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Restoration - The Fine Print
It’s important to understand that our experience is almost everyone under estimates or does not recognize the actual condition of the audio material they will send us. For that reason neither are they aware of the work required to repair and restore it. While we are pleased to discuss in advance what you want and offer a ballpark quote on the work required, this is based solely on your description of the material's condition. This is especially true in dealing with tapes and old 78 RPM records. The work required to transfer the audio to digital and clean it up can be significant and run into many hours if the tape or record is old and in poor condition. Any tape over 20 years old or stored in warm, moist conditions is going to take a lot of work. It might look good - but it probably isn't. Any record that has lost its "shine" is going to sound terrible when first played back. Frequently the hum, hiss and other noise will overwhelm any sound and make the record unlistenable. We had an instance recently where a tape was in such poor condition we could only remove 30 seconds of audio at a time before stopping and cleaning the heads and guides. The hundreds of pieces of audio then had to be reassembled on computer before we could begin the repair and restoration process. Each 10-inch reel took over 5 hours to transfer, reassemble and restore. The client was truly surprised, thinking his tape was pristine and we could do the whole job in 30 minutes or less, so we invited him to watch the tape muck up the tape deck. We are honest people who take pride in our work and will be glad to discuss a firm quote once we receive your material and are able to determine exactly what must be done to meet your project needs. If the time needed exceeds your budget we will work with you as best we can to move your project forward. We understand what you send to us is important to you and in many cases these are cherished memories or important recordings. Asking for a "simple transfer my tape/record to a CD" will, in some cases, give you nothing you'd want to save or share with others. Audio restoration is not magic - it can be difficult, tedious work. While today's computer software helps tremendously, repairing damaged audio frequently is laborious and time consuming with the final result completely dependant on the skill and experience of the engineer doing your project. We're not trying to talk you out of using our services but it's important to understand that realistically it might not be a simple and inexpensive job. While you can't put a price on a cherished item, there are times the amount of restoration work required can be more than what you want to spend. If that happens we'll return your item safely. It is also important to understand that severely damaged audio generally can not be restored to 100 percent original condition. The restoration process itself may sometimes change or color the audio. You can expect significant, even extraordinary improvement from what you give us, but there are times that some damage may remain audible. The finished project is returned to you with a copy of the engineer's notes and a Restoration Report. This way you know exactly what we found and what we did to fix it. |
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