Hi richard,

I still work in the Archival Mastering Dept. of a major film studio. In the
“Hollywood” film industry, 24/48 Wav was agreed upon a few years ago as the
standard for production and archival. That said, everything that goes to our
servers is 24/48 Wav. If the source was Fairlight, SDII, Sonic Solutions,
Waveframe or whatever, regardless of bit depth, it is played in real time,
using the original or (at least) a compatible platform and captured at 24/48
wav. This includes the digital tape sources as well. More often than not, the
capture is from the AES bitstream which I don’t necessarily agree with because
better results can be obtained (IMHO) from the analog output of a quality
converter using 192 bit DACS. 

Regarding AIFF files, yes they are PCM files but they still have to be “saved
as” or re-written in some manner to get the .wav extension which adds the
potential for additional data errors.

You wrote:
“I am one of the few voices seriously questioning making 24/96 WAV 
files from analog cassettes of oral history.”

I would agree, 24/48 is plenty adequate for spoken word and such. I’m a
stickler
for a bit depth of 24 bits for archival files regardless of sample frequency.

~CB
Corey Bailey Audio Engineering


Quoting "Richard L. Hess" <[log in to unmask]>:

> Hi, Corey,
> 
> if the original DAT is 44.1 or 48 ks/s and 16 bits, why would you 
> make a preservation master at anything faster or deeper than this?
> 
> I am one of the few voices seriously questioning making 24/96 WAV 
> files from analog cassettes of oral history.
> 
> If you have a digital file, I think that it should be archived in its 
> original sample rate and bit depth. I think the IASA TC-04 book 
> concurs, but I didn't look it up.
> 
> Making a digital recording of the analog output of a DAT player 
> imprints the preservation master with the sonic signature of the 
> playback DAT's D-A converter. It is not the same as the original digital
> file.
> 
> There is no reason to store bits that weren't saved in the first place.
> 
> As to AIFF and WAV, they are the same PCM data in different wrappers, no?
> 
> My software of choice, Samplitude, will read or save in either 
> format. I don't think you're interpolating or doing any form of 
> conversion to the data (except perhaps re-ordering it), but rather 
> just rewriting headers and other metadata during this conversion.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Richard
> 
> 
> Richard L. Hess                   email: [log in to unmask]
> Aurora, Ontario, Canada       (905) 713 6733     1-877-TAPE-FIX
> Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
> Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes. 
>