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General Shep Related Chatter

Subject	Message	Replies
new analog to digital transfers? Date: 04-23-2008 By: Duhhh	Is anyone working on doing new analog to digital transfers? I have seen quite a jump in our ability to clean noise and produce better digital audio in the past few years, and this might help preserve classic shows like Shep's (before we lose the analog completely). I almost had a shot at this when I found someone who had Shep tapes, but it turned out to be a dead end. If there is an ongoing effort, where do I sign up to help? I'm sure the digital files floating around now are more products of minimal bitrate rather than maximum quality, but I wanted to know if there was a way I could help in the preservation. FYI, I was a production engineer back in the 70's (listened to Shep on WOR, but didn't save any of the recordings I made [:(]), so I learned on analog (my echo chamber was a dual head tape deck, and my reverb was a big spring [8D]). Now I do digital music editing, and am always amazed at what can be done (I use Adobe Audition 2.0). I've cleaned a few of my favorite shows, but when starting with 24k samples, there's only so much that can be done.	7

Replies

Date	Member	Message
05-14-2008 ( Reply#: 2040 )	Duhhh	OK, maybe I'm the only one interested in doing A-to-D conversions. [:(] If anyone ever stumbles across this post who wants help preserving or improving the quality of the digital archives, send me an email. I'll keep my reel-to-reel deck de-gaussed and ready.
05-20-2008 ( Reply#: 2046 )	ShepCast	You're not alone, but as you found, it's hard to find folks who will loan you source material! quote: Originally posted by Duhhh OK, maybe I'm the only one interested in doing A-to-D conversions. [:(] If anyone ever stumbles across this post who wants help preserving or improving the quality of the digital archives, send me an email. I'll keep my reel-to-reel deck de-gaussed and ready. ------------------------------------------------------ The Brass Figlagee - A Jean Shepherd Podcast Nightly episodes of Shep's radio shows http://shepcast.blogspot.com
06-24-2008 ( Reply#: 2082 )	Duhhh	Okay, just in case someone is sitting on a stash of 40 year old Shep tapes, but doesn't want anyone touching them.... If YOU can do the Analog to Digital, I'll do the clean-up and send them back to you. If you can connect your source deck to your PC and capture a .WAV file, I'll do the rest (I'll even help you set up the software needed to do the capture). When I'm done, I'd hope to have a digital version that is of much higher quality than we're used to, and hopefully even better than your analog copy (since I can get rid of background noise, AC or carrier hum, etc). We can then use appropriate compression on that file so it can be shared without chewing up massive amounts of storage. So, if you're sitting on tapes (which may not last much longer, flake...flake...), it might be time to do an A-D before they're gone.
09-01-2008 ( Reply#: 2258 )	sheptapes	Schmidco Never Sleeps!!! I have been digitizing all my original reels and cassettes for the last year or two, starting with material that wasn't released on cassette in the first eight years - I started releasing these shows in on cassette in 1998. I'm working my way through Rudy's reels at the moment, which are the bulk of the material already released and/or broadcast. I'm somewhere around June/July of 1965, so I still have to go through another year's worth to get them all done. These are FM airchecks until WOR split the broadcasts between AM & FM. After I get done with those I will probably tackle the big run of reels from 1975 to the end of the series - these were nearly complete originally ( a Chicago collector had someone in NY tape them all for him), but due to shenanigans on the part of an unscrupulous dealer, many of the reels are useless or seriously deteriorated. It seems this guy borrowed the reels, made bad copies, and returned those in place of the originals. They were further damaged when they had to be copied again to get rid of the tape squeal on the bad dubs - rather than the accepted method of baking the tapes to dry out the sticky oxide, the owner of the tapes used a hare-brained solution dreamed up by some OTR collector that involved a wet sponge somewhere in the tape path - it did stop the squeal, but it also got all over the pinch roller, causing slippage and massive amounts of wow that cannot be fixed. (Another aside - there may be a program to deal with this, but I don't know if it's available/accessible/affordable. It was reported on and demonstrated last year on NPR - it somehow locks on to the original recording bias signal and fixes the pitch accordingly -amazing! Anybody have this??) Also remaining to be digitized are many cassettes from "PD" - I have put these off because the quality varies so greatly from tape to tape, and because Pete liked to edit out commercials as the show went along, so they aren't very complete. And that's why Schmidco never sleeps - too much work left to do! -Max
09-11-2008 ( Reply#: 2321 )	Duhhh	Well, if you want help, let me know what I can do. I have an open reel deck that is still in good working order, so I can do the A-D capture. From there, I can do whatever cleanup might be needed, (although I haven't heard of using the bias signal to lock-on and correct). The most effective cleanup involves sampling whatever hum & hiss is constant in the background, and filtering that out (either with a notch filter or using FFT's to remove his or other background noise)
10-25-2008 ( Reply#: 2396 )	Dan	quote: Originally posted by sheptapes Schmidco Never Sleeps!!! I'm working my way through Rudy's reels at the moment, which are the bulk of the material already released and/or broadcast. After I get done with those I will probably tackle the big run of reels from 1975 to the end of the series - these were nearly complete originally ( a Chicago collector had someone in NY tape them all for him), but due to shenanigans on the part of an unscrupulous dealer, many of the reels are useless or seriously deteriorated. -Max Max, does anyone still make open-reel recorders?
11-02-2008 ( Reply#: 2414 )	sheptapes	Otari is the last manufacturer of reel-to-reel. press release: http://www.otari.com/news/2008-08-07.html Product: http://www.otari.com/product/audio/mx_5050b/index.html At roughly $5k new, it would probably make more sense to find one used on eBay. WBAI got about a dozen donated from Christian Science Monitor radio when they went digital several years ago. I bought one years ago for about $600, but I think they may be even cheaper these days if you shop around. The 5050 model has a two track head and a four track head, switchable, and also can be set to go down to 3 3/4 by taking the back off to reach a toggle switch.