Did you record at Infidel Studios or with either Duncan or Paco anytime before 2005?
Have you ever wondered “How come I lost all my copies of that CD we made??” or wondered “Gee, I wonder if I could get my old tracks and have a go at mixing them?”.
Well, now is the time to do something about it.
All Infidel Studios recordings made from when Paco began, around 1996, through until about 2004 – 2005, were multi-tracked to DA-88 & DA-38 machines and mixed down to DAT tape. Although archiving and storage of old recording projects has never been formally offered by the studio, we have tried to keep one copy of every project we have worked on over the years in one format or another. Old projects that were recorded to these tape based digital formats have been stored only on the tapes and there is no second copy. And as anyone who works in IT will tell you, data that is in only one place doesn’t exist!
The big issue now is that any recordings on these early digital format tapes will soon be almost impossible to retrieve. Machines to play them back have not been manufactured for many years and the ones that are left are breaking down. Many parts for them are hard to come by or simply made of unobtanium. The tapes themselves are a whole lot less robust than first thought.
Now is the time to get them transferred before they become unplayable and lost forever.
Currently we have one DA-38 machine that is running well and a DA-88 that, although it is too unreliable for audio playback, is very useful for synchronisation. We also have one working DAT machine. This year I have successfully transferred a good number of DA-8 and DAT tapes, covering 3 different recording projects, without any losses.
Over recent months I have done a stocktake of all the DA-8 and DAT tapes we hold. We have about 350 DA-8 tapes and 180 DAT tapes that span over about 130 separate recording projects. So there is a very good chance we hold yours. Associated paperwork ranges from “none at all” though to comprehensive sessions notes. At the very least, I can link nearly every tape to a band or artist name.
If you do want your old projects or want more information, please get in touch.
For more information about our audio digitisation services click here