administrative, rights management, and preservation metadata.

EXTENSIVE AUDIO FORMAT SUPPORT & AUDIO PRESERVATION FORMATS

From Edison wax cylinders, wire recordings, Dictabelts, and Magnabelts, to ADAT, PCM-F1, reel-to-reel of any width or track count, and dozens of formats in between, we support more audio formats than any company. We also encode lossless, high-quality preservation formats, avoiding lossy concatenation errors. Click HERE for a list of supported preservation formats.

REEL-to-REEL AUDIO TAPE DIGITIZATION

Obsolete, open-reel audio tape formats are most at-risk of unrecoverable content loss. Their chronological age and manufacturing methods form a death sentence whose peak recovery period passed decades ago. Now, it’s a race to recover what audio remains. Multitrack formats of 2” 24-track and DASH are as endangered as their ½” and ¼” open reel-to-reel cousins. Trust the experts at AVConservation.org powered by Wall Street Productions to give your aging, open reel audio tapes the best chance at recovery & preservation.

AUDIO CART & CASSETTE DIGITIZATION

Dozens of analog audio cartridge and cassette formats are at risk of becoming unrecoverable as the amount of undigitized media exceeds the capacity of the world’s inventory of working playback machines. Trust the professionals at AVConservation.org to recover your at-risk audio media using reference-quality, 24-bit analog-to-digital conversion at sample rates up to 768kHz. Our jitter ratings are less than 1 picosecond thanks to an ultra-stable femtosecond digital clock. The result is unparalleled quality and the highest signal to noise, producing uncompromising results.

CYLINDER, DISC, & BELT DIGITIZATION

The 20th century saw dozens of wax cylinder formats, wire spool cartridges, phonograph records, audio carts, and magnetic belts compete for widespread adoption. We can recover your antique wax cylinder, Magnabelt, wire recording, Flexidisc, and dozens of other obsolete audio formats. Our modified audio playback devices capture signals at the earliest possible point, ensuring the lowest noise floor prior to digitization. Not sure what obscure audio format you have? Send us a picture. We’ll tell you what it is and how we can restore it for you.

DIGITAL AUDIO TAPE PRESERVATION

Digital audio tape media enjoys a longer shelf life than their analog counterparts. However, they are more at risk, because far fewer digital audio playback machines were manufactured. Plus, slight misalignments or tape damage results in no sound playback at all. Trust our carefully maintained equipment to recover precarious digital audio tape formats. From DASH, ProDigi, Alesis ADAT, and Tascam DTRS, to DCC, PCM-F1, FTR, and R-DAT, our all-digital signal path ensures capture and preservation of your digital audio tape-based media.

OPTICAL AUDIO DISC PRESERVATION

Fewer than a dozen optical audio disc formats existed before file-based media made them obsolete. While CD players remain ubiquitous, less common formats suffer from dwindling numbers of playback devices, and recordable optical discs suffer from degradation of the dyes retaining the audio data. In spite of their invincible appearance, now is the time to rescue all audio content on optical media before it’s too late.

LONG-TERM ARCHIVAL MEDIA STORAGE

After digitizing your media to both a long-term archive format and mezzanine service file, you’re faced with how to securely store these files, and whether to retain or destroy your source media. No matter what you decide, we can support you with petabytes of secure file storage, allowing you to enjoy the mezzanine copies without the expense of storing massive archive files. We also offer environmentally-friendly media disposal and long-term cold storage for retaining source media.