1914 Edison Diamond Disc Recordings Catalog
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Department of Special Collections

Performing Arts Collection-
Preservation of Sound Recordings

Davidson Library's Special Collections Department has a fully equipped sound preservation studio to preserve the often old and fragile audio recordings in the collections. The studio has equipment to playback every format in the Library's collections including cylinders, discs and open reel audio tape as well as modern formats such as DAT and CDs.

Equipment in the studio has been chosen to provide the highest quality playback while remaining faithful to the original sound source. Some of the features that allow high quality transfers are the use of balanced audio signals and balanced AC power throughout. While common in professional recording studios, this is less common in archives.

The library has an active an ongoing preservation program and dubs hundreds of hours of unique audio recordings every year to more stable media such as recordable Compact Discs (CDR). Some audio files are also stored online. Additionally, all commercial 78 rpm recordings are copied onto CDR as patrons request items. This ensures that the recordings in demand and most likely to be unavailable elsewhere are copied onto a stable format.

Studio Equipment:

Open reel playback:

  • Studer A807 (quarter and half track)
  • Otari MX5050BIII
  • Revox B77
  • Teac A 4010S (quarter track)

Audio disc playback:

  • Thorens TD520 16" turntable
  • Technics/KAB SL1200 turntable
  • Technics/Esoteric Sound "Whiteman" turntable
  • KAB Souvenir EQS MK12 phono preamplifiers and EQ
  • Owl 1 preamp and EQ
  • Esoteric Sound Re-Equalizer

Other playback equipment:

  • Archeophone #4 (Cylinder playback)
  • Marantz PMD502 Cassette and PMD 321CD players
  • Sony PCM R500 DAT

CD Recording and Digital Audio Workstation:

  • Marantz 620 CD Recorder
  • Gateway Pentium III computer with Digital Audio Labs CardDelux, Sound Forge and CD Architect editing software, and a Plextor 4/12 CDR drive

Noise supression and equalization:

  • Packburn 323A Audio Noise Supressor
  • SAE 5000 Impulse Noise Reduction
  • Behringer 8024 Digital EQ

Miscellaneous equipment:

  • Keith Monks Audio Labs Record Cleaning Machine
  • Furman IT-1220 isolation transformer
  • Alesis RA 100 power amp and monitor one monitors
  • Microboards Copywriter CD duplicator
  • Neutrik balanced patch bays.

Page author: David Seubert.
Last modified: 11/20/06 04:54:14
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