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Change in Richard’s Available Formats

After over 20 years of providing digitization services to a wide range of clients, it is time for me to slow down and smell the roses (as they say). I’m not stopping, I’m just reducing the formats that I can handle. I can still digitize the following formats.

ANALOG FORMATS
0.150″ tape – most formats can be accommodated if they can be re-shelled into standard cassettes. I can handle mono, stereo, and four-track tapes. We use Nakamichi Dragons for most transfers. Odd speed or more than two tracks are handled in Datatape players. Speeds of 15/32 to 7.5 in/s can be accommodated. Slower speeds can be accommodated by further slowing in the computer.
0.250″ tape – most formats from full track mono to four track can be handled on our Sony APR-5003V machines from 1-7/8 to 30 in/s. Slower speed tapes can also be accommodated by further slowing in the computer. Most 1/4-inch cartridges tapes can be removed from the cartridges and returned on reels. This includes 8-track cartridges (stereo or quad) that can be transferred four channels at a time.
0.500″ tape – I can now only accommodate 2-, 3-, and 4-track tapes in this width.
For all reels the maximum reel size is 12.5 inches. 14 inch reels can be accommodated if the flanges are removable and the tape pack is no larger than 12.5 inches in diameter.

DIGITAL FORMATS
DAT, Minidisc, CD, and PCM F1 on either Betamax or VHS.

I can also transfer some grooved disc media (i.e. records), but usually only as part of a larger archiving project.

See https://www.richardhess.com/tape/ for more details.

A New Year’s view of at-risk audio formats

This article was first written in January 2015, with minor revisions in 2018. The revisions made in 2024 are highlighted, like this line. The deletions are struck through.

There are many factors that affect the ability of people like us to digitize tapes for you, our clients.

One of the most difficult issues to balance is the physical space that different formats take up, the ongoing maintenance of these formats, and, to be brutally honest, their return on investment.

What we discovered is that some of the machines we were archiving for future use would not work when they were brought out of storage. Rubber parts, capacitors, and lubrication are probably the most prevalent causes of failure. We have said to clients more than once (with a wry smile), “Yes we can probably restore your tape, but first we need to restore a machine.”

Manufacturer and maintenance depot support for various formats is waning or fully discontinued. Parts are hard to come by, and good machinists with an interest in doing this are either non-existent or very expensive.

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Comments in this blog…

I apologize, but I have been receiving 2000 spam comments a week recently and it fills up my inbox and the users have to be deleted. They’re not going to get their comments posted, but I’m tried of this. If you wish to leave a comment on this blog, please email it to me and I will post it in the article. Sorry. I am moving all the excellent comments into the articles and that should be done shortly.

Watch those insects!

OK, this is not directly related to audio, but three audio people I know have been bitten by insects this spring and have suffered greatly for it. One was bitten by a spider in California, one almost died from a flea bite in Texas, and another received a suspected spider bite in Pennsylvania…so be careful…you never know where nasty insects might be hiding…maybe even under a tape box!

If you are worried about what to do, a friend, though a staunch vegan, squashes spiders. Of course, certain spiders are good and eat other insects, so this is just another one of those tough decisions in life.

And then there is mold. A good friend’s life was cut short by interaction with mold, though he was a smoker much of his life, so I’m certain that contributed to it.

As my Dad used to say, “you don’t get out of this life alive”, but he made a good run for it, living until age 93!