Re: [ARSCLIST] Fw: Analog: A Race Against Time - Billboard August 28, 2004

[steven austin <stevena@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hmmm.

Fortunately, I don't have much in the way of audio tape, really, but I'd
hate to lose forever certain live recordings from the sixties and
seventies. For the smaller private collectors, with more primitive
environmental situations, what are the options?

Steven Austin

-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
[mailto:ARSCLIST@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Dick Spottswood
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2005 8:25 PM
To: ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ARSCLIST] Fw: Analog: A Race Against Time - Billboard August
28, 2004

more fuel for the alarmists among us--thank goodness for 78rpm shelf
life!
Dick

----- Forwarded by Dick Spottswood/dick/AmericanU on 01/06/2005 11:28 PM

-----


OldHatRecords1@xxxxxxx
01/06/2005 03:39 PM

        To:     jeff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, pete@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
smweiss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
        cc:     Harriswray1@xxxxxxx
        Subject:        Analog: A Race Against Time - Billboard  August
28, 2004


UPFRONT: Last issue, senior writer Bill Holland began a five-year update

on the state of the music industry's vaults. He found that all companies

face new challenges in preserving digital-era recordings that were
captured on equipment and in formats that are now obsolete. This issue,
he
revisits the problems still encountered with analog tape.

The problem with analog tape preservation is simple: The music is
embedded
on a ferric oxide layer stripped onto plastic tape.

Unfortunately, such tapes were not built to last.

Nearly 1 million analog studio tapes from the '70s and '80s, both
masters
and session reels, are now in perilous condition because, as engineers
discovered to their horror nearly a decade ago, they were manufactured
with a flawed binder that absorbs moisture over time.

Problem tapes include Ampex 406 and 456 and Scotch 3M 206/207 and
250/251.
Several Agfa formulations also show the symptoms. None of those tapes
are
still manufactured.

If the tape is played without treatment, the sticky binder, taking bits
of
the oxide "playing" surface with it, pulls away from the tape.

The binder residue also clogs the machine's transport system. The
friction
caused as a tape is played can stop a machine in its tracks.

And it can destroy a master recording.

These analog tape assets, which represent some of the most lucrative
catalog for companies to exploit, cannot be played without destroying
the
music content-unless they are individually "baked" in a convection oven
for many hours to dehydrate them.

Other tapes of this type also have a "shed" problem, where the tape
oxide
surface containing the music material simply peels away from the
defective
binder. Sticky shed syndrome is the diagnostic term for the "disease"
affecting such tapes.

Experts say that about 85% of tapes manufactured between 1971 and 1991
exhibit sticky shed syndrome.

But the good news is that five years after Billboard's articles
initially
appeared, most studios have ovens on hand to dry out problem tapes.

A remaining obstacle is that at all the majors, such problem tapes are
baked only when a reissue project is scheduled. Most sit soggy and
unattended on the shelves.

"They're now in controlled, dry rooms," says Glenn Korman, head of BMG
Music's vault. "They won't get any stickier. We pull them when we need
them and then bake them."

But even tapes that seem safe right now may have decreased shelf life.

"There's a lot of educated people out there who believe that you can
bake
a tape over and over," says Frank Bowen, director of EMI's North
American
archives. "[But] common sense tells you that every time you bake a tape
for eight hours, something is diminished on it."

Warner Music librarian Steve Lang is not as pessimistic: "If a tape is
sticky, we bake it, so maybe they last another 20 or 30 years. Maybe by
that time we'll have a better idea."

After baking a tape, it is racked and played before it can rehydrate.
The
music information is transferred to more stable "safety" copies, usually

both in analog and high-resolution digital formats.

There are no programs at any of the four major record companies to
initiate a full-time effort to save these masters and session reels. The

reason is the sheer scope of the problem.

In 1999, vault and catalog veterans estimated that it would take 17
years
for a crew of six engineers working daily eight-hour shifts to stabilize

and transfer every one of the industry's at-risk tapes now stored in the

vaults of the four companies.

MANY TAPES, FEW RESOURCES

The sheer volume of the major labels' holdings also often leads to lost,

mismarked or mystery tapes sitting on shelves. The surviving companies
have acquired so many labels-and their catalogs of hundreds and even
thousands of master and session tapes-that in some instances they have
not
completely inventoried their holdings.

A prominent producer told Billboard that recently he was led to an
un-air-conditioned, underground parking lot in Los Angeles that
contained
a security cage. Inside the cage were stacks of apparently uncataloged
tapes belonging to a major label.

