Re: [ARSCLIST] [project-gramophone] Plus Deck

[stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

see end...
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Frank Forman" <fforman1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> I have purchased this unit, described at http://plusdeck.com. It plugs
> into a bay on your computer and lets you pop an audio cassette into it and
> make sound files, wav and MP3 among them, to your hard disk. It uses a
> serial cable, but my new e-Machine does not take them, and I'll have to
> buy a serial card to get it to work.
>
> My purpose is to make DVDs from 1000-2000 C-90s I inherited from William
> Lampe, an elementary school teacher in Huron, SD, from his estate. Among
> many misc. 78s of classical music, they contain most of the Victor and
> Columbia M-sets. They were made a consumer grade turntable, amplifier, and
> cassette recorder. They have given both of us, and others, a great deal of
> pleasure over the years. I'm too hard of hearing to tell, but Bill and
> others insisted that they sounded, for all the purpose of just listening,
> as satisfying as those reprocessed for CDs by transfer engineers like
> Mark Obert-Thorn.
>
> Residual copyright problems, as you all know, preclude putting these on a
> server in the United States. If I could get someome to host them on a
> server outside this country, I could make DVDs of MP3 files of the C-90s.
> There are many projects underway to put huge numbers of 78s onto websites,
> but so far this has been mostly preliminary talk, esp. over standards of
> quality for the transfers, which are uniformly set at high professional
> standards. Money to do the job to fully professional standards might be as
> much as $100 million for all 78s, classical and popular.
>
> (I have describe this before, what I call the four Cs: collecting.
> converting, cataloging (absolutely essential), and copyright. Even if the
> copyright problem can be gotten around and collectors are willing to lend
> their discs to the converters, we are still talking about vast sums for
> the middle two Cs. The cost of maintainnig the site is trivial, compared
> to the four Cs. The $100 million would include the Old Record Foundation,
> say, itself buying and warehousing the 78s. Cataloging, as everyone in
> ARSC knows, can be indefinitely refined. You may recall my own "Acoustic
> Chamber Music Sets, 1899-1926: A Discography," which appeared in three
> parts in the ARSC Journal in 2000 and 2001. That had an unusually high
> level of documentation for each recording, but even describing the
> contents of each M set would require a good deal of work, since all lists
> of M-sets contain errors and a standard format would have to be devised,
> just for this preliminary project of putting Bill's M-sets onto a site.
>
> (Of course, the philanthropist could simply buy out any residual
> copyrights that are held by claimants in the United States and transfer
> them to the Old Record Foundation or, even better, just put them into the
> public domain. I doubt that the total profits from CDs of classical 78s
> since the beginning of CDs are more than $1 million. Any estimates?)
>
> Getting Bill's tape onto a site, provided the sound is at least reasonably
> adequate, might do wonders to show philanthropists that here is something
> that is not just theoretical but actual. These M-sets would remain on the
> site until the money rolls in in pieces and each M-set gets replaced with
> a thoroughly engineered job from original 78 rpm source material.
>
> In short, I want to jump start the process of the grand 78 to Web dream we
> all have.
>
> What I'd like to get from this list is an appraisal of the PlusDeck and a
> volunteer to place the result on a server or help in finding one. My
> difficulty is that I am extremely hard of hearing and don't want to spend
> hundreds of hours producing something of poor quality, nor to do a lot of
> work and being unable to find anyone willing to host the results. I would
> also like to know about how cheap and medium grade C-90s deteriorate over
> time.
>
I can't speak to the deck in question...however, to reply to some
other points in your message:

1) My personal experience with cassettes has been that they seem to be a
near-permanent medium, with one important caveat: DO NOT play them in
automobile tape decks, which have a nasty tendency to "eat" cassette
tape. In fact, I have a number of Philips cassettes I taped using a
small portable machine (all that was available in 1967-68) that are
still very playable. Cassettes, of course, do have a standard "tape
hiss" that might have to be processed out...but the bandwidth is
probably ample for content originally on shellac 78 records.

