Loose it and your story ceases to exist

What if you were to loose all those recordings that you’ve worked so hard to produce? All those hours of conversation… gone! As far as future generations are concerned you’d cease to exist. Maybe it’s best to have systems in place so that it doesn’t happen.

Recording your Life Story using any system is better than not recording it at all but lets use the best practice for recording and archiving this important data and get it right first time.

Fortunately we live in the era of cheap, easy to use digital recording equipment, with every reason to use it in a manner so the recording last forever. It’s just a case of using the equipment and the appropriated settings.

Getting the recording is always the first priority and using any equipment is better than none meaning that you may be using, or have old format recordings that are available and should be converted to digital at some stage. Old records, wax cylinders, reel to reel tapes or cassettes can be converted to digital by a professional or accessing an Analogue to Digital Converter (ADC). An ADC processes the analogue audio and converts it to digital data directly before it is imported to your computer and are far more accurate than playing your analogue audio through an audio output on the tape player into the mic in on your computer, or worse, into a microphone where there will be inevitable quality loss.

Most of us will be making fresh recording and utilising digital recorders in the first place so instead of converting the data it’s appropriate to record in the correct format from the get go.

Digital audio is recorded in one of two standards. Uncompressed (lossless) and compressed (lossy)

Digital Recording Formats

Lossy compressed audio formats such as MP3 & OGG are wonderful for transferring and sharing recorded audio but are generally not the best system to use for the initial recording. Some devices such as mobile phones have the ability to record audio but only use MP3 compression.

Lossless audio formats such as WAV & AIFF are uncompressed full dynamic files and the preferred recording format for recording our Life Story projects. All audio recording programmes and digital recorders can record and export in uncompressed file formats and some mobile Apps are available for mobile phones.

Recording Standards

The recognised standard to convert analogue audio to, or archive audio in, is as a WAV file at a minimum of 24kps at 48kHz. It’s perfectly okay to record at a higher standard and finally archive to this standard but if you start at a lower standard you can never recover the missing data even if your programme can format the audio at the higher standard. If the audio is missing it can’t be created in any programme. If in doubt always start at the best standard of recording possible.

Archiving

With some editing and mixing with music and effects the initial recording can be enhanced to be an easy and enjoyable listening experience, then compressed to MP3 for easy sharing but this is not the original that needs to be archived.

Always archive the original recordings as a WAV file, with minimum settings of 24kps 48kHz. This is the original, non edited, full of lumps and bumps recording. It may be ugly before it’s edited but it’s the original that the researchers of the future or you can always return to for additional information. Always make sure you have multiple copies on different devices.

I always make two copies of the original recording immediately after the recording is co...