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Abstract
The bulk of recorded radio content prior to the introduction of magnetic tape in the late 1940s was made on lacquer transcription discs. These discs have proven highly unstable and are considered a top preservation priority in radio archives. While preservation reformatting via mechanical playback is ideal, when it comes to damaged or deteriorating discs, the risk of losing content and the amount of labor needed to perform one-to-one transfers is high. As an alternative, several optical scanning technologies have been developed. This article offers a comparative study of four existing optical transfer systems for discs: IRENE, Saphir, VisualAudio, and Endpoint Audio.
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank the archivists, librarians, audio experts, historians, and engineers, who took time to share their systems, data, and experiences: Jean-Hugues Chenot, Nicholas Bergh, Bryan Hoffa, Caitlin Hunter, David Giovannoni, Mike Casey, Patrick Feaster, Melissa Widzinski, Adam Tovell, and Jeff Willens. I would like to acknowledge this journal’s editors and reviewers for their assistance with revisions on this piece. I thank my partner and son for their endless patience and support in all of my endeavours.
Notes
1 Carla Arton, “Care and Maintenance,” in ARSC Guide to Audio Preservation, edited by Sam Brylawski, Maya Lerman, Robin Pike, and Kathlin Smith (Eugene, OR: Association for Recorded Sound Collections; Washington, DC: Council on Library and Information Resources and the Library of Congress, 2015), 72; Kevin Bradley, ed., Guidelines on the Production and Preservation of Digital Audio Objects (IASA-TC 04) (South Africa: International Association of Sound and Audio Visual Archives, 2009), 38.
2 Library of Congress’ Peter Alyea, “The IRENE System” (presentation, ARSC Conference, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, May 28, 2015); Institut National de l’Audiovisual’s Jean-Hugues Chenot, Louis Laborelli, and Jean-Etienne Noiré’s “Saphir: Using Colored Light for Recovering Audio Signal from Challenging Delaminated Lacquer Disk Records” (presentation, IASA Conference, Berlin, September 19, 2017); Swiss National Sound Archives’ Stefano Cavaglieri, “Expert Transfer Techniques: A Special Focus on Mechanical Discs” (presentation, ARSC Conference, San Antonio, Texas, May 11, 2017); Endpoint Audio Labs’ Nicholas Bergh, Stefano Cavaglieri, Jean-Hugues Chenot, Patrick Feaster, and Thomas Levin’s “Recent Developments in Audio Retrieval via Optical Methods” (presentation, ARSC Conference, Portland, Oregon, May 9, 2019).
3 Ottar Johnsen et al., “VisualAudio: An Optical Technique to Save the Sound of Phonographic Records,” Journal of the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives 21 (2003): 38–47; Vitaliy Fadeyev and Carl Haber, “Reconstruction of Mechanically Recorded Sound by Image Processing,” Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 51 no. 12 (2003): 1172–1185.
4 Jean-Hugues Chenot, Louis Laborelli, and Jean-Étienne Noiré, “Saphir: Optical Playback of Damaged and Delaminated Analogue Audio Disc Records,” Association for Computing Machinery Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage 11 no. 3 (2018): 1–29.
5 Nicholas Bergh, Stefano Cavaglieri, Jean-Hugues Chenot, Patrick Feaster, and Thomas Levin, “Recent Developments in Audio Retrieval via Optical Methods” (presentation, ARSC Conference, Portland, Oregon, May 9, 2019).
6 Rob Bamberger and Sam Brylawski on behalf of the National Recording Preservation Board, The State of Recorded Sound Preservation in the United States: A National Legacy at Risk in the Digital Age (Washington, DC: Council on Library and Information Resources and the Library of Congress, 2010), 23, 35.
7 Caitlin Hunter, Head, Recorded Sound Section at the Library of Congress, interviewed via email by Yuri Shimoda, January 28, 2019; Jeff Willens, Media Preservation Engineer, Audio, the New York Public Library, interviewed via email by Yuri Shimoda, December 3, 2018; Adam Tovell, Head, Sound & Vision Technical Services, British Library, interviewed via email by Yuri Shimoda, January 21, 2019; Melissa Widzinski, Audio Preservation Engineer, Indiana University Mass Digitization and Preservation Initiative, interviewed via email by Yuri Shimoda, January 4, 2019.
8 National Archives & Record Administration, Format Guide to Sound Recordings (October 2014): 3, https://www.archives.gov/files/preservation/formats/pdf/format-guide-to-sound-recordings.pdf.
9 Rebecca Rochat, “Safeguarding the RTS Broadcast Lacquer Discs: Challenges of a Multifaceted Project” (presentation, IASA Conference, Hilversum, Netherlands, October 3, 2019).
10 Rebecca Rochat, Typology guide: Lacquer discs collection of Radio-Lausanne and Radio-Genève (Genève: Fondation pour la sauvegarde du patrimoine audiovisuel de la Radio Télévision Suisse, 2019), https://issuu.com/rebecca.rochat/docs/typology_guide_rts_lacquer_discs (accessed May 20, 2020).