2) All that is actually necessary to create cassette-based sound
files (.wav or .mp3) is a set of cables that have RCA plugs on
one end (assuming your tape deck uses those...most do)...and a
stereo "mini-phone-jack" on the other to plug into your sound
card's "LINE IN" jack. You can download a freeware program,
Audacity, which can take any sound signal you can input into
your sound card and convert it to the above sound files. Note
that .wav files can be used to produce CD-R discs that are
playable on standard CD players...but they also occupy a fair
amount of digital "space!"

3) The copyright situation currently looks bleak (or worse)
in the US, and the record firms are trying to put these
eternal-term laws in place in all the countries they can
think of. Basically, about 99% of the sound recordings on
78 have their copyrights owned by one of about three
multinational corporations...and these firms, in turn, can
afford to hire lawyers that eat us ordinary citizens for
breakfast! The industry is terrified of granting usage
to anyone (for fear of establishing precedents) and, in
many cases, chooses to "look the other way" if copyrighted
recordings are made available. If nothing else, they have
seen copyrights abused by so many younger folks that they
are convinced they have to "bar the door" in every case!

4) I would suspect that one could BUY copies of virtually
all extant 78's for that $100 million! My estimate on the
total number of 78's issued in North America would be about
3,000,000 give or take...so that you could pay $33.33 per
record, which is well above the value of all but a few
of them. The next problem, of course, would be storing
this archive (I estimate about 300,000 milk boxes would
be needed!). Of course, 3 million 78 discs would weigh
in at about 1,500,000 pounds (add a little to cover the
Edisons!...or 75,000 tons.

5) Finally, as per the server problem, I tend to think that
the best approach would be to purchase the necessary
hardware and software. If we assume (and I'm guessing here)
that the multiple issuance of many early sides (I've seen a
Plaza side credited with being used on 20 different labels!)
is more-or-less "covered" by the fact that most of our
"3 mega78's" (to coin a word) have two sides, we arrive
at 3 million sound files in our archive. If we elect to
use MP3 files (usually 2 or 3MB each) this works out to
something between 6 and 9 terabytes...and while this is
an imposing number, keep in mind that this only requires
24 to 36 250GB drives and those often cost around $100 each,
or $2,400 to $3,600. At most we are looking at $10,000
(or less) for hardware. I'll leave the cost of the 24/7
high-bandwidth net connection to those who know that
sort of data. But, I suspect it still won't even come
close to the $100,000,000.00 you cite...

5.5) The biggest problem will be creating the discographic
database that I would guess would/should be part of the
process. The "Abrams files" (available at 78Online.com) use
160-byte data records (which are, as might be assumed, far
from complete)...and they comprise about 100MB of text
data. Ignoring duplication (which exists) this would
seem to be data on about 600,000 SIDES (not phonorecords)
or at best 300,000 phonorecords...10% of my estimated total.
Disk space isn't the problem...a 250GB disk would hold
45KB data records for each of my estimated 5 million sides...
it is the DATA ENTRY! Assume that our hard-working clerks
take 10 minutes to look up and enter the data on one
phonorecord side (on the average...some will take A LOT
longer to locate!). That means 50,000,000 minutes of
data entry work...or 833,333.333 hours...or 104,166.666
person-days (if they work 5-day weeks, that's 20,833.333
person-weeks, or 416-2/3 person-years)

So...we will need 416 clerks and one little short one...
mebbe one of us "cripples" (explanation on request) to
put in a full year of looking things up and entering
what they find. We have to use people who know their
way around discographies (ever try to find a "Majestic
Dance Orchestra" side on Radiex, using ADBD?!...) so
they won't be minimum-wage employees (see under
"Rigler-Deutsch...?). Of course, they won't have to
be...if we assume we have $83,333,333.33 left of
the hundred million, we can pay them $100.00/hour!...
(on second thought, maybe I'll offer my services...).

Anyway, I'm in favour of the idea...just playing
"devil's advocate" a bit...

Steven C. Barr