A Case for Non- Contact and Format Agnostic Retrieval of Audio Heritage from Magnetic Carriers

Abstract

For the last 60 years, almost all audio of any kind has been recorded and stored on magnetic tape. The amount of cultural audio heritage is overwhelming in terms of complexity and amount of material. This has been known and discussed for a long time in the relevant circles of archivists, institutions, audio engineers and academics. Yet it appears that, despite UNESCO’s / IASA’s ‘Magnetic Tape Alert Project’,
(iasa-web.org/magnetic-tape-alert-project) no unified strategies of note have been put forward to begin to address the entirety of the situation. Archival guides and documents seemingly hold fast to technical assumptions and quality control mechanisms that may no longer be certain or achievable, whilst the proliferation of open-source algorithms and operators without technical or historical knowledge is advancing regardless of those mechanisms.

This paper attempts to categorise some aspects of this problem and outline, in principle, the necessity for a future, non-contact, format agnostic retrieval system and unified reconstruction processes that incorporate real engineering experience, algorithmic processing and modern archival methods.