Over twenty people attended yesterday's Introduction to Digital Audio workshop at METRO presented by Dave Nolan, Audio Archivist at the 92nd Street Y.
The six-hour presentation focused primarily on two areas: archival transfers (migrating from an existing format to a newer and hopefully better format) and creating new recordings of live events, oral histories, etc.
The morning session was spent discussing a slew of digital audio concepts including bit depth, sampling rate, and numerous compression formats.
Part of the afternoon session focused on audio digitization equipment with the presenter demonstrating equipment and offering tips and recommendations in the following areas:
- Computer (Mac is the obvious choice.)
- Analog to Digital Converter/Computer Audio Interface (The single most important link in the digitization chain. If you have extra $, spend it here.)
- Software (Pro Tools is the industry standard. Audacity is free and is also very good.)
- Hard Drive(s)/Digital Storage (Store your archival copy as a broadcast wave file on an external drive rather than on tape or optical (cd, dvd) disc.
The rest of the afternoon covered analog to digital transfer and the creating of new recordings including tips and recommendations on microphones, mixers, PA systems, and digital recorders.
Dave provided attendees with a list of digital audio resources and I've included them here for those who could not attend.
Dave Nolan's Digital Audio Resources as of November 1, 2006
- ARSC - The Association of Recorded Sound Collections
- ARSC-List
- CLIR - Analog to Digital Audio Best Practices
- CDP - Digital Audio Best Practices
- Richard Hess Tape Restoration Resources
- Valerie Forrestal's Audio Archiving Resources
Thanks to Dave Nolan and all who attended.
