Private individuals expect prominent non-program noises to be removed or reduced and limits on the overall background level. More extensive treatment still is given audio intended for commercial release.

Some institutional archives wish no further sound processing be done, an objective copy of the original. Others are comfortable with minimal restoration processing, assuming they will complete the job in the future at such time as auditioning a specific item is requested. This allows a finite preservation budget to stretch over a greater number of items, which can be preserved at "bare-bones" level.

Recovery of skipped or repeating grooves is an important part of disc restoration. Putting the missing pieces back into a continuous program can be time consuming but is less so when the engineer making the transfer can do the repairs at the same time, while those edits are in his head. He can then identify missed segments, pick them off the disc and drop them in while the original is still to hand. Should the original discs contain skipped or repeating grooves, resolving the problems they raise takes between 15 minutes and an hour per 16" 15 minute side, depending on the extent of the damage. A reasonable estimate of the extra time transferring your collection may require should be included as part of any on-site appraisal.

Common wisdom has it that the average studio time to carefully copy old tape and lacquer disc media averages 3 times the playing time. This conforms to my own experience so long as no further processing of the sound is required.

This site ©2001 Steven Smolian.rev1