Archiving old domestic tape recordings

[Phil G4SPZ]

My wife's late Aunt passed away aged 92 just before Christmas and we are clearing her bungalow. I have found four 5" reels of tape, and I have had a listen to these. They contain family recordings at 3.75 ips from around 1960 and the voices on the tapes are of not just the aunt herself, but her mother, late husband and son... all of whom are now deceased.

I only knew the Aunt, but my wife knew all the other people and she can't bring herself to listen to these recordings, yet I find them quite fascinating. Am I wierd? Many people keep photographs of their lost relatives, but sound recordings are less common and, interestingly, these are in perfect condition. As an essentially mechanical medium, magnetic tape seems to be very durable and is likely to be as secure as any for long-term preservation of sound recordings.

So, what to do with them? There are few living relatives who'd be interested, but I'm wondering about transferring them to an audio cassette or CD of edited highlights for archiving, then re-using the reels of tape.

Does anyone else keep old recordings like this for posterity?

[Michael Maurice]

Phil, whatever you do, DO NOT ERASE OR DESTROY THE TAPES.

Transfer them to computer using Audacity or something similar then you can easily make copies onto CD or cassette or even email them to relatives.

The problem with digital storage especially CD's is that they can deteriorate, if you've destroyed the original recordings then they're gone forever.

And no Phil you are not weird, its just another avenue to reminisce about times gone by.

[dave walsh]

You've probaly put your finger on the point Phil by wondering what others do? This is a new issue domestically as it has only [reely] been since the 60's that the recording of relatives became a [readily available] possibility at home. I don't think it was actually done with the future in mind it was just such a great novelty and amusement at the time! Some people might, understandably, be uncomfortable "listening back" especially when individuals are now deceased. Others may take comfort. As with photos, tapes may be lost or destroyed but I'm sure there are many being kept. It's a situation now magnified by the widespread use of the camcorder. There is even a web site for people to deposit 8mm film images just up and the web [itself] is being archived [which might mean us now]. If it is a "problem" having such audio-visual access, then it's a very new one and we've not yet taken on board the consequences [if there are any]. On the other hand, many people are not interested and will throw out new technology just as easily as they would have done with letters/paintings etc. I don't think that's the general attitude on here though. By coincidence I have put a CD together tonight for my son's birthday. It starts with him yelling the house down at 16 weeks...thirty four years ago. There's two and a half minutes of it at 3 3/4 ips but I've kept it down to a few seconds for the intro [for very good reasons]. Still the whole thing is still there and should be a bit of a surprise all round. I've rambled on about the philosophy rather than the technical aspects, preservation etc as a lot has been said about this is the past on here. Cheers Dave

[ben]

This whole area has always fascinated me, ever since as a child I went picking up reel to reel decks from jumble sales with the tape still on which usually contained traces of the life of the previous owner!

Part of the appeal here is that such fragments only exist as disembodied voices or presences, since the only info you had about the person on the tape was the voice and what they said, accent, etc. Sometimes you find interesting or bizarre one-off stuff.

I always preserve such recordings I find , as sort of anthropological historical artefacts and have an archive (under contruction ) of the 'finds' . These get used in some of my artistic ventures from time to time.

I also have tapes of family members and even deceased friends, recorded years ago. Before camcorders, these were the next best thing I suppose.

[G8VAT Wolfman]

No you're not weird Phil, I'm just about to copy some tapes for a friend, then a relative and then my own recordings of my family tragically killed in 1961, I'm not sure how I will feel when I get there but I've waited years for this, I think the others will also be unsure what to expect.

But an interesting point was mentioned above about deterioration of CDs, do they deteriorate? being a relatively new technology has there been a noticeable change in older CDs already?
Apart from the usual scratches, fingerprints etc or perhaps a plastic degredation, I can't imagine the actual data going west.

The tapes I'm copying are all early sixties and most are in good solid condition but one has noticeably hardened and several splices have given way.

[joe]

Hi, Phil

You're not the only one. My wife's mother has recently been admitted to a nursing home at the age of 88, and when clearing her house for sale we came across several cassettes with my son's name on the label all made when he was a toddler (he's now 28) and three reels of 1/4 in tape reportedly with members of her family, now all deceased.

I was about to post a request to ask whether any forum member has a reel-to-reel m/c & would be willing to transfer the tapes to either cassette or CD.

Joe

[cmjones01]

Michael's quite right: do not destroy the original medium. It's impossible to predict now what better means there might be in the future for recovering information from old tapes and films, even when they've degraded. The closer to the original source it's possible to get, the better the chances of preserving the original recording.

Modern digital media are much, much more fragile than analogue tape, discs or film. The human brain is amazingly good at picking out familiar voices from a crackly, distorted recording. On the other hand, CD players, for example, are terrible at recovering usable audio from degraded CDs: you'll get skips, jumps, clicks, and fragments of sound, but it's very hard to piece together into something intelligible.

