Date:         Tue, 7 Oct 2003 11:09:18 -0600
Reply-To:     Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
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Sender:       Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
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From:         Archive Project <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Re: audio workstation help
Comments: To: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
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Here's what Naropa Audio Archive is doing - can't help with SoundForge.
Try David Glasser at www.airshowmastering.com. He's our grammy-winning
restoration engineer. If doesn't know, he can direct you.

In the meantime - hope this info is helpful:

1.  We used SADiE for a year (loaner machine) and it was great, but
concur as overkill. Had to set up signal path to go around the SADiE to
burn data files. Hot swapped. When we rec'd grant money, we opted for
ProTools  - inexpensive, MAC-based, and we are HAPPY.  ProTools Digi002
can do more than we need to merely transfer the audio, but at 5K it's a
good value - and we're looking forward to the functionality as outside
demand for material in the collection is growing. That is, we anticipate
being able to cut radio programs and educational material out of the
material sometime soon.

2.  Pro audio engineers are consultants and trainers on our project, as
well as part of our QC process; we train students to run the
workstations. This is our 2nd year of operation, and for our collection
(30 years of rather esoteric spoken word poetics) it's been much more
valuable to hire grad students who love the content than to hire an
audio engineer who may be disinterested.  The students collect all the
metadata necessary for MARC21 catalog record creation (also Dublin Core)
during the transfer from analog to digital, as well as log the content
for further indexing.  No uninterested person, no matter how well
trained for sonics, electrical engineering, etc., could stand to do it
for long. The archival work we're doing isn't any more difficult than
the current crop of computer using 25 and under crowd is used to. And to
make sure we're doing the right thing, we've got one of our transfer
labs set up at an audio restoration facility. They're a vendor, but
they're state-of-the-art as far as audio and engineering goes.

3.  We transfer from original record cassettes through Lucid A-D
converter into ProTools in real time.  It's a flat transfer, no
alteration. It's the only time we touch the originals.

We output to several formats:  CD-DA - flat audio copy to gold CD as
reference copy; CD-R - BWAV files to two different manufacturers of CD
(mitsui and taiyo yuden; this is back-up to account for random physical
defects in the manufacture of CDs); AIT - BWAV file also gets laid off
onto Sony AIT tape in case the CDs experience catastrophic failure
sometime in the future in the hopes that the AIT tape will last longer
than whenever that is).   All of these are protection copies and go into
cold storage along with the original cassette.  

We could be striking another unaltered full resolution dub to BWAV at
this time to use as production masters - but we're doing the restoration
at this time......

We go back to the digitized material in ProTools and put the file
through mild EQ - hiss and noise reduction programs (plug ins)- as
appropriate.  If there are any long pauses in the original recording, we
take them out.  This gets output to CD-DA audio. These listening copies
are our access and production masters until we finalize our server
configuration. 

All of our digitized material is uncompressed. 44/24.  We'd like to be
at 96, but can't afford to at this time.



-----Original Message-----
From: David Seubert [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 2:03 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [ARSCLIST] audio workstation help

We've encountered a problem that I hope somebody can assist with.

We'd like to be able to use external signal processing equipment on
audio
that we've digitized. When we make preservation copies of analog source
material, we capture a flat transfer on our audio workstation. (PC with
Sound Forge 6.0) If we want to use an external piece of equipment (e.g.
Cedar, EQ, Packburn etc.) to modify the signal we are unable to do so.
Unless I am missing something, Sound Forge cannot playback the original
file and record a new file at the same time. Our sound card (DAL
CardDelux)
supports full duplex, our software apparently doesn't. I even tried
playing
back a wav file with Media Player, then looping it out to an external
equalizer and then back into the computer and recording in Sound Forge,
but
this creates a feedback loop.

How to you make this work?