Prior to EMI's purchase of Capitol Records in the United States, many of

Capitol's masters were haphazardly stored in un-air-conditioned dressing

rooms of the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles until the building was torn

down in the '90s (Billboard, July 12, 1997).

EMI's Bowen says that even this year, his staff has had to search for
material on Capitol and labels that EMI has acquired through the years
that weren't in the vault.

"We spent nearly four months cold-calling basically every studio in the
U.S., asking if [they] have any of our tapes or those with the labels
that
go back 50 years."

Staffers at all the major labels' vaults say they've had to do the same.

In one of the most famous examples, BMG had to hunt down lost Elvis
Presley recordings. Veteran engineer Bones Howe had saved them from the
dumpster 20 years before.

Howe told Billboard he found "a dumpster filled with tapes" when Los
Angeles' legendary Radio Recorders was going out of business in 1960.
Howe
said the studio owners had pleaded in vain for then-RCA label officials
to
pick up their masters.

Even today, the majors regularly hire consultants to listen to "mystery
tapes" they own, often housed in tape boxes without any information on
them.

A MASTER IS MANY MASTERS

In the old pre-tape days, when a record company A&R staffer or outside
producer handed in a master to a company, it usually meant one cut on an

acetate-cut disc that embodied the best performance of a recording.

In decades to follow, this common procedure from the '20s to the '40s of

only saving "the best of the best" continued. Luckily, some non-master
performances were saved, usually the result of bad recordkeeping.

Without these extra takes, companies would have no "alternate master"
disc
recordings of such musical giants as Robert Johnson and Duke Ellington.

By the '50s, a master was an artist's best performance of a session tape

recording. It was usually edited from a reel of tape embodying several
other performances, usually considered lower quality.

Some takes were magnificent but just too long to be included on vinyl
albums. Those throwaways later became valuable to companies and music
fans.

The poster boy for this phenomenon is Miles Davis' 1959 album, "Kind of
Blue," on Columbia (Legacy), owned by Sony. The main tape recorder in
the
session ran slightly slow, so in playback the performances were a
half-step sharp in pitch, which has puzzled generations of jazz-studies
students and workaday players.

The jazz masterpiece found itself on the jazz charts again in recent
years
after Sony's engineers found an alternate take of one of its
compositions
as well as a "B reel" of the album-taped on a backup tape recorder
running
at the correct speed.

Because Sony held onto the original analog masters, its latest
incarnation
is a version in high-resolution Super Audio CD.

>From the '60s to the introduction of digital recordings in the '80s,
in-house or outside producers handed companies a "production master"
equalized for vinyl (boosted bass, hot upper-end sizzle) so that
recordings would jump out of radios.

Producers also usually gave companies a "flat," unequalized master and
the
multitrack session tapes.

At some companies, some of these tapes have not survived. That means the

company's only asset of the recording is the version that became the hit

in whatever year it was released. Updated reissues are impossible.

INCREASED VIGILANCE

The increased concern over the possibility of more masters being
destroyed
has led to greater awareness and vigilance by many in the industry.

In January, song stylist Michael Feinstein sent an alarming e-mail to
dozens of music historians, archivists, industry officials and musicians

who are on the board of the federally created National Registry of
Recordings.

Congress created the board in 2000 to preserve the most important and
significant sound recordings in the culture.

Feinstein said that he had been told that a new top executive at Sony
suggested that original master recordings be jettisoned since digital
copies of some sort existed. Therefore, the exec reasoned, the originals

were no longer needed.

Of course, those originals included works by such artists as Louis
Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Leonard Bernstein,
Bruno Walter, Barbra Streisand and Bruce Springsteen.

Feinstein said the problem of new execs not understanding the importance

of keeping and preserving original source material was not just at Sony,

but with all the majors.

He suggested to the registry's members that they write letters "to the
various recording concerns outlining the importance of preserving
original
masters."

The letter touched off inquiries to Sony by such board members as
veteran
engineer George Massenburg. Sony brass assured him that the comment was
made offhand by a person who has no jurisdiction over vault assets, and
that there is no plan to throw out original source material masters.

Although in this case the news that Feinstein received was a false
alarm,
the bigger point is that there is now a network of industry
professionals
who can blow the whistle should masters be in peril.

Furthermore, Feinstein's call to action underscores the concerns voiced
by
many that a combination of a major industry downturn, consolidation,
cost-cutting and newcomer execs unfamiliar with the recording process
could result in a tragedy of mammoth proportions-the self-destruction of

their companies' prime assets.

"We're in our infancy as far as understanding the scope of preservation
in
the digital age," says preservationist Bill Ivey, who paraphrases
Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "There are things you know, things you know
you
don't know and there are things you don't even know you don't know."