And yes, recordable CDs do degrade. I've written CDs (on decent, branded media) which after three or four years are still playable but with an incredible number of errors in the audio data: the background noise is nearly as loud as the audio. Who knows what they'll be like in ten years' time?

Thought experiment: in the future, people will be going to extraordinary lengths to try and extract sound and video from degraded Flash memory chips in today's iPods. Dealing with a reel of analogue tape shedding oxide is a doddle by comparison!

Chris

[mickjjo]

An interesting subject for me too as I recently transferred a long forgotten reel of tape I had recorded on my old Elpico TR702 machine with BSR TD2 deck back in January 1966. The one hour recording was of a family party, a unique record of the voices of dozens of sadly departed relatives and friends.
After cleaning and resplicing the tape, it played back quite well on the same machine that recorded it but with the hiss and hum levels from the badly screened ECC83 valve playback circuit, the audio quality was poor.

I then remembered my early Leak "Stereo 30" amp, which cost me a pound, has tape head input sockets, so I ran a screened wire direct from the playback head, bypassing the recorders electronics. This gave a noise free signal and the amps tone controls were able to equalise the response.
The Tape out sockets of the Stereo 30 were connected to the PC and the audio was transferred for editing and burning to CDR. The final version is amazingly clear and detailed, My late Fathers jokes and Grandmothers "Les Dawson" style piano playing are priceless....

I will keep the original tape and a few analogue cassette copies, I have doubts about long term "digital" archiving since several of my early CDRs from 2002 have recently become unreadable, the analogue cassettes from 1972 are still fine......

Regards, Mick.

[Big Band Heaven]

Intersting thread. I too have made recordings of now deceased relaives. It was all part of a family history project I undertook in 2000...those that I got to see I recorded and those I didn't I got to write down details about the early parts of their lives. Those I recorded I used my (then brand new but now defunct format) mini disk recorder - with a clip on microphone from Maplin - and the sound you got was crisp and excellent. This way I was able to record first hand descriptions of life in the 1920's through to the present day and has now only 10 years later turned out to be an invaluable family record.

As an example I have uploaded a short extract with my grandmother describing being bombed out during WWII in Devon.

http://www.box.net/shared/int27o9v7j

I have pondered the best way of archiving a mini disk and so far have a copy on my pc, a copy on my online storage facility and a back up on CD with myself and three other relatives (overkill maybe) but hopefully this way copies will survive long term!

[Framer Dave]

Originally Posted by Big Band Heaven

As an example I have uploaded a short extract with my grandmother describing being bombed out during WWII in Devon.

It was fascinating to listen to your grandmother. I was born in the middle of WWII, and have no personal memories of it. My late mother told me of nights she spent with me in the Liverpool air raid shelters though.

I had the equipment to make recordings when my grandparents and parents were still alive, but as a teenager never thought to do it.

Those who do have such archives hold not only family memories, but an important part of our wider social history. As I grow older I can now see the importance of preservation of this oral history by whatever means is currently available, also the need for very careful storage of the original source material.

I regret, however, that I have nothing useful to add to the technical side of this discussion!

Dave

[KeithsTV]

Over the last couple of years I have transferred about 72 hours of R-R tapes recorded in the 60s to my PC. The tapes had been stored in probably less than ideal conditions, in a friends loft, but were in remarkably good condition. There were a few breakages but these were spliced and relevant sections re-transferred to the PC. The tapes are back with their original owner who will be keeping them and not re-using them, as he doesn't have a R-R tape deck. I recorded them at the CD sample rate of 44.1kHz in mono ending up with about 25Gbs worth of WAV files. I have kept them on an external hard drive on my PC and another friend has a copy on his PC who has the inclination to clean them up. They were recordings taken from an AM receviver and have a few pops and crackles included.

I have also transferred some VHS tapes from a family friend to DVD as their VCR was failing. I have also kept the files generated by the capture process on an external disc.

In both cases I have advised the owners to keep the original tapes as you never know what will happen to the digital copies or there may be a better means of preserving them in the future.

I would advise recording the tapes using a high sample rate, such as 44.1kHz, making multple copies of the files on different media, hard drive, CD, DVD and keeping them in different places, with friends or relatives as well as keeping the originals safe. Check the copies regularly as recordable CDs & DVDs do not last forever especially if kept in inappropriate conditions.

The files may need editing or cleaning up which will generate new files. Keep these as well as the original files.

These audio and video records may not be of much interest to this generation but future generations will probably find them invaluable.

