Re: Reel to Reel Archving

On Apr 30, 3:41 am, Parvardigar <parvardi...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I've been elected to backup from the non profit library our reel to
reel audios. There are several hundred mostly 5 inch reels.

Does "non-profit" describe the library, or does it describe you? It's
not a big deal to copy a handful of reels for a good cause, but when
you're talking about several hundred reels, it's a real job that will
take up a lot of your time. Be careful about winning such elections.

Should I go reel to reel player/recorder to reel to reel player/
recorder to make the backup?

Yes, if you want to make your copies on reel-to-reel tape. However,
you should recognize that 1/4" audio tape is pretty much a boutique
item these days, expensive and a bit difficult to find in quantity.
Unless there are some special circumstances, you'd be better off
copying the original tapes to CD. While we are still unsure about the
lifespan of home made CD-Rs, most modern disks, with careful storage,
seem to have a proven life of at least 10 years these days (early ones
occasionally failed after a couple of years).

I thought it would be most efficient to run the reel to reel player/
recorder to a cassette recorder.

That's probably the process that would take less of your time, but
then you'd have cassette copies which nobody really considers to be
particularly good for long term storage. While the quality of the
original recordings may not be all that great, the cassette copies
will be a downgrade, which is not a good thing for the next person who
gets the job of having to copy them to another medium in the future.

If I went reel to reel player/recorder to computer I'd end up with 2
disk or more for a one reel tape.

Well, you really need to think about what the purpose of the "archive"
is going to be. If you have much more than an hour recorded on a 5"
reel, depending on the type (thickness/length) of the tape, your
original recordings are at best 3-3/4 ips half-track mono or quarter-
track stereo. You need to know this in order to choose the proper tape
deck for playback. If they're a mix of formats and speeds, you'll need
to accommodate this also.

At this point, my advice would be to do more research to determine
just what you have to work from. Unfortunately, that requires some
knowledge of tape formats and access to some sort of tape deck to
evaluate the tapes. You may even need to bake the tapes before they
will play successfully.

I don't envy your job unless you're being well paid for it, and I
suspect that you aren't. It might seem like a good thing to do for the
community, but it will get old very fast.


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