Legacy
In an article in the Daily Mail, May 8th, 2007, "Lo-Fidelity", the author laments the planned demise of the audio cassette.As he has kept many recordings of unique interviews he did in the past, what can he do to safeguard that legacy?
Cassette are dead indeed, and what can be done with these interviews that he kept?
Archiving
The same problem happens everywhere and I just read that a new company which is archiving audio interviews to try and save them for the future.Actually I just did the same for an author who had cassettes from his own BBC talks all these years ago; those being the only remaining media of his work.
The simple solution was to convert them to .wav files and keep those. Then to burn a CD from the same files.That gives us 2 supports and duplication. A smart move would be to duplicate the cassettes as well.
Dangerous Digital
However, although everybody raves about going digital, this might be a dangerous route.Digital "standards" tend to be replace overnight by new ones.
MP3 players are awful because the contents and the player are on the same item. You loose the player, you loose the lot; which means you have to keep originals somewhere else on something else.
In France, the INA - Instititut National de l'Audio-Visuel- would probably archive the precious originals.
In the UK, they are too keen to go digital, less interested in the contents than the toys.
Maybe the BBC would look after this legacy. I certainly hope that none of these cassette will be lost, it would be tragic.
And about the BBC, this is what they say about the subject: 10 uses for audio cassettes
Compilations
If you have compilations that you want to keep as such, or music which is unique, follow the "digital route".- copy on your PC in WAV, high quality, no compression;
- copy files to a CD data ;
- make a CD music;
- duplicate again on Blue Ray ;
- copy directly from your cassette player to your CD recorder,
- with the gadget on the left, transfer from an audio cassette to an iPod.
