Archival equipment

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

Magnetic media

Audio cassette tapes

Nakamichi Dragon

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

• Upgraded with Maxim MAX4066 CMOS switches for improved sound quality over the factory 4066 chips, with additional voltage translation circuit to maximize benefit of better switches
• Professionally serviced by Perry, incorporating beneficial upgrades done from the factory on later serial number Dragons

• Output stage:
  • Blue Jeans Cable LC-1 Low Capacitance Audio Cable 8-foot RCA cable -> Creative Sound Blaster ZxR sound card (RCA Line In) with 123dB input signal-to-noise ratio (captured at 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

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

PAL

• Philips VR1000 (JVC rebadge; for PAL tapes) 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 at PCM 16-bit 96khz using Monoprice Premium 6 foot RCA to 3.5mm 22AWG gold plated cable to Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic sound card

I am still working on obtaining a high-end NTSC S-VHS VCR.

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 or DVD Audio Extractor 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 of the MD deck

Vinyl / LP

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

• Output stage:
  • Blue Jeans Cable LC-1 Low Capacitance Audio Cable 8-foot RCA cable -> Creative Sound Blaster ZxR sound card (RCA Line In) with 123dB input signal-to-noise ratio (captured at 32-bit depth and 96khz sample rate) -> Adobe Audition CC 2015 (recording at 32/96)