Reel-to-reel audio tape desires loving transfer to contemporary format

July 14, 2006 11:51 AM

Old (circa-fifties) reel-to-reel audiotape: how do I read it and get it on CD or hard disk?

Backstory: My girlfriend's mom was a local celebrity in Pittsburgh, PA. She was the star of "The Children's Corner", the precursor to "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood", among other things. She passed away a couple of years ago, and as a result we have all sorts of old media of (we think) her performances. This includes a number of reel-to-reel audiotapes, some 8mm film, and quite a number of VHS tapes.

We need to figure out a method (or find a service, preferably in the SF bay area of California) of transferring the R2R tapes into a format we can read and thus continue to preserve. I was able to find a place in Novato that can handle the 8mm, and we can deal with the VHS (I intend to archive it to miniDV & DVD), but I am running into a wall regarding local methods for dealing with the audio tapes. Any tips would be heartily appreciated.

posted by gkostolny to technology (6 comments total)

There's this company out of LA, LP Transfers 4 U

they do reel-to-reel transfers.
posted by nomisxid at 12:00 PM on July 14, 2006

A music studio friend of mine in Tucson and I were involved in a project to digitize several hundred short interviews for a local classical music station recorded on reel-to-reel format over the last 35 years or so. Our experience was that the tapes were extremely fragile, some with heavy oxidization, and required a baking process to removed the oxidization so that you could play the tapes without destroying them. Then he put them through some filtering on his Mac to clean them up: remove hiss, warble, etc. The final product was pretty good.

I can hook you up with him if you're interested; see my contact info.
posted by ldenneau at 12:11 PM on July 14, 2006

If you have a lot of them, you might want to obtain the necessary gear to do the transfers yourself. Find an R2R deck on ebay, then it's just an audio signal to be recorded onto your HD. Further help depends on whether you are PC or Mac -- I know there are a lot of threads here on that topic.

Note that the tape may have to be baked if the oxide is flaky.

5inch, 7 or 10-inch reels? You'll also need to find out somehow what speed the tape was recorded at --- 1-7/8ips, 3-3/4 or 7-1/2 --- they are probably mono.

(If you were in Minneapolis I'd have a lot more options.)
posted by omnidrew at 12:16 PM on July 14, 2006

I do this (among other things) for a living. Do you know the year (approximately) the tape was recorded? That can tell you whether you are likely to run into sticky shed problems that require baking. (Don't do that yourself, unless you are willing to risk the tape; it's a risk anyway. Usually you get one chance to playback and digitize after baking tape.) I would not recommend buyng your own gear. A decent R2R deck for this purpose will cost several thousand dollars. The tape may need to be baked, spliced, or otherwise manipulated. Heads may have to be aligned, depending on the recording format.

Getting it done professionally should cost you *at least* $30-40 per hour of tape if the person or shop is serious about it. More, possibly. If someone charges less, they probably aren't experienced with the procedure, or don't take particular care with it. If the stuff truly means something to you, make sure you *see* the facility where it will be transferred. The gear should be in pristine shape, clean, and professional grade. The room the tape will be stored in and transferred in should be clean, organized, and have a cool, dry atmosphere.

No one can guarantee this will work, or that the tape won't be damaged in the process. The best shop will make that a very unlikely outcome. Be sure to digitize at the highest possible sampling rate. You can always compress later. That means 24/96 digitization.
posted by fourcheesemac at 12:59 PM on July 14, 2006

Most libraries have reel-to-reel players in the music section. A college music library certainly will. They're usually enclosed in a box to keep you from plugging cables into the outputs (to prevent copying of copyrighted material), but the headphone output jack is available, even though not a perfect match. Bring your recorder along with a (large) stereo plug on one end and whatever you use for input on the other end.
posted by KRS at 1:13 PM on July 14, 2006

Annex Digital in Palo Alto does transfers/duplication of nearly anything! Nice people too.
posted by starscream at 8:05 PM on July 14, 2006