MANUAL OF ANALOGUE SOUND RESTORATION ... - British Library

All this means that someone qualified to do discographical work may be kept just
as busy as the actual sound operator. The two should work in close collaboration for
another reason as well. Often technical factors depend on the date of the recording, or its
publication-date; so the operator (or manager) may need this information before work
starts.
2.7 Archive, objective, and service copies
With these considerations in mind, it now seems appropriate to address the issue of the
versions we wish to make. (We considered the “three possible copies” in section 1.5)
Until now, most copying has been “demand-led” - the demand from listeners and
customers dictates what gets copied. While this is all right so far as it goes, the result is
usually that only “service copies” are achieved, because copies are tailored to listeners’
needs with subjective and cultural factors incorporated.
In my view, a proper programme of archival copying cannot be demand-led for
that reason, and the following as well. The technical standards for service copies can be
less critical, so general standards are lowered; I confess I have been guilty of this myself.
Service copies are often done “against the clock”, when loving care-and-attention is in
short supply. And since the demand always comes from someone familiar with the subject
matter, documentation tends to be less rigorously done.
Thus a programme incorporating several separate copies will take longer as well. It
may be necessary to do three versions and document them. And it is advisable to have a
procedure to prevent the same job being done twice.
On the other hand, there are ways to save time if a proper programme is planned.
Demand-led hopping between different media with different characteristics wastes time
connecting and aligning equipment, and may mean research and experiment if the plan
does not confine itself to known areas. It requires “technical rehearsal time,” which I shall
consider shortly. Thus it is best to allocate at least a full working day specifically to archival
copying without risk of interruption, and during that time a slab of technically-similar
technically-understood work should be tackled.
There are many cases in which the various copy versions may be combined. If a
disc record is so good that modern technology can do nothing to improve the sound, then
the objective and service copies might as well be identical. Many professionally-made
tapes can be copied to fill all three roles.
The overall strategy must always be capable of giving predictable results. If two
different operators do the same job with different equipment, there should be no audible
difference between their two “archive copies” and their two “objective copies”. This
implies that the operators should be supported by technical staff ensuring that all the
equipment operates to international standards. A programme of routine measurement of
equipment is essential, and if a machine is discovered to have been operated in a
misaligned state, all the work done by that machine in the meantime should be checked
and, if necessary, re-done. I shall not impose my ideas of the tolerances needed in such
measurements, as standards are bound to rise with time; but managers must ensure such
checks take place at frequent intervals.
Top-of-the-range copying facilities have high capital costs. These might be diluted
by arranging a shift-system, so the equipment is in constant use. Alternatively, one shift
might be doing exploitation work while another is doing strict archival work and a third is
doing routine maintenance.
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