RE: [AV Media Matters] arsclist Arhoolie Foundation - Digitizing Project (fwd)

[Gilles St-Laurent <gilles.st-laurent@nlc-bnc.ca>]

>1. What is a good currently manufactured turntable with variable speed
>that will play 78s?

We're having one built at the moment by Simon Yorke Designs.  See
http://www.recordplayer.com/archive.htm .  Warning: high quality but
expensive!

>2. What is a good currently manufactured pre-amp, preferably one with
>various EQ curves?

I've just finished working with Millennia Media (www.mil-media.com) to
design an analog phono-preamp/eq.  The unit has 6 bass boost curves and 6
low pass curves  and there are places to drop in capacitors to custom design
any curve and there are separate shelving EQ sections to further fine tune
the curve.  The unit is designed to play vertical cut discs.  The input can
be either phono or high level balanced and the phono input can be loaded to
accommodate any cartridge impedance.  They are presently manufacturing the
box for a March delivery.

>3. What is a good cartridge that accepts a currently made 78 stylus?
I've been happy with the Stanton 500 and the many stylus sizes available
(see www.78rpm.com)

>1. What is a good model A/D converter?
We've just taken delivery of the Apogee PSX-100 (both an A to D and D to A
in one box).  The advantage of this unit is that there are multiple outputs
with the possibilities of one output delivering a UV 22 dithered 16 bit
signal and the other a full 24 bits.

>3. What program would be good to use to record and save the files?
I have a PC based Pyramix system (www.merging.com/).  Very flexible, fast
and easy to use.

NOTE:  Do not use digital EQ for playback curve.  The original recording
curve was made in the analog domain  which has side effect of introducing
phase shift.  Since digital EQ'ing does not introduce phase shift, an analog
playback EQ is required to reverse the original shift to keep everything in
phase.

>6. We will also be taking a high resolution digital photo, of
>the source
>material. In the case of the 78s, this will be the 78 label.
>Do you know
>of a database system the would work as a good front end to
>manage all of
>this?

Our site, The Virtual Gramophone (www.nlc-bnc.ca/gramophone) uses Oracle to
manage all the discographic elements (cataloguing, bio, label scan and music
streaming).

Gilles St-Laurent
Music Division
National Library of Canada

>-----Original Message-----
>From: mdurham@unm.edu [mailto:mdurham@unm.edu]
>Sent: Saturday, February 17, 2001 2:57 AM
>To: AV Media Matters
>Subject: [AV Media Matters] arsclist Arhoolie Foundation - Digitizing
>Project (fwd)
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 13:17:10 -0800
>From: Tom Diamant <tom@arhoolie.com>
>To: ARSCLIST@galileo.cc.rochester.edu
>Subject: arsclist Arhoolie Foundation - Digitizing Project
>
>Dear Arsclist,
>
>I just joined up on this list so I don't know what has been covered
>before. But I was hopipng that some of you could us out.
>
>The Arhoolie Foundation is about to digitize the Chris Strachwitz
>Frontera Collection (A large collection of vernacular Mexican and
>Mexican American Music) of 78s, 45s, LPs, tapes, cylinders and other
>source materials. We are working with the UCLA library and the Chicano
>Studies Department there.
>
>The first part of the project, the 78s, comprises about 80,000 minutes
>of music (about 26,000 78 RPM sides). UCLA wants high resolution,
>probably, 96mhz/24 bit. They would like us to put it on a
>removable hard
>drive and send it to them as we do it and they will store it on their
>server at UCLA. We will also keep a copy for the Arhoolie Foundation.
>
>We are looking for answers or opinions on the following questions.
>
>A. Capturing the analog sound.
>1. What is a good currently manufactured turntable with variable speed
>that will play 78s?
>2. What is a good currently manufactured pre-amp, preferably one with
>various EQ curves?
>3. What is a good cartridge that accepts a currently made 78 stylus?
>
>B. The digitizing. We would like to use a PC instead of Mac.
>1. What is a good model A/D converter?
>2. What is a good sound card for the computer?
>3. What program would be good to use to record and save the files?
>4. What file format would be best to save these in? Is there a format
>that allows meta data to be attached?
>5. Ideally, the Arhoolie Foundation would like to keep it's copy of a
>RAID server. This would require about 1.3 terabytes. Using SCSI drives
>this would be quite expensive. However, there are new IDE ATA 100 RAID
>systems that are coming about that are much cheaper and are large
>capacity. Do you have any knowledge about this.
>6. We will also be taking a high resolution digital photo, of
>the source
>material. In the case of the 78s, this will be the 78 label.
>Do you know
>of a database system the would work as a good front end to
>manage all of
>this?
>
>Thanks forany help you can give. Please email or call if you have any
>questions.
>
>Best Regards,
>
>Tom Diamant
>
>Arhoolie Foundation
>10341 San Pablo Ave.
>El Cerrito, CA 94530
>USA
>
>phone: 510-525-7471
>fax: 510-525-1204
>email: tom@arhoolie.com
>web site: http://www.arhoolie.com
>