Osiris Studio provides migration, preservation and restoration services with proven experience in helping corporate, non-profit, governmental and educational organizations of all sizes maintain their collections through successfully reformatting and restoring historical audio content.

Why choose Osiris Studio?

Skilled engineer

• Michael Graves, owner and engineer; recipient of the 2008 GRAMMY Award for Best Historical Album for his engineering work on that project
• Wealth of experience and familiarity in working with aging, fragile media

World-class equipment

• Use of the latest, best professional-grade digital and analog audio equipment

Customer service

• Professional and confidential
• True understanding of issues facing collections with large archives
• Can provide experienced counsel related to all aspects of your project and work within an established budget

Who has chosen Osiris Studio already?

• The American Cancer Society
• The Archives of the Episcopal Church
• The Coca-Cola Company Archives
• Emory University Pitts Theology Library
• Georgia Institute of Technology Music Department
• Georgia State University Library Special Collections and Archives (Johnny Mercer Collection, Popular Music Collection, Southern Labor Collection)
• The National Library of Medicine
• The National Park Service: Joshua Tree Archives, Sitka Archives, Yosemite Archives
• The Rialto Center for the Arts
• Senator Max Cleland (personal recordings made during his service in the Vietnam War)
• U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, David J. Sencer CDC Museum (formerly the Global Health Odyssey Museum)

Important factors to consider in any audio preservation/migration project

PLAYBACK EQUIPMENT
Make the original analog recording sound the best it possibly can.

Use high quality, regularly maintained playback equipment to play the original recording. Every piece of playback equipment used at Osiris Studio was chosen for its best in class performance in audio re-production. In some cases modifications have been made to an already outstanding playback device to further improve the audio quality.

DIGITAL CONVERTER
Capture the best, most accurate digital representation of the analog sound.

Often overlooked, this is one of the most important tools in the preservation process. It is this single device that captures or “records” the analog sound in a digital format. Digital converters can range in price from $20 to $20,000, and as those prices indicate all converters are not created equally. We use the Prism ADA-8XR. Prism makes what is considered to be some of the most accurate analog to digital converters available in the professional audio world.

Osiris Studio takes the responsibility of converting their client’s audio artifacts to a digital format very seriously. Usually this is a onetime process for analog media reaching the end of its life. Therefore it is critical that the analog to digital conversion process be performed by only the best converter available. The Prism ADA-8XR is nothing short of state-of-the-art in this regard.

It’s also worth noting that the Library of Congress is currently using the ADA-8XR in their new Culpeper, VA facility and EMI recently chose the ADA-8XR to digitize the entire Beatles catalog for preservation and re-issue.

QUALITY CONTROL
Make sure everything is right.

What good are great sounding digital files if the file names don’t accurately reflect the content? We regularly deal with large projects that end up producing hundreds or thousands of files. If 1 or 2 of those files ends up labeled wrong or recorded incorrectly, the integrity of the project could be in question. Quality control is essential. Osiris Studio has QC procedures in place throughout the transfer process that will ensure usable, accurate, complete sound files and the best possible representation of the analog source in digital format.

OUTPUT
Store it on something useable and durable.

If you plan to have your final project delivered on optical media (CD or DVD), there are two things you need to consider.  First, the media itself; Osiris Studio uses Taiyo Yuden and MAM-A discs exclusively.  Both are considered reference, industry standard media.  Second, labeling of the discs themselves; all of our discs are printed using a Rimage Everest III color thermal disc printer.  Aside from looking truly outstanding, the color thermal printed discs offer many advantages over other forms of labeling. 

For example, most guidelines indicate that using a Sharpie or felt tip marker is an acceptable practice, but you’re limited to marking on the clear center hub of the disc only; writing anywhere else on the disc may eventually damage the surface.  Ink jet printing really isn’t suitable for archival work; it’s not permanent and can easily smear.  Stick-on labels are a big no-no.  The adhesive part of the label will eventually deteriorate and damage the disc surface.  But with discs printed using the color thermal process you get:

• Uniform, professional looking discs.
• The ability to print the maximum amount of information on the disc surface clearly and legibly.
• Maximum durability. The color thermal printing process adds another protective layer to the disc surface, the most vulnerable side to scratching.
• Waterproof discs. Actually, just for the heck of it we put a few of these discs in the dishwasher (with the drying cycle on) and they came out looking and functioning perfectly.

External hard drives are great too; they’re very inexpensive and easy to use.  We recommend going with a model that has a RAID feature, which means that there are 2 hard drives in the enclosure that are mirror images of each other. If one drives fails the other will still safely contain your audio files.  It’s still a good idea though to back up the files on the external drive to another drive, local server or remote server just to be safe.

RANT

USB turntables. Sure they sound like a good idea for a quick and low cost preservation project. You play the record and end up with a digital file. It’s been digitized therefore it has been preserved. Right?

Well, not exactly.

That last statement sort of assumes that “digitization” equals “exact copy in digital form”. It does not. There are levels of quality in digitizing something. Think of digital photography. You can take a digital picture of a painting with a cell phone camera or a 24 megapixel DSLR camera. The end result is technically the same, a digital file representing a non-digital object. The painting for all practical purposes has been digitized. Something tells me though that the picture taken with the fancy camera might look just a little more true to life than the one taken with the cell phone.

The same holds true for audio and the USB turntable. From low quality analog to digital converters to truly horrible styli, they’re just not up to the task of capturing an accurate digital representation of a record. It wouldn’t be so bothersome if I didn’t repeatedly hear of people buying these devices to preserve old one-of-a-kind recordings…or worse yet, paying a service that uses these devices to preserve their recordings for them. Usually it’s someone’s old homemade recordings of their parents, grandparents or some other relative. Voices long gone and never to be heard again. The saddest thing is that some people, after having their old records “preserved”, throw the old discs away and all they’re left with is a digital file that doesn’t even come close to revealing the true contents of that record. Heartbreaking.

So if you’re thinking about buying a USB turntable to digitize your old record collection from high school, it might work out for you. But it you’re considering a USB turntable for a preservation project, this may not be the best idea. If you’re thinking of using a business that uses USB turntables for a preservation project, you may want to reconsider that as well. You could end up getting the audio equivalent of cell phone snapshot of your priceless records.