Quote:
"Depending on the volume of material you are hoping to transfer and the funds and resources available, I would suggest that it may be worth investigating setting up the required facilities in-house.  As cassette is a relatively standard format and, as such, won't generally require much in the way of pre-transfer restoration or conservation it can be quite straight forward to set-up a simple workstation with user-friendly software to carry out the digitisation work."
 

The above might work well for somebody who wishes to digitise a few audiocassettes they have at home, but for the archiving world this is a serious non-starter. You will never get the best replay of your material if you don't take into account azimuth, accuracy of tape speed, cleaning of the tape heads, use of NR systems such as Dolby (not always documented, you sometimes have to guess that yourself), etc.  The audiocassette may be a "standard" format but the quality and alignment of the machines that recorded them is anything but "standard"! These magic boxes do not take care of any of this.  (You also have to employ someone to carry this out - unless of course you're under-utilised at the moment and have the time to do it yourself.)
 

Just because the audiocassette comes in a handy little case doesn't mean you can just shove it in a "do-all" machine and think what comes out as being the best you can get. Also if you're listening to the output in less than ideal conditions (ie not in a acoustically treated room) then the room's environment is likely to colour your judgement.  And if you've accepted that as the best you can get, then you cannot improve at a later stage - you cannot put back what you haven't pulled off the tape in the first place. Any number of short "courses" in the art of analogue to digital conversion is not going to make you the world's expert overnight.  Better that this sort of thing is viewed as an introduction to and overview of what is required to give you an awareness to allow you to better manage your project.

Quote:
"They (BLPAC) warned strongly against transferring to CD or mp3 - CDs are apparently more unstable than most cassettes"

 This is a bit of a blanket statement.  

First of all, how come (for nearly 10 years) we were contracted to transfer many tape-based recordings to CD-R for the BL Sound Archive? We haven't heard of any problems with these gold dye discs used for the delivery format. The biggest determining factor in our experience is the "batch"/manufacturer syndrome.  With CDs you will get a much improved durability if you use "gold dye" CDs which should last 100 years.  Many of the discs which are now showing signs of CD rot are made from inferior materials or with inferior techniques.  Early Deutsche Grammophon discs (c.late 1980s) are a well known example of this.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc_bronzing)

We have also found that different manufacturers have markedly different reject rates for their discs.  We have made over 60,000 discs and have found that the only way to keep on top of this is to check serial numbers and log all faults so that you can spot rogue batches quickly.  Even changing manufacturers is no guarantee as several use the same blank disc pressing plant.  Once you have found a manufacturer that you can trust, it is worth using them even though their discs may be initially more expensive as in the long run they will end up cheaper because you won't have all the rejects.

We would agree that .wav files are probably the best archive storage media if you can guarantee the integrity of your long term computer storage systems (and your IT department!), but many keepers of archives specify CDs for access copies for many local reasons, including that you will only need a cheap CD player to play them, rather than a computer which is then not being fully utilised.

Ultimately, it's horses for courses, and what suits one application won't suit another.  You should bear in mind that you will want at least one "archive" format which is stored securely, but you may want an entirely different format for your "access" copies.

Jenny Grigg
All You Need Is Ears, Bristol

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