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New Service Recovers Endangered Audio Recordings

Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2014 1:09 am
by JFK

Re: New Service Recovers Endangered Audio Recordings

Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2014 9:10 am
by oldposterho
Very cool, good news for dour English majors everywhere.

I wonder if this technology could be used with Vitaphone records? Are they victims of delamination too?

--Peter

Re: New Service Recovers Endangered Audio Recordings

Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2014 5:15 pm
by coolcatdaddy
It might be useful in some cases.

The process works best with lacquer recordings where the plastic coating has flaked off of an aluminum base. You can't just reattach the lacquer and play it with a stylus because the coating is so fragile.

Most Vitaphone-type discs were pressed in shellac as a solid piece. However, some were pressed by Columbia, using their laminated process - a shellac playing surface on a core made of rough material. If you had pieces of the lamination that became detached, you could use this process for it.

You might think this process would be useful for broken discs, but it can be difficult to "reattach" the grooves and that part, after the scan, takes some manual intervention.