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Re: [ARSCLIST] National Recording Registry
I just
listened to this broadcast via the web. The host made reference to "Sam's pencil
is squirming on
his
paper". Were I Sam, I'd be squirming myself - from the standpoint of providing
information to the public
it was
a wholly chaotic affair. And as for collecting feedback from the public - well,
a couple of useful
suggestions were put forward. But the broadcast also made clear that
the public doesn't really understand
the
purpose of the registry - nor really did the host of the program, who was far
too invasive I felt.
As per
some of Steve's comments about playing back cassettes on the "original" machines
on which they
were
recorded, I have some comments. Cassettes were truly a consumer medium if there
ever was one.
Most
folks would get rid of their cassette machines if they died and simply
bought new. But they didn't get
rid of
the tapes. I don't have any of the machines I owned before 1993 when I got the
one I use now. I tried
to
hang onto the older machines for some years, but then as I kept moving from
place to place Mrs. Lewis
would
insist I shake this or that machine loose if it didn't
work.
I
regretted the swift death of DCC, as I really wanted one. Not to play and record
the digital cassette tapes,
which
I knew were doomed, but as a very high-end player of normal audio cassettes.
With mono cassettes
I made
before I started using a stereo cassette deck (prior to 1981) I prefer to play
them back on a stereo
machine, as it gives me two signals to work with. If the main, louder
channel is too overmodulated to provide
a
clear signal, then I will recombine it at a low volume with something of
the quieter, but noisier secondary
mono
channel to get a result that is listenable. I suspect this is
audio-restoration heresy, but I noted that
Seth
Winner and Dennis Rooney have a similar strategy when dealing with damaged
half-track open reel
tapes
(as per their joint talk at last year's ARSC.)
Tape
truly is "the Devil".
David N. Lewis
Assistant Classical
Editor
All Media Guide
301 E. Liberty Suite 400
Ann Arbor, MI
48104
davlew@xxxxxxxxxxxx
PS: When is the deadline to submit an ARSC talk this
year? I've forgotten the dealine, but I do have
something.
DL
In a
message dated 1/29/2003 10:07:58 AM Pacific Standard Time,
mikel78_rpm@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
The host said "with great difficulty".
Here's how you do it
fellas. You take a cassete recorder and hook it up to a
phillips (or any
other brand) cd recorder and you transfer it following the
simple
instructions in the manual. Converting sound recordings to
digital
recordings takes no expertise at all.
Boy is
this true. What I find in all of the work that I have done is that, at
the end of the day, with voice recordings especially, the quality matters less
than the content. Spending too much time on quality rather than on the
value and the meaning of the content to contemporary generations-- is a
waste of time. The host was completely uninformed and probably turned
off some young people who would like to do this sort of thing. Too
bad.
David Hoffman
independent documentary filmmaker
varied
directions
www.theHoffmancollection.com