11 Dietrich Schüller and Albrecht Häfner, edited by, Handling and Storage of Audio and Video Carriers (IASA-TC 05) (London: International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives, 2014), 11.
12 Arton, “Care and Maintenance,” 63.
13 Brandon Burke, “Designing a Housing for the Horizontal Storage of Cracked or Broken Phonograph Discs,” ARSC Journal 25, no. 1 (Spring 2018): 28–40; Elise Calvi, “Floating Disks,” E. Lingle Craig Preservation Lab Blog, March 9, 2016, https://blogs.libraries.indiana.edu/craiglab/2016/03/09/floating-disks/ (accessed May 20, 2020).
14 For a summary of solutions for removing exudation from a disc without damaging it, see Marcos Sueiro Bal and Jeff Willens, “Survey of Suggested Treatments for Removing Acidic Exudation from Vintage Lacquer Discs” (poster presentation, Audio Engineering Society International Conference on Audio Archiving, Preservation & Restoration, Culpeper, Virginia, June 28–30, 2018).
15 Virginia Danielson, “Stating the Obvious: Lessons Learned Attempting Access to Archival Audio Collections,” Folk Heritage Collections in Crisis (Washington, DC: Council on Library and Information Resources, May 2001), 7.
16 Schüller and Häfner, IASA-TC 05, 13–14.
17 Bradley, IASA-TC 04, 39.
18 Louis Laborelli, Jean-Hugues Chenot, and Alain Perrier, “Non contact Phonographic Disks Digitisation Using Structured Colour Illumination” (presentation, Audio Engineering Society 122nd Convention, Vienna, Austria, May 2007).
19 Bertram Lyons, Rebecca Chandler, and Chris Lacinak, Quantifying the Need: A Survey of Existing Sound Recordings in Collections in the United States (Brooklyn, NY: AVPreserve, 2014), 18. https://www.avpreserve.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/QuantifyingTheNeed.pdf (accessed May 20, 2020).
20 William Chase, “Preservation Reformatting,” in ARSC Guide to Audio Preservation, edited by Sam Brylawski, Maya Lerman, Robin Pike, and Kathlin Smith (Eugene, OR: Association for Recorded Sound Collections; Washington, DC: Council on Library and Information Resources and the Library of Congress, 2015), 112; Bradley, IASA-TC 04, 8.
21 “IRENE Sound Reproduction R & D Home Page,” Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, https://irene.lbl.gov/ (accessed May 20, 2020); “Audio Preservation with IRENE,” Northeast Document Conservation Center, https://www.nedcc.org/audio-preservation/irene (accessed June 1, 2020).
22 Mark Hartsell, “Unlocking Sounds of the Past,” Library of Congress (blog), March 12, 2012, https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2012/03/unlocking-sounds-of-the-past (accessed June 1, 2020).
23 “IRENE Home/History,” Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, http://irene.lbl.gov/sample-page/irene-home-history/ (accessed May 27, 2020).
24 “Understanding IRENE,” Northeast Document Conservation Center, https://www.nedcc.org/audio-preservation/understanding-irene (accessed May 27, 2020).
25 Schüller and Häfner, IASA-TC 05, 10.
26 Hartsell, “Unlocking Sounds of the Past.”
27 “History of the IRENE Project at NEDCC,” Northeast Document Conservation Center, https://www.nedcc.org/audio-preservation/history (accessed May 28, 2020).
28 “Hidden Gems: The IRENE Technology Helps Preserve a Lost Native Alaskan Dialect,” Northeast Document Conservation Center, https://www.nedcc.org/about/nedcc-stories/attu-audio (accessed September 6, 2018); “New Hope for Damaged Media: WNYC Radio Broadcast on Broken Disc Successfully Imaged with IRENE,” Northeast Document Conservation Center, IRENE Seeing Sound Blog, June 20, 2014, https://www.nedcc.org/audio-preservation/irene-blog/2014/06/20/damaged-media (accessed June 1, 2020).
29 See NEDCC, “Audio Preservation with IRENE” for service details.
30 George Blood, “IRENE: Messiah or False Prophet” (presentation, ARSC Conference, Bloomington, Indiana, May 13, 2016).
31 Bergh et al., “Recent Developments in Audio Retrieval via Optical Methods.”
32 Fadeyev and Haber, “Reconstruction of Mechanically Recorded Sound,” 1182.
33 Vitaly Fadeyev, “An Analysis and Comparison of Bit Depth and Sampling on an Early Recording,” Lawrence Berkeley Lab, 2016, http://irene.lbl.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/40/2016/06/An-Analysis-and-Comparison-of-Bit-Depth-and-Sampling-an-Early-Recording-VF.pdf (accessed May 20, 2020).
