IASA 2019 Annual Conference

The archival transfer of the tape, disc, and cylinder formats currently benefits from a high level of equipment sophistication and an impressive community knowledge base that has been building for decades. In contrast, a few legacy audio formats with important archival content such as wire and Magnabelts are typically still being transferred with original 40- to 70-year-old equipment and with fairly limited understanding of the core format problems. Along with damage to the media itself, the vintage machine approach typically results in audio with significant rumble, flutter, speed errors, distortion, hum, and other noise issues. Recent developments in high-quality equipment provide the opportunity to significantly reduce or eliminate these problems, as well as allow the transfer of deteriorated media that cannot be handled on vintage machines. The results can help elevate this media from just a means for written-transcription towards actual audio uses such as film or radio content. This presentation will discuss the modern high-quality playback of wire and magnetic belt, and compare the results to the vintage machines used almost universally today. Several larger transfers projects with these formats will also be discussed to highlight some of the unique workflow and storage issues.