The Audio Archive - Facilities

Our Facilities

We are fanatical about good sound.

Quality transfers start with a facility equipped with clean power, secure storage for your valuable recordings, and high quality monitoring gear for accurate listening. In addition, all the right test and measurement tools are at our finger tips to ensure that every piece of equipment is calibrated and in top operating condition.

We pride ourselves in our technical expertise and the state-of-the-art analog playback and digital recording equipment in our facilities that ultimately produce transfers with the best possible quality, bar none.

Storage

When your media arrives, it is brought to our offsite media storage facility. Our media storage is environmentally controlled and constructed entirely of fire-resistant materials, modern earthquake proofing and away from flood zones. Security includes 24/7 video surveillance and password protected building entry.

Power and Grounding

Clean power and quality grounding are the keys to low noise floors and optimal equipment performance. When the power supplies of the equipment are receiving ideal power, they can operate at maximum design performance. To this end, we have dedicated power circuits with star grounding. All of our equipment are fed by PS Audio Power Plants. The PS Audio power regenerator actually converts AC to DC, and then rebuilds a perfect sinusoidal AC power signal with precise symmetry for extremely stable frequency and voltage.

Monitoring

In order to make good judgments about the quality of the audio we are preserving or restoring, we need to be able to hear it accurately. We monitor with Revel Performa M20 and Revel Performa F30 speakers, powered by Nelson Pass designed Threshold SA-1 monoblock power amps with the balanced input option. These in turn are fed by a Boulder 1010 preamp with all balanced signals for minimum noise. Mogami W2549 signal cables and Kimber Kable 8TC speaker cables round out the picture. When we use headphones, we use the venerable Sennheiser HD 600 driven by a Mytek 8x192 ADDA that has a very high quality headphone amp.

Test and Measurement

Testing and measuring are at the heart of making sure that the entire playback, transfer and monitoring chain are operating at peak performance. Our tools includes a four-channel 350 MHz Tektronix oscilloscope, a variety of function generators, frequency counters, a real-time spectrum analyzer, Fluke DMMs, non-contact tachometer (precise to 0.001 RPM), plus many more tools to measure performance and calibrate equipment.

Digital Domain and Mastering

The conversion from analog to digital is a critical step in the preservation process. We use a range of Mytek converters, including the high-performance Mytek Stereo192 ADC and the Mytek 8x192 ADDA. To ensure that the digital audio is probably transmitted to the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), we use an AES/EBU connection whose clock is precisely sychronized with the DAW using the Lynx AES16-XLR interface. Our DAW software is the Cube-Tec Audiocube with powerful VPI plug-ins - one of the most sophisticated capture and mastering suites available, used by mastering engineers like Bob Ludwig, Ted Jensen, and Bernie Grundman as well as organizations like Sony Music, Library of Congress and Smithsonian.

Tape Equipment

Our tape facilities are state of the art for 1/4-inch and 1/2-inch tape.

We have standardized entirely on Studer A820 Master Recorders for open reel work. These were the last and best machines built by the famous Swiss machine maker, and were used in the best recording facilities around the world to produce much of the music that we know and love today. Our Studer machines are completely remanufactured to original specifications and carefully matched so that each machine is identical and interchangeable, and then subtly modified for even better performance. You will find no better machine for preservation and remastering work, with gentle and precise constant-tension tape handling, ultra-low wow-and-flutter, low scrape flutter, low noise floor and flat frequency response. And it just sounds amazing.

We also employ Revox C274 Logging Recorders for low-speed work (15/16 and 1-7/8 ips) to eliminate the need for any speed or EQ correction often associated with other machines and processes. If you want to transfer low-speed tapes correctly with the best quality sound, this is the only machine for the job.

For cassette, we have standardized on the Nakamichi CR-7 series with manual playback azimuth control to give us maximum control over playback - even more control than provided by the popular Nakamichi Dragon.

Learn more about our tape transfer capabilities and services here.

Disc Equipment

We use the best archival equipment available for all of our disc work, some of it custom, and some adapted from other industries.

Our disc transfer platform is the Simon Yorke S7 turntable. Simon Yorke provides archival turntables to the largest archives around the world, including the Library of Congress. We mated the S7 with the SME 309 and 312 tonearms, a modified Graham Engineering IC-70 silver phono cable, feeding into either the Boulder 1010 (RIAA) or the Millennia Media LPE-2 phono preamp (historical EQ).

The cartridge is where everything starts, and we have custom mounted Ortofon SPU-GT moving coil cartridges with custom styli from Expert Stylus. Not only is the SPU-GT a highly musical cartridge, but these wide bandwidth cartridges allow better separation of noise from signal, resulting in superior restorations.

The entire turntable assembly rests on a Minus K BM-1 vibration isolator. The Audio Archive was the first to adapt Minus K products from the world of physics and nanotechnology and apply them to audio. The Minus K negative stiffness technology provides isolation that is used in applications requiring nanoscale precision (like molecular assembly).



