AES New York 2015
Archiving and Restoration Track Event A2
Thursday, October 29, 11:15 am — 12:45 pm (Room 1A14)
Archiving: A2 - Preserving Historic Audio Wax Cylinders and Expert Transfer Techniques
Presenters:Brad McCoy, Library of Congress - Culpeper, VA, USA
Nadja Wallaszkovits, Phonogrammarchiv, Austrian Academy of Science - Vienna, Austria; NOA GmbH
Abstract:
Audio preservation experts have decades of experience with rare and problematic media formats and modes of degradation and have developed sophisticated techniques and work flows to recover the content from a wide variety of damaged, degraded, and obsolete types of storage media. The Library of Congress staff have produced video tutorials on basic playback techniques for wax cylinders conducted by expert practitioners in the field. This presentation will showcase these videos, discuss how they came into being, and plans for disseminating them to the preservation community. Different approaches will be outlined and compared, including internationally proven methods such as improved mechanical signal pickup. Recordings will be played of transfers made of historic cylinders from both the Phonogrammarchiv in Vienna, Austria, and the Library of Congress Packard Campus in Culpepper, VA.
