Restoration and Optimized Transfer of Historical Magnetic Audio Tapes: Safeguarding Valuable Contemporary Audio Documents

The workshop will lead through the complete workflow chain of high quality magnetic audio tape restoration — from analogue to digital. Starting with a short overview of early magnetic tape developments, the practical handling of critical tapes within a digitization transfer is outlined: based on an analysis of the physical and chemical preservation status of the individual tape, the choice and adjustment of the special treatment, the adequate replay equipment and parameters are discussed. Problems of carrier handling and physical as well as chemical restoration are outlined, as well as possible signal enhancement on the playback process only.

A practical work report details the restoration process that was carried out on 46 magnetic audio tapes from the „Maghreb“ collection of the German Broadcasting Archive. As unique evidence of national socialist foreign broadcasting from the early 1940s, these tapes contain propagandistically biased entertainment content targeted to audiences in Northern Africa and the Arabian world. Restoration measuresof the brittle and mould-infested tapes included cleaning, splice repair as well as additional methods to recover playability of the severely polluted and highly degraded tapes.