Scientists scan damaged audio discs, resurrect fresh beats

Digitizing your analog archives? Vinyl to CD / MP3 / iPod turntables might do well enough in your old 45s, however the folks at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory opt to take heed to their old beats by capturing of them. More specifically, restoration specialists are using a system called IRENE/3D to snap high resolution images of damaged media. The cracked discs — often made up of wax on brass or composition board — are then repaired digitally, letting researchers play the digitized discs with an emulated stylus. To date, the team has recovered a handful of 125 year old recordings from a team in Alexander Graham Bell’s Volta laboratory. The all digital system gives researchers a hands-off solution to recover audio from relic recordings without running the danger of damaging them inside the process — and no, they probably won’t mean you can use it to hear that beat up copy of the White Album you’ve had on your closet since eighth grade. Hit the source link to listen to what they’ve recovered.

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This post is tagged: alexander graham bell, berkeley national laboratory, high resolution images, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, restoration specialists