May Street Tapes - Marty's Production Notes

When Marty sent me the several May Street audiotapes which we've been considering in the previous several posts, he included some notes on his retrieval and archiving processes.

The geekily inclined will find them of intrinsic interest; anybody can appreciate the care and judgment that the effort required.

Thanks again, Marty.

Here are Marty's notes:

_____________________________________________________

"My long time lab partner from work has a reel-to-reel deck.

I went to his place last Saturday with 3 of the 6 tapes.

After a confusing and slow start, we recovered all the personal recordings.

There was roughly 30 minutes of personal audio taken from various sections of one reel.

All of this was stored in a .wav file.

I split this file into 3 parts,also .wav files.

I then converted these to mp3 files.

These are attached.

Details:

Starting out, everything played backward.

We tried various things including an inverted rewind.

Still backwards.

Finally, mid-reel, we took the reels off the machine and switched them so the tape would be going in the opposite direction.

It played correctly.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think the tape was recorded in 2-track stereo (can be played in one direction only) and left in the box tail-out; and we were playing it on a 4-track stereo machine assuming there was a head and tail at each end (can be played in both directions).

The condition of the tape was remarkably good.

The tape in the box with index notes indicating a lot of personal content was filled completely with music.

The tape in the box with index notes indicating mostly music and maybe some personal content was where all the personal content was found.

The tape in the box with index notes indicating a 4-track stereo recording of music was completely blank.

The other 3 tapes have no index notes with them; except for one which says "brittle film", and sure enough, that tape looks poor.

When we first heard the grandfather clock, it sounded great.

Listening to it several times after that with cheap headphones, I wonder if we got it at the correct speed."

_____________________________________________________

I'd say the grandfather clock sounds just right, in pitch and tempo.

I'd also say some tech talent was evidently transmitted from grandfather to grandson.