In part I of this article, we examined how to best store and protect oral histories that are on magnetic media for the long term (or at least to slow the degradation process that naturally occurs with this technology). Now, we’ll turn our attention to getting that information from the tape into the digital world.
Copying your recording, the right way
You may ask, ‘Well, why can’t I simply make a copy of the original onto a new tape – that should last for another thirty years, right? Yes, you could do this, but there are two problems: first, machines to play the tapes are becoming harder to find as time goes by, and there’s no guarantee that in another 15 or so years you will be able to find a machine at all.
Second, with analog audio, every time a tape is copied it introduces an additive generational loss to the copy: more noise is built up due to the noise inherent in magnetic tape (tape hiss), and any small speed variations of the tape machine will be added to with each subsequent copy that is made.
Why a digital copy is the solution
To protect the information for the long term, you should digitise your tapes as soon as
