Archival equipment

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The webmaster has the following equipment at his disposal to digitize or transfer / capture 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
  • 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

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 at PCM 16-bit 96khz using Mediabridge 6 foot RCA to 3.5mm cable to Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic sound card

NTSC

  • Still working on obtaining a high-end JVC NTSC S-VHS VCR

Optical Media

Compact Discs / CD-R

DVD

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