Audio Preservation Studio
About the Studio
The Loeb Music Library developed its Audio Preservation Studio (APS) to preserve, reformat, and reproduce audio materials in the library collections. Now integral to the library's preservation program, APS is a state-of-the-art facility, with a staff of experienced and well-trained engineers knowledgeable in the characteristics of a wide variety of audio formats over generations. APS's primary client is the Harvard College Library, but the studio also accepts projects from other Harvard units, as well as from outside the University.
The studio features access to some of the finest digital and analog audio equipment available. The preservation studio's signal path features 96K, 24-bit capability and is "bit-clean," which means that digital audio put into the system comes out unaltered unless alterations are deliberately introduced. The studios also offer noise reduction restoration services for audio, utilizing some of the finest tools available today.
APS's audio equipment includes Studer and Ampex tape machines, Prism analog-digital converters, Genelec S30D monitors, and Keith Monks record-cleaning equipment. The audio quality of the room itself has been carefully engineered to create well-tuned listening environment. The measuring systems include an Audio Precision Test set, Spectra Foo and other scopes and RTAs that allow for real-time monitoring of the audio signal, proof-of-performance testing of the entire signal chain, and precise calibration of equipment.
Engineering service involves careful attention to audio detail and adjustment of sound for accurate playback and recording. All digital master recordings are verified for readability and bit-accuracy. Administrative and structural metadata are collected for all processes. Questions regarding the studio and requests may be directed to Patricia O'Brien, Administrative Coordinator, Loeb Music Library, via e-mail.
Current Projects
Sound Directions
The Sound Directions project is an NEH-funded joint venture with the Indiana University Archives of Traditional Music to create best practices and test emerging standards in the digital preservation of critically endangered sound recordings. Currently there are few published standards or best practices for this field, yet sound archives have reached a critical point where unique original materials are rapidly deteriorating. Sound Directions will establish digitization standards while simultaneously preserving several of Loeb Music Library's collections.
The Sound Directions project will help preserve the following collections:
The Baroness Ullens Collection
Baroness Ullens de Schooten was a photographer who traveled in Iran and Iraq regularly from 1926 until 1970. Her audio recordings document folk and colloquial music of the region. The astounding richness of this collection lies in the fact that the repertories represented are absolutely unavailable anywhere else in recorded or print form. The collection greatly expands awareness of cultural life in Iraq and Iran in the early to mid-20th century.
The Richard Wolf Collection
Collected by Professor Richard Wolf during more than seven years in India and Pakistan, the collection includes about 70 hours of Sufi and Shia Islamic practices and recordings of the entire festival year of the Kota tribe. More than any other currently available, this collection offers some of the very finest specimens of musical performance in each genre covered and offers access to little-known or difficult-to-obtain general folk and tribal music from across the Indian subcontinent.
The Sema Vakf Collection of Turkish Classical Music
The Sema Vakf Collection may be the largest collection of Turkish music in the world. Collected by Altan Güzey, the Turkish-American connoisseur of Ottoman classical music, this collection includes the private archive of Ismâil Baha Sürelsan, a Turkish composer and ethnomusicologist who has devoted more than 60 years to performing Turkish classical music. Among the other treasures of the collection are recordings of the singer Allâeddin Yavaşça's mesk, musical lessons held on Sunday afternoons at his home once a month. Some of Yavaşça's own transcriptions of musical works form part of the collection. There are numerous performances by such accomplished artists as Meral Ugurlu, Mes'ûd Cemil, and Bekir Rehâ and Selmâ Sagbas.
Music from the Archive: A New Model of Access to Rare and Unique Sound Recordings
The pilot project of the Archive of World Music, "Music from the Archive" involves developing the technologies and methodologies needed to access sound recordings as well as other digital objects. Focusing on three of the Archive's premier collections, the completed project will provide students and scholars with online access to the collections' finding aids, images, and audio files—much of it rare and unique material. The collections included in the project are the Laura Boulton Collection of Byzantine and Eastern Orthodox Chant, the Joseph Jeffers Dodge Duke Ellington Collection, and the James Rubin Collection of South Indian Classical Music.