	Our Facilities We are fanatical about good sound. Quality transfers start with a facility equipped with clean power, secure storage for your valuable recordings, and high quality monitoring gear for accurate listening. In addition, all the right test and measurement tools are at our finger tips to ensure that every piece of equipment is calibrated and in top operating condition. We pride ourselves in our technical expertise and the state-of-the-art analog playback and digital recording equipment in our facilities that ultimately produce transfers with the best possible quality, bar none. Storage When your media arrives, it is brought to our offsite media storage facility. Our media storage is environmentally controlled and constructed entirely of fire-resistant materials, modern earthquake proofing and away from flood zones. Security includes 24/7 video surveillance and password protected building entry. Power and Grounding Clean power and quality grounding are the keys to low noise floors and optimal equipment performance. When the power supplies of the equipment are receiving ideal power, they can operate at maximum design performance. To this end, we have dedicated power circuits with star grounding. All of our equipment are fed by PS Audio Power Plants. The PS Audio power regenerator actually converts AC to DC, and then rebuilds a perfect sinusoidal AC power signal with precise symmetry for extremely stable frequency and voltage. Monitoring In order to make good judgments about the quality of the audio we are preserving or restoring, we need to be able to hear it accurately. We monitor with Revel Performa M20 and Revel Performa F30 speakers, powered by Nelson Pass designed Threshold SA-1 monoblock power amps with the balanced input option. These in turn are fed by a Boulder 1010 preamp with all balanced signals for minimum noise. Mogami W2549 signal cables and Kimber Kable 8TC speaker cables round out the picture. When we use headphones, we use the venerable Sennheiser HD 600 driven by a Mytek 8x192 ADDA that has a very high quality headphone amp. Test and Measurement Testing and measuring are at the heart of making sure that the entire playback, transfer and monitoring chain are operating at peak performance. Our tools includes a four-channel 350 MHz Tektronix oscilloscope, a variety of function generators, frequency counters, a real-time spectrum analyzer, Fluke DMMs, non-contact tachometer (precise to 0.001 RPM), plus many more tools to measure performance and calibrate equipment. Digital Domain and Mastering The conversion from analog to digital is a critical step in the preservation process. We use a range of Mytek converters, including the high-performance Mytek Stereo192 ADC and the Mytek 8x192 ADDA. To ensure that the digital audio is probably transmitted to the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), we use an AES/EBU connection whose clock is precisely sychronized with the DAW using the Lynx AES16-XLR interface. Our DAW software is the Cube-Tec Audiocube with powerful VPI plug-ins - one of the most sophisticated capture and mastering suites available, used by mastering engineers like Bob Ludwig, Ted Jensen, and Bernie Grundman as well as organizations like Sony Music, Library of Congress and Smithsonian. Tape Equipment Our tape facilities are state of the art for 1/4-inch and 1/2-inch tape. We have standardized entirely on Studer A820 Master Recorders for open reel work. These were the last and best machines built by the famous Swiss machine maker, and were used in the best recording facilities around the world to produce much of the music that we know and love today. Our Studer machines are completely remanufactured to original specifications and carefully matched so that each machine is identical and interchangeable, and then subtly modified for even better performance. You will find no better machine for preservation and remastering work, with gentle and precise constant-tension tape handling, ultra-low wow-and-flutter, low scrape flutter, low noise floor and flat frequency response. And it just sounds amazing. We also employ Revox C274 Logging Recorders for low-speed work (15/16 and 1-7/8 ips) to eliminate the need for any speed or EQ correction often associated with other machines and processes. If you want to transfer low-speed tapes correctly with the best quality sound, this is the only machine for the job. For cassette, we have standardized on the Nakamichi CR-7 series with manual playback azimuth control to give us maximum control over playback - even more control than provided by the popular Nakamichi Dragon. Learn more about our tape transfer capabilities and services here. Disc Equipment We use the best archival equipment available for all of our disc work, some of it custom, and some adapted from other industries. Our disc transfer platform is the Simon Yorke S7 turntable. Simon Yorke provides archival turntables to the largest archives around the world, including the Library of Congress. We mated the S7 with the SME 309 and 312 tonearms, a modified Graham Engineering IC-70 silver phono cable, feeding into either the Boulder 1010 (RIAA) or the Millennia Media LPE-2 phono preamp (historical EQ). The cartridge is where everything starts, and we have custom mounted Ortofon SPU-GT moving coil cartridges with custom styli from Expert Stylus. Not only is the SPU-GT a highly musical cartridge, but these wide bandwidth cartridges allow better separation of noise from signal, resulting in superior restorations. The entire turntable assembly rests on a Minus K BM-1 vibration isolator. The Audio Archive was the first to adapt Minus K products from the world of physics and nanotechnology and apply them to audio. The Minus K negative stiffness technology provides isolation that is used in applications requiring nanoscale precision (like molecular assembly).
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