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 to prevent potential channel imbalance or failure, and the rest of the playback amp board's capacitors has been replaced as well; see this Tapeheads.net forum thread for more details

• Serviced:
  • Tape speed, default head azimuth, head height, playback level and frequency response, etc. calibrated against A.N.T. Audio's stellar alignment tapes
    • Performance checked against calibration tapes about every six months; I will post a wow & flutter figure shortly to prove proper performance
  • Factory belt kit from Marrs Communications ensures wow & flutter figures meet or exceed factory specifications
  • Tape path thoroughly cleaned and demagnetized regularly according to owner's manual recommendations, approximately 10 hours of use between cleanings and 50 hours between demagnetization using a wand-type demagnetizer
  • Tape transport cleaned and re-lubricated as of June 2015 (includes capstan flywheels and thrust bearings, reel hubs, and reel motor front bearing; new replacement capstan motor [mentioned earlier] does not need re-lubrication for several years from installation date)

• 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 2015 (recording at 32/96)
  • Each tape is fully wound (fast forwarded) and then rewound to ensure tape spools are packed with the least amount of potential stiction that 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

NTSC & PAL

• Philips VR1000 (JVC rebadge) with built-in line time base corrector or JVC HR-S7600U with built-in line time base corrector
• DataVideo TBC-1000 full-frame time base corrector
• ATI All-In-Wonder 9600XT AGP video card for lossless Huffyuv AVI captures captured on a dedicated Windows XP Service Pack 2 computer
  • Other general computer specifications: HP Compaq d530 CMT computer with Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.2ghz with HyperThreading, 1.5GB DDR-400 RAM, 80GB Western Digital Velociraptor + 500GB Western Digital Blue hard drives, Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic, Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2
• Audio captured using high quality Monster RCA cables passed through capture card to Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic sound card

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 captures
• Many thanks to Ryan Jonik for his generous contribution

Vinyl / LP

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

• 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)