That is really cool.

I hope they are able to preserve a lot more old tracks before they are lost forever.

Awesome

Thats awesome now we can bring back that old time music that was once lost to time

cool! now convert that to mp3

And then, of course, the RIAA sued them for copyright infringement.

@sgodun: Hahaha!

@sgodun: no, they just had to drm it immediately, send it the music police and erase every unlicenced copy they had. If they ever find that student though, he's in trouble.

um...i have woody guthrie songs like Union Maid where you can clearly hear the audience...maybe it's the only non-professional live recording?

Holy fudgecicle! I never knew they preserved music in wire! I never knew that one bit from Soul Music by Terry Pratchett was grounded in reality. (I had previously thought it alluded to those visual representations where sound is a horizontal line.)

... I really need more vocabulary in the acoustic spectrum.

... Why the hell am I talking like a thesaurus?

@Gann: "RIAA castrates 85 year old man for unauthorized woodie guthrie recording"

Sad, but wouldn't surprise me at all. Rules are rules, you know!

"old time folk-singer Woody Guthrie" = "oldey days politician army guy George Washington"

One Problem: Guthrie was a Commie Fag Junky.

wow, new candidate for best comment ever... sigh...

Not only a wonderful rescue attempt for posterity and a headsup as well that CDs only last, depending on quality, 2 - 10 years and magnetic tape 30 - 100 years.
Many people have "archived" stuff on CDs and may want to re-visit and re-burn.

@bramachari:

takes one to know one.

That's way cool. Does anyone remember that hoax video about resurrecting sound from an ancient vase? Supposedly the audio was recorded as the clay spun around.

That is pretty impressive. I've literally baked old magnetic tape in a oven to save it before. One of the things I miss in a digital audio age is the "ghost notes" (not of the bass playing variety) from reel to reel recording, where the signal bleeds through to another layer just enough to hear something in anticipation right before it hits.* I can simulate that digitally, no problem...but it's so much cooler to know it happened organically.

*can only be heard using Pear Cables.

Lol @ Pear Cables.

@ANoel: Uhm... no.

Maybe some CDRs only last ten years, but I've got CDs from 1983, 1984, etc. that play just fine.

And I've got a couple 12 year old CDRs that have no problems, too.

FYI:
[en.wikipedia.org]

Also, awesome job on the audio reconstruction, guys!

@barfoo: Where is the wheel & hamster?

@bramachari:

you should be ashamed of yourself.... hew was more American than you will ever realise..

@ANoel: I have CD's that still work great having bought them in the very early 90's.

Anyway, why is some team of people getting a Grammy for smart math guys? Sure, it's probably better music than 90% of what is on the radio today, but seriously, "and the Grammy goes to those nerdy guys playing with calculators over there" doesn't ever need to be uttered.

If you ever read Herb Alpert's bio, you find that all his early farting-around at recording was done with wire recorders.

Psss... Don't let RIAA know.

It was a "bootleg" recording to begin with, so under that statue they will provably sue the student that recorded it and/or if deceased, their family members.

And since they are on that boat, might as well sue Dr. Kevin Short and the entire team as perpetrators.

Regarding the RIAA jokes and etc.:

Woody Guthrie was not in favor of copyrights of any sort. When his estate sued JibJab over their 2004 parody of "This Land Is Your Land", attention was brought to the statements and writings of Guthrie where he expressed community ownership of all things (a la Communism) including his music.

I'd actually like to see the RIAA try to pursue this one.

Guthrie's actual quote RE: the copyright for "This Land is Your Land"

This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin' it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do.

@johnnyabnormal: except when its a SMPTE track that bleeds its bad self onto its neighbor.

@ideaman2020:
Ya, I do too... however, original quality of the media and in particular how the CDs have been used and especially stored has a huge impact on longevity.
Originally estimates of 50 - 100 years were given (by manufacturers (who knew?)) but now it's considered to be more like 5 - 10 years... at work we burn dozens of CDs and DVDs daily and I've had a chance over past dozen years to see cheapo media fail right out of the box as well as after a year or less...[www.osta.org]

@frigg: Very true. Shit, I'm lucky to get a proper 2-pop on most stuff that comes my way!

@GOKOR: You've never heard of the "Technical Achievement" Awards? They always go to the [usually Audio] engineering geeks...

@ANoel: Yes, and there's a huge difference between "cheapo media" CDRs/CDRWs and manufactured CDs.

Different substrates, stamped vs burned, etc...

@ideaman2020:
I'm not too worried about my MC5 Kick Out the Jams CD... y e t
My burned CD of digital family shots... WAY more!

@frigg: He's talking about ghosting...not bleeding. It would be bad if you had your SMPTE track (usually down on 24) bleed over to something important next to it (like a cowbell). Ghosting can be heard (without Pear Cables) as a kind of mystery pre-delay that magically appears due to improper storage of a reel of tape. Listen to Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love". You can hear it best on Plant's vocal just before the outtro. Check it out.

@bramachari: What FECKINEEJIT said. That and so what? You disagree with his point of view, but what does that have to do with enjoying his music? That's like saying Wagner's music sucks because he was a jew hater.

@EricIvar: If that happens, I just ADD MORE COWBELL!! Funny thing is, there's no way to avoid it. Either it comes before the original signal or after it. After it is barely audible though.

@johnnyabnormal: tails out, tails out!

@EricIvar: Which is why I always leave an empty track next to the ugly squeal that is SMPTE on 24. Although actually, despite the romance of it and all, the only time I'd play with an analog deck anymore is to transfer to digital. No misty eyes here for the craptastic magic of unintended pre-delay.

@frigg: I haven't heard that since...'96! I'm not an old fart either (33 years old) but it's been that long.

@johnnyabnormal: There is a way to avoid it.

Reduce your input levels, so the signal isn't oversaturating the tape...

@ideaman2020: Well, I haven't used 24 track tape since '98, so it's not really a problem now! Now I record 24 bit 192k digital. But! I would imagine you'd be fighting plenty of hiss if you reduced your input enough to not have ghosting. In the past, I only slammed the tape levels if I was going for tape compression.

@johnnyabnormal: Well, how low you can reduce the input without significant tape hiss depends on a number of factors, including quality of the tape, whether noise reduction [dolby, etc.] is being used...

It is possible to get a clean sound without bleed through, with the proper equipment [and tape].

I've been on the digital train for several years, but my brother still uses a half inch 16 track model.

@sgodun:

That won the cake~!

@ideaman2020: I've heard that using Pear cables makes all the difference. *snickers*

Well, I'm very happy with the way digital audio is evolving, although I might grab a 1/2 tape device only for the harmonic distortion they do so well. Do you mix somewhere?

@ideaman2020: Unless your brother's name is Chris or Tom, he needs to let go of the past! ;)

@johnnyabnormal: I know people who still insert tape just for real tape delay or compression, but it seems like it's getting more fetishistic than anything else. The value of tape just doesn't seem as perennial as the value of a good analog circuit.

Tapetastic harmonic distortion? Download Vintage Warmer and call it a day!

Just downloaded the demo. I'll check it out for sure.