Keith

[dave walsh]

Lots of interesting case stories and comments on digital security here. Phil seemed to be more worried about the activity itself than the technicalities initially but the archiving process is covered by the thread title! It is something that I've asked about a few times on here [along with others of course]. All this advice is spot on especially re a relatively few treasured items. It's a bit more difficult when trying to habitually keep a lot of recordings though. As someone with a bit of an archive craze [and digitally dim] I have clung on to tried and trusted analogue tape media for a very long time. Seeing how many CD's/DVD's [paper sleeved] can fit in a shoe box however, I've become a partial convert. There is no doubt that [at present] there is a better chance of restoring a tape recording than a u/s CD. On the other hand, we were told for years that tape had a limited life [especially cassettes] which has not been borne out by my experience. I'm not doubting that there is a clear potential problem digitally but I've not seen that many CD or MD failures myself. It would be hard to back everything up so this must really be restricted to the most crucial recordings [if you know which they are]. So I suppose I'm on both sides of the arguement [if there is one] in this area. A few years back I asked our IT experts how big organisations secured their priceless digital info [if it was all so risky] eg the Beeb. Paul Stenning took the trouble to almost write an article explaining about the "raid" HD system. Even then someone commented that the only guaranteed storage systen was a piece of stone and a chisel, with nobody wanting to bet on the eventual outcome for anything else. Perhaps things have changed?. I don't want to have a Luddite approach but there are justified concerns. Having developed useful technology it's a shame we can't have a guaranteed harder wearing version for domestic use. Perhaps there will be automatic back-up recovery to the web or elsewhere ultimately? Dave W

[Big Band Heaven]

I agree with the difficulty of archiving on mass. I did spend some time once commiting much of my 78 rpm record collection to hard drive. I had a copy on my pc and also on an external hard drive. All set up in an electronic filing system by genre and then alphabetically by band. I kept a WAV version and a "restored" MP3 version of each file.

Well, the pc died unexpectadely, but not to worry I still had my back up. But no! When I tried my back up external hard drive it said no files found! I have no idea what happened as I know they were on there. I have packed it away in the meantime pondering the best way forward. PC world offer a service to download files from knackered hard drives but I wondered if this was the best way forward. Of course what I should have done was to back up to CD as well....easy to say in hindsight though! So BEWARE how you archive! My view is that if you go down the digital line then multiple media is the way to go: Harddrive, cd. online storage!

Lucky for me I still have all my records so I could always re-digitize them if the hard drive files really can't e extracted. If only I now had the time.....

But back to the first post...never destroy the originals or you may live to regret it (in my very humble opinion )

PS if anyone has any ideas on where best to send (or take) a harddrive for examination I would welcome any views.

[HamishBoxer]

I agree that its important to copy to as many formats as possible and as i stated in a recent post that hardrive storage is so much cheaper these days.As for Raid 0 i believe its called, excellent as any amount of drives from two upwards are back to back and should one fail as the data is duplicated on the others you are in with a chance.

David

[jamesperrett]

I've done a fair bit of archiving to CD over the last few years and experienced problems in the early days. This made me very conscious of media quality and how the brand on the box of the CD bears no relationship to who actually made the CD itself. I could buy a batch of Sony CD's one week which were great while next week's batch were terrible. The same goes for most major brands.

There is only one reliable way to tell how good the CD's are that you are using and that is the ATIP code embedded on the disc. The basic rule is that if that ATIP code doesn't translate to Taiyo Yuden then you had better copy that disc onto a Taiyo Yuden disc pretty quickly before it dies. There are a few notable exceptions to that rule but they're a little date dependent so it is easier just to stick to Taiyo Yuden discs.

Yes, Taiyo Yuden discs may be a little more sensitive to sunlight than others (so keep them in a case) but my oldest disc is now 14 years old and still shows low error rates in Plextools.

Cheers

James.

[Big Band Heaven]

How can you tell the ATIP code of a disk? I have quite a few CD-Rs and wondered how I can check

[cmjones01]

Originally Posted by jamesperrett

There is only one reliable way to tell how good the CD's are that you are using and that is the ATIP code embedded on the disc. The basic rule is that if that ATIP code doesn't translate to Taiyo Yuden then you had better copy that disc onto a Taiyo Yuden disc pretty quickly before it dies. There are a few notable exceptions to that rule but they're a little date dependent so it is easier just to stick to Taiyo Yuden discs.

That is very useful information - thank you!

Chris

[HamishBoxer]

More details please re ATIP codes.Thanks David

[chipp1968]

Transfer the recordings , but the tapes should Definitely be preserved . Its a bit like diaries , they actually are of historical interest . I wonder whether there is an archive that would take them ,I know there is for diaries , there was something about that on R4 recently.

[G8VAT Wolfman]

Well, thanks for the amazing insight into the properties of this modern media, I had (like many others no doubt) assumed that a CD was for life and not just for Christmas.

Since moving to a digital camera about 12 years ago I have religiously committed our pictures and later digital videos too onto CD/DVD as my archive, thinking they were safe forever, I'd better go check, and/or re record them until a more permanent media comes along.

But then another question comes along, how long is permanent?

Even printed pictures deteriorate, cine films, tapes, all recent media on the scale of things.