Archival equipment

The webmaster has the following equipment at his disposal to digitize or transfer several different formats.

Magnetic media

Audio cassette tapes

Nakamichi Cassette Deck 1

• Three head, asymmetrical dual capstan transport with pressure pad lifter
• Manual playback azimuth adjustment, allowing best frequency response of a tape that was recorded on any other device

• Upgraded with:
  • Pacific Stereo Universal Capstan Motor
  • Two underspec'd capacitors in the playback amplifier circuit replaced with high-quality, audio-grade, properly spec'd caps; see this Tapeheads.net forum thread for more details

• Serviced:
  • Calibrated against to A.N.T. Audio's stellar alignment tapes
  • Fresh capstan drive and back tension belts from Adams Manufacturing Co.
  • Thoroughly cleaned and demagnetized regularly
  • Performance checked against calibration tapes on a regular basis

• Output stage:
  • Mediabridge 6 foot RCA to 3.5mm cable -> ASUS Xonar DX sound card with 112dB input signal-to-noise ratio (32-bit depth and 96khz sample rate) -> Adobe Audition CC 2014.2 (recording at 32/96)
  • Each tape is fully wound (fast forwarded) and then rewound to ensure tape spools are properly packed with the least amount of potential stiction which may result from a long time spent in storage
  • Azimuth is optimized per tape, and if required, per each individual tape's side

Digital Audio Tape (DAT)

Sony SDT-9000 SCSI DAT drive

• Flashed with firmware that is able to read audio DATs
• Most direct option to rip audio DATs to WAV format in their native sample rate (i.e. 16-bit 32khz / 44.1khz / 48khz)
• Allows error correction which no standalone DAT deck / recorder can perform
• Regularly cleaned according to manufacturer recommendations using "new old stock" Seagate DAT head cleaning tapes
• DATs ripped using dat2wav software

VHS / S-VHS

• No appreciable equipment currently. Working on acquiring a high-end PAL S-VHS set up, consisting of a high-end JVC or Panasonic S-VHS VCR with built-in time base corrector, an additional external time base corrector, and a capture card that can capture losslessly. NTSC S-VHS VCR to come afterwards (fewer recordings are on NTSC format, thus obtaining such equipment has a lower priority).

Optical Media

Compact Discs / CD-R

• The latest version of Exact Audio Copy configured to optimal settings for a perfect rip
  • Optical drive used does not affect the result of the rip

DVD

• ImgBurn to make ISOs
• PgcDemux to demux audio soundtracks to their native formats

BD

• Not applicable at this time due to no Blu-Ray bootlegs existing that need to be ripped; as far as I know, only one or two BD recordings have been torrented on DIME.

MiniDisc

Sony MDS-S707 MiniDisc deck

• Optical output is used for digitally bit-perfect transfers
• Many thanks to Ryan Jonik for his generous contribution.

Vinyl / LP

Audio-Technica AT-LP120-USB Direct-Drive Professional Turntable + Shure M97xE Cartrige

• Output stage:
  • RCA to 3.5mm cable -> Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic sound card (32-bit depth and 96khz sample rate) -> Adobe Audition CC 2014.2 (recording at 32/96)