Something VERY special we heard at the Pilgrimage I forgot to mention...

[pmsummer]

...the original on-location 2-track reel to reel tapes of choirs, bands, and organs recorded by Paul Wilbur Klipsch himself for demo purposes. It was quite a thrill to hear them. Part of the old "Klipsctapes" project? Apparently, some thought has gone into producing some of these for sales.

These have yet to be archived, and time's running out.

[Daddy Dee]

I was wondering about this. Is the age of the tapes the concern for deterioration? Also, what kind of archive method would be appropriate.

If there were someone on the forum who has studio gear, this might be accomplished on a volunteer basis or perhaps at cost.

I think there would be great interest in sharing these recordings. Don't know if CD's might be made for sale as an option to finance the project.

[DrWho]

Those old recordings were a real treat...one thing I found most

interesting is some of PWK's stereo recordings before stereo ever came

out - that dude was so crazy.

There was huge concern about the tapes still working due to the way

they were stored and the fact that analog medium doesn't last very

long. They usually give it a lifetime around 15 years and some of this

is much older.

Sometimes you can only get one final play out of the reel, and if I

understand correctly Klipsch already has plans for sending it out to

some professionals who do this kind of archiving all the time. It will

be stored in a digital medium so that it can last forever without any

further degredation.

And I'm pretty sure some kind of sales will be available in the future.

[colterphoto1]

Doc is correct. For instance when Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin went to create the Zep DVD, some of the old tapes were recorded on equipment that barely still existed. I think they had to scour Japan to find playback equipment. Then the tapes were carefully revitalized with temperature and humidity controls before what proved in some cases to be their one and final playback.

The binders that adhere the magnetic particles to the backing material are usually the first to fail, causing the recording to literally 'flake off' the base.

[colterphoto1]

"stored in a digital medium so that it can last forever without any

further degredation."

However, this is also a simplification. Digital may be good, but far from perfect storage medium. For instance, what if you had an original floppy disk with an old LOTUS 123 spreadsheet on it. How long will it be before the hardware to read that digital computer disk be defunct?

We face the same challenge in the photo industry. Brides have their wedding videos on VHS, how many of you still have a machine that will play them back? Do you know that the life of a typical computer CD or DVD is not much better than the 15 years Doc quoted for film? Also SHARPIE markers are the enemy, there are chemicals in them that eat through the aluminum coating (read: data) on the top of a CD, so don't use those.

Not to be arguementative, just throwing valid concerns out there.

[DrWho]

But before the CD goes bad you can just copy it onto another CD - bit for bit perfect duplication. And during the transition to new formats there should most certainly be methods of translating the data without losing any information. The quality won't increase to the level of the new data structures, but it won't get worse than the old version either. Of course this assumes that the person who owns the backups is on top of things and maintaining their collection - which certainly won't be the case for everyone. But that obviously wasn't the case for the tape crowd either.

[BEC]

Stored right, the old magetic tape lasts a very long time. I have lots of tapes I made in the late 60's that still sound very good. Also, there is quite a market for some of the old tape. If you have some 10.5 inch NAB reels of TDK, try putting it on Ebay. You might be amazed what people will pay for that 30 year old tape.

Bob