Tobias Rapp, senior software developer at NOA Archive , will be traveling to the 2018 AES International Conference on Audio Archiving, Preservation and Restoration in Culpeper, Virginia to present a paper entitled “Digital Deemphasis of Gramophone Recordings.”
Held at the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation on June 28–30, the event will bring together audio archiving professionals from around the world to discuss “critical preservation issues and focus on strategies that will support and encourage collaboration and interoperability between industry and the preservation, restoration and archiving communities.”
Rapp’s paper, written in collaboration with Peter Kuhnle (AV digitizing and archiving specialist, NOA ’s CTO and MP), takes a look at the use of deemphasis filters to achieve a desired tonal balance in gramophone recordings. It outlines the advantages of using this technology, including the ability for archivists to preserve the unaltered offcarrier signal and subsequently apply deemphasis if required, as well as warranting better results when removing click and crackle artifacts for access copies. In addition, the paper summarizes how the use of digital deemphasis filters instead of analog circuits can lead to simpler workflows, and how in combination with high-quality linear pre-amplifiers and A/D converters it is possible to achieve dynamic, high-quality gramophone digitization.
Other themes to be addressed during the event include topics like storage and access technology, the current state and future development of digital archives and their role in preserving commercial audio, physical/object based preservation & material science, handling and storage of audio carriers, new trends in material research, mechanical vs. optical transfer of gramophone recordings, handling of magnetic media as well as preservation issues for emerging high-end audio formats and sustainable preservation of legacy formats.
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