OT: 78rpm disc restoration

JackW wrote on 6/27/2007, 11:15 AM
Just saw this in an announcement from markertek.com:

"Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have constructed an image workstation for the Library of Congress Recorded Sound Section and Preservation Directorate (http://www.loc.gov/preserv/pubscare.html) that could vastly improve the process of restoring and digitizing 78 rpm shellac and acetate records. The system, named IRENE: Image, R econstruct, Erase Noise, E tc. magnifies the groove of old records and optically reads them without playing the record on a turntable. "Once we put the record in the form of an image, we can retouch the image and repair the damaged portion," said Carl Haber, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Particle physicists at the lab crafted the idea after they realized that a high-resolution digital camera could take intricate photos of the records grooves."

We probably won't see this technology in general use anytime soon, but I'd love to be able to use it on my old Blue Note jazz collection.

Jack

Comments

John_Cline wrote on 6/27/2007, 11:41 AM
Brilliant!
Grazie wrote on 6/27/2007, 12:42 PM
Too Kewl!
TorS wrote on 6/27/2007, 2:34 PM
Once they've gotten thus far, what's stopping them from doing it to the soundtracks of old films?
Tor
OdieInAz wrote on 6/27/2007, 4:42 PM
Maybe they got the idea from this guy:

http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~springer/

This could work as well : tapp off the digital data with some DSP magic

http://www.elpj.com/main.html

farss wrote on 6/27/2007, 5:18 PM
The difference is that on the 78s part of the media is still hopefully intact as it's 3 dimensional. Unfortunately the optical soundtracks are pretty much 2 dimensional.

You can come close with 78s and vinyl by using different diameter stylii to read different parts of the groove.

Bob.