34 Bergh et al., “Recent Developments.”
35 “VisualAudio,” Swiss National Sound Archives, https://www.fonoteca.ch/gallery/visualAudio/home_en.htm (accessed May 20, 2020).
36 Stefano Cavaglieri, Prof. Ottar Johnsen, and Prof. Frédéric Bapst, “Optical Retrieval and Storage of Analog Sound Recordings” (presentation, Audio Engineering Society International Conference, Budapest, Hungary, October 2001).
37 Johnsen et al., “VisualAudio: An Optical Technique,” 38.
38 Stefano Cavaglieri, “Expert Transfer Techniques” (presentation, ARSC Conference, San Antonio, Texas, May 11, 2017).
39 “The rediscovered voice of Aldo Spallicci, the ‘father of Romagna,’” Ravenna Today, March 5, 2019, http://www.ravennatoday.it/cronaca/la–voce–ritrovata-di-aldo-spallicci-il-ba-dla-rumagna.html (accessed May 28, 2020).
40 Chris Harland-Dunaway, “This Scientist Used Imaging Techniques to Rescue Sound from the Nuremberg Trials,” PRI’s The World, February 4, 2019, https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-02-04/scientist-used-imaging-techniques-rescue-sound-nuremberg-trials (accessed June 1, 2020).
41 Cavaglieri, Johnsen, and Bapst, “Optical Retrieval.”
42 Cavaglieri, “Expert Transfer Techniques.”
43 Bergh et al., “Recent Developments.”
44 “Saphir: Optical Playback of Analogue Audio Disc Records,” Institut National de l’Audiovisuel Research Area, http://recherche.ina.fr/eng/Details-projets/saphir (accessed May 28, 2020). For details on original Buchmann-Meyer method, see Gerhard Buchmann and Erwin Meyer, “A New Optical Method of Measurement For Phonograph Recordings,” translated by J.M. Cowan, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 12, no. 2 (1941): 303–306.
45 Laborelli, Chenot, and Perrier, “Non Contact Phonographic Disks Digitisation.”
46 For a more detailed elaboration of the technical details discussed here, see Chenot, Laborelli, and Noiré, “Saphir: Optical Playback.”
47 Bergh et al., “Recent Developments.”
48 Chenot, Laborelli, and Noiré, “Saphir: Optical Playback,” 28.
49 Bergh et al., “Recent Developments.”
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid.
53 Nicholas Bergh, “Pushing the Envelope: Test Cylinders & A Radically New Archival Transfer Platform” (presentation, ARSC Conference, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, May 29, 2015).
54 “Hear Different: Advanced Transfer and Restoration Services for Film, Television and Music,” Endpoint Audio Labs, https://www.endpointaudio.com/ (accessed May 15, 2020).
55 For MDPI’s discussion of their use of the Endpoint cylinder system, see Dan Figurelli and Melissa Widzinski, “Using the Endpoint Audio Labs Cylinder Playback Machine,” Media Digitization & Preservation Initiative Blog: Latest Thoughts from Inside MDPI, Indiana University, September 6, 2017, https://blogs.iu.edu/mdpi/2017/09/06/using-the-endpoint-audio-labs-cylinder-playback-machine/ (accessed June 1, 2020). For announcement of the most recent installation, at the Národndí Muzeum in Prague, see Nicholas Bergh, “The 5th Cylinder Machine is Installed in Prague,” Endpoint Audio, September 4, 2019, https://www.endpointaudio.com/blog/2019/9/4/the-5th-cylinder-machine-is-installed-in-prague (accessed May 28, 2020)
56 Bergh et al., “Recent Developments.”
57 Nicholas Bergh, Founder, Endpoint Audio Labs, interviewed via email by Yuri Shimoda, January 11, 2019.
58 Jody Rosen, “Researchers Play Tune Recorded Before Edison,” The New York Times, March 27, 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/arts/27soun.html?hp (accessed January 19, 2020).
59 Patrick Feaster, “New Software for Playing Pictures of Sound Waves,” Griffonage-Dot-Com, Nov 20, 2016, https://griffonagedotcom.wordpress.com/2016/11/20/new-software-for-playing-pictures-of-sound-waves/ (accessed June 1, 2020).
60 Patrick Feaster, Media Preservation Specialist, Indiana University’s MDPI, interviewed via email by Yuri Shimoda, February 26, 2019.
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Yuri Shimoda
Yuri Shimoda is an archivist at the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive. While earning a master’s degree in Library and Information Science from UCLA’s media archival studies programme, she worked for the university’s Music Library, Library Special Collections, and as a UCLA Community Archives Lab/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation intern at Visual Communications, and founded the first student chapter of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC). She has served in roles for Los Angeles Public Library, the Autry Museum of the American West, Walt Disney Imagineering Collections, and as a Library of Congress Junior Fellow in the Recorded Sound Section of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Centre. Shimoda is also an American Library Association Spectrum Scholar and co-founder of Basement Tapes Day, an annual event that provides the public with access to their home audio recordings.