Thanks for this, Marie. Very much agreed. David's original question
relates to a collection (or several) of tapes that they want to make
commercial CDs from, and regardless of the original quality of the
tapes they transfers need to be the highest quality as master for
commercial releases... whether for archival or commercial use, the
quality of the source needs to be as high as possible. If noise
reduction (his etc) is to be done 24 bit is pretty imp;ortant as a
minimum level of quality, and I feel that 44.1 original transfers are
prefereable to sample rate conversion from 48k.

Large numbers of tapes are not justification for lowered quality of
product, and yet if the client has limitations of invesment, better to
do the work than refuse it!

Lou Judson • Intuitive Audio
415-883-2689

On Feb 13, 2006, at 7:31 AM, Marie O'Connell wrote:

> I work with spoken word/oral histories all the time, and it is my
> recommendation that to make a digitized preservation copy/master, that
> it is
> done in real-time. I work with both reel-to-reel and cassettes, with
> speeds
> ranging from 15/16ths to 15ips.
>
> I believe there is a requirement to get the best quality from spoken
> word
> recordings. In fact, in terms of preservation work, real-time is the
> only
> way to go. I'm sorry, it may take longer, but it is worth it.
>
> Cheers
>
> Marie O'Connell