Six steps, in order

How a job runs

Nothing here is clever. The value is that it happens the same way every time, and that each step leaves a line in a file you also receive.

1 · Intake

Your email becomes a job number of the form 26-0431 - year, then a counter that resets in January. Items are photographed as they come out of the box, including the box, because packing tells us how the collection was stored. Each item gets a paper tag with the job number and an item index; the tag stays with the item until it ships back.

We weigh and count against your email. A mismatch stops the job: we write to you with the photographs before anything is played, which has twice turned up a reel left behind on a kitchen table.

2 · Inspection

Tape is wound through by hand onto a spare reel under lamp light, looking for splice tape gone to glue, edge damage, curl and shed. Cassettes get the shell screws checked and the pressure pad pressed with a toothpick; a pad that crumbles is replaced before the tape is played, not after it has been dragged across a dirty head. Discs are inspected under raking light for crazing and for the brown dust that means the coating is separating.

Anything found here goes into the condition report as a short phrase and a photograph. Our phrases are boring on purpose: «shed, moderate, first 200 ft» tells a later engineer more than «poor condition».

3 · Alignment

A reference tape is run on the deck that will do the transfer, every Monday and again whenever a head is cleaned. We log reproduce level at 1 kHz, response at 10 kHz and 50 Hz, and azimuth as the phase difference between channels. For each individual reel we then set azimuth against the tape itself, because a tape recorded on a misaligned machine in 1974 plays best on a machine matched to that error rather than to the standard.

4 · Transfer

One pass, start to finish, unattended only for the last third once the tape has proved it will behave. Levels are set so the loudest peak of the loudest passage lands near −6 dBFS, which leaves room for a later engineer and costs nothing at 24 bits. We do not ride gain.

If the tape breaks, the transfer stops and so does the clock on your estimate. We splice with fresh tape, note the footage at the splice, and restart from a point before the break so the joined file has an overlap rather than a hole. Both halves are kept.

5 · Cataloguing

Priya listens to the head and tail of every file and types what she hears into the item sheet: announced titles, dates spoken aloud, names, the sound of a room changing. This is the slowest step and the one clients thank us for two years later, when they are looking for one interview in ninety files. Where a label disagrees with the recording, both readings are recorded and the label text is marked as such.

6 · Delivery and return

Files go out on a USB drive we supply, or to a cloud folder you nominate, with checksums computed before and verified after the copy. Physical items ship back the same week, rewound tail-out on their original reels, in new boxes if the old ones were failing, with the paper tags still attached. We keep masters for ninety days in case the drive arrives dead, then delete them on request - or keep them longer, in writing, if you ask.