Tag Archives: audio

Behind the Scenes, Digitization Expertise, Equipment, Technology, Uncategorized

Mythical Beasts of Audio

Gear. Kit. Hardware. Rig. Equipment.

In the audio world, we take our tools seriously, sometimes to an unhealthy and obsessive degree. We give them pet names, endow them with human qualities, and imbue them with magical powers. In this context, it’s not really strange that a manufacturer of professional audio interfaces would call themselves “Mark of the Unicorn.”

Here at the Digital Production Center, we recently upgraded our audio interface to a MOTU 896 mk3 from an ancient (in tech years) Edirol UA-101. The audio interface, which converts analog signals to digital and vice-versa, is the heart of any computer-based audio system. It controls all of the routing from the analog sources (mostly cassette and open reel tape decks in our case) to the computer workstation and the audio recording/editing software. If the audio interface isn’t seamlessly performing analog to digital conversion at archival standards, we have no hope of fulfilling our mission of creating high-quality digital surrogates of library A/V materials.

Edirol UA-101
The Edirol enjoying its retirement with some other pieces of kit

While the Edirol served us well from the very beginning of the Library’s forays into audio digitization, it had recently begun to cause issues resulting in crashes, restarts, and lost work. Given that the Edirol is over 10 years old and has been discontinued, it is expected that it would eventually fail to keep up with continued OS and software updates. After re-assessing our needs and doing a bit of research, we settled on the MOTU 896 mk3 as its replacement. The 896 had the input, output, and sync options we needed along with plenty of other bells and whistles.

I’ve been using the MOTU for several weeks now, and here are some things that I’m liking about it:

  • Easy installation of drivers
  • Designed to fit into standard audio rack
  • Choice of USB or Firewire connection to PC workstation
  • Good visual feedback on audio levels, sample rate, etc. via LED meters on front panel
  • Clarity and definition of sound
MOTU 896mk3
The MOTU sitting atop the audio tower

I haven’t had a chance to explore all of the additional features of the MOTU yet, but so far it has lived up to expectations and improved our digitization workflow. However, in a production environment such as ours, each piece of equipment needs to be a workhorse that can perform its function day in and day out as we work our way through the vaults. Only time can tell if the Mark of the Unicorn will be elevated to the pantheon of gear that its whimsical name suggests!

Collections, Digital Collections, Technology

Future Retro: Images of Sound Technology in the 1960s Duke Chronicle

Many of my Bitstreams posts have featured old-school audio formats (wax cylinder, cassette and open reel tape, Minidisc) and discussed how we go about digitizing these obsolete media to bring them to present-day library users at the click of a mouse.  In this post, I will take a different tack and show how this sound technology was represented and marketed during its heyday.  The images used here are taken from one of our very own digital collections–the Duke Chronicle of the 1960s.

The Record Bar

Students of that era would have primarily listened to music on vinyl records purchased directly from a local retailer.  The advertisement  above boasts of “complete stocks, latest releases, finest variety” with sale albums going for as little as $2.98 apiece.  This is a far cry from the current music industry landscape where people consume most of their media via instant download and streaming from iTunes or Spotify and find new artists and songs via blogs, Youtube videos, or social media.  The curious listener of the 1960’s may have instead discovered a new band though word of mouth, radio, or print advertising.  If they were lucky, the local record shop would have the LP in stock and they could bring it home to play on their hi-fi phonograph (like the one shown below).  Notice that this small “portable” model takes up nearly the whole tabletop.

Phonograph

The Moon

Duke students of the 1960s would have also used magnetic tape-based media for recording and playing back sound.  The advertisement above uses Space Age imagery and claims that the recorder (“small enough to fit in the palm of your hand”) was used by astronauts on lunar missions.  Other advertisements suggest more grounded uses for the technology:  recording classroom lectures, practicing public speaking, improving foreign language comprehension and pronunciation, and “adding fun to parties, hayrides, and trips.”

Tape Your Notes

Add a Track

Creative uses of the technology are also suggested.  The “Add-A-Track” system allows you to record multiple layers of sound to create your own unique spoken word or musical composition.  You can even use your tape machine to record a special message for your Valentine (“the next best thing to you personally”).  Amplifier kits are also available for the ambitious electronics do-it-yourselfer to build at home.

Tell Her With Tape

Amplifier Kit

These newspaper ads demonstrate just how much audio technology and our relationship to it have changed over the past 50 years.  Everything is smaller, faster, and more “connected” now.  Despite these seismic shifts, one thing hasn’t changed.  As the following ad shows, the banjo never goes out of style.

Banjo

 

Behind the Scenes, Collections, Digitization Expertise, Equipment, Technology

What’s DAT Sound?

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My recent posts have touched on endangered analog audio formats (open reel tape and compact cassette) and the challenges involved in digitizing and preserving them.  For this installment, we’ll enter the dawn of the digital and Internet age and take a look at the first widely available consumer digital audio format:  the DAT (Digital Audio Tape).

IMG_0016

The DAT was developed by consumer electronics juggernaut Sony and introduced to the public in 1987.  While similar in appearance to the familiar cassette and also utilizing magnetic tape, the DAT was slightly smaller and only recorded on one “side.”  It boasted lossless digital encoding at 16 bits and variable sampling rates maxing out at 48 kHz–better than the 44.1 kHz offered by Compact Discs.  During the window of time before affordable hard disk recording (roughly, the 1990s), the DAT ruled the world of digital audio.

The format was quickly adopted by the music recording industry, allowing for a fully digital signal path through the recording, mixing, and mastering stages of CD production.  Due to its portability and sound quality, DAT was also enthusiastically embraced by field recordists, oral historians & interviewers, and live music recordists (AKA “tapers”):

tapers[Conway, Michael A., “Deadheads in the Taper’s section at an outside venue,” Grateful Dead Archive Online, accessed October 10, 2014, http://www.gdao.org/items/show/834556.]

 

However, the format never caught on with the public at large, partially due to the cost of the players and the fact that few albums of commercial music were issued on DAT [bonus trivia question:  what was the first popular music recording to be released on DAT?  see below for answer].  In fact, the recording industry actively sought to suppress public availability of the format, believing that the ability to make perfect digital copies of CDs would lead to widespread piracy and bootlegging of their product.  The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) lobbied against the DAT format and attempted to impose restrictions and copyright detection technology on the players.  Once again (much like the earlier brouhaha over cassette tapes and subsequent battle over mp3’s and file sharing) “home taping” was supposedly killing music.

By the turn of the millennium, CD burning technology had become fairly ubiquitous and hard disk recording was becoming more affordable and portable.  The DAT format slowly faded into obscurity, and in 2005, Sony discontinued production of DAT players.

In 2014, we are left with a decade’s worth of primary source audio tape (oral histories, interviews, concert and event recordings) that is quickly degrading and may soon be unsalvageable.  The playback decks (and parts for them) are no longer produced and there are few technicians with the knowledge or will to repair and maintain them.  The short-term answer to these problems is to begin stockpiling working DAT machines and doing the slow work of digitizing and archiving the tapes one by one.  For example, the Libraries’ Jazz Loft Project Records collection consisted mainly of DAT tapes, and now exists as digital files accessible through the online finding aid:  http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/findingaids/jazzloftproject/.  A long-term approach calls for a survey of library collections to identify the number and condition of DAT tapes, and then for prioritization of these items as it may be logistically impossible to digitize them all.

And now, the answer to our trivia question:  in May 1988, post-punk icons Wire released The Ideal Copy on DAT, making it the first popular music recording to be issued on the new format.