VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[Lizden]

I had the most AMAZING experience today. I listened to a WIRE RECORDING of my dad telling a funny story & playing the accordion...it's a spool I found when moving my folks out of my childhood home and it probably has not been played in over 50 years.

I had NO idea what was on this spool, but when I was moving my folks out of their NYC apartment (& my childhood home) back in 1997 I found this spool & decided to keep it...not knowing if I'd ever find a way to play it.

About 6 months ago I found out that my friend Dave Sica has a huge collection of old media devices including several Wire recorders/players & he brought one over yesterday.

When I threaded the wire & started it up this morning...and heard the accordion & heard my dad's voice from probably 50 years ago...it was amazing....he then went on to tell a really funny story about one of his cousins and I laughed out loud as if he was in the same room telling the story to me...across time.

It was REALLY cool.
_________________
Liz de Nesnera O.A.V. ~ Livin' The VO Dream!
English/French Bilingual VO w/ ISDN
HireLiz.com / liz@hireliz.com

[Drew]

That's pretty cool! I've never seen a wire recorder in person.
_________________
www.voiceoverdrew.com
Skype: andrew.hadwal1
Although I have a full head of hair, I'm quite ribald.

[Moe Egan]

Very nice gift from the universe Liz. What a magical moment that most have been to hear your younger dad...very cool. Thanks for sharing. Hey, is the heat on yet at your place?
_________________
Moe Egan
i want to be the voice in your head.
~~~~~

[bobsouer]

Liz,

How wonderful for you. I'm sure that was very special.

We had a wire recorder that saw very limited use when I was working for Billy Graham. Quite the spiffy little gadgets.
_________________
Be well,
Bob Souer (just think of lemons)
The second nicest guy in voiceover.
+1-724-613-2749
Source Connect, phone patch, pony express

[crisden]

That's fantastic. Do you plan on transferring the audio to one of these new-fangled digital record-n' devices?

[Lizden]

Yeah, it really IS pretty cool!

I DO plan on transferring the audio to digital...and get this...since the adapters aren't made anymore for the output plug (Looks like an = sign ) , I have to strip an RCA wire & either attach 2 paper clips to the ends or just stick the wires in!...talk about format incompatibility!....BTW, I have permission to do this from the guy who lent me the unit...that's how he does it & he has several of these that he's transferred audio from!

I'll let you know how it works.

/threadjack/
Moe...yes the heat was rigged for the weekend...tomorrow we get an estimate for a new furnace/heating system!
/end threadjack/
_________________
Liz de Nesnera O.A.V. ~ Livin' The VO Dream!
English/French Bilingual VO w/ ISDN
HireLiz.com / liz@hireliz.com

[Deirdre]

Mechanical devices for playing back sound are like doors into the past sometimes. How neat!

Makes me wonder if any of our digital recording stuff will last anywhere. The CDs will, but the rest may be ether.
_________________
DBCooperVO.com
IMDB

[Chrissy]

That's wonderful Liz. Maybe we can hear it once your done???

[Bruce]

Actually CD's and DVD's are far from permanent storage mediums. Tape of course has the shortest life span among the media we commonly know, but discs can lose integrity quickly depending on how they are treated and the earliest CD-R's are more "fragile" than current models. The longest lasting medium according to one audio expert? LP records. They'll hold the shape of the grooves much longer than the film inside a disc will survive the degradation of the surface material. Here's a very detailed but interesting article on the life expectancy of data discs:

http://tinyurl.com/CD-Life-Story

The quick takeaway for me is make CD copies of the oldest CDs I care about someday soon, and make copies of newer important discs maybe every 20 years or so.....if I can remember.

Tiny piece of trivia I've enjoyed: in the 1960 movie The Time Machine, when he stops in the year 802701 (now how do you pronounce that one?) and goes into the Eloi's library, their history is stored on silver discs that look a lot like CDs. The film was made 16 years before the invention of the digital disc. Of course you spun theirs like a top on a glass table to hear a reading of the history instead of playing them in machines, but still interesting to note.

B

[crisden]

Bruce, you beat me to it.

I have CD-Rs from about a decade ago that actually have disintegrated. Cheap media aside, most everything has a shelf life.

The solution I have adopted as of late is to keep everything archived on two redundant external drives. When one fails, I simply replace it. With memory exceptionally cheap these days, you can have a terabyte or two of backed up data for pennies on the gigabyte.

I agree that aged sound recordings are like magic. I have cassettes I've recorded that are over 25 years old and its fantastic to re-live the memories recorded on them, even it was only a quarter century ago.

Now, this leads me to another question and forgive me for the inevitable thread jacking. How long do you guys hold on to your home produced audition files? I've been contacted months after an audition by clients who want me to do what I did in the original audition, either for the original project or a new one. Makes me wary to delete anything!

[bobsouer]

Sean,

My auditions are just part of my audio archives that I back up onto redundant hard drives. Like you, I've had clients come back months later to ask for something "just like that audition" so I don't throw anything away.
_________________
Be well,
Bob Souer (just think of lemons)
The second nicest guy in voiceover.
+1-724-613-2749
Source Connect, phone patch, pony express

[crisden]

Bob,

Woids ta' live by.

I do the same, but was wondering is some of you more seasoned VOices had sage wisdom that I may have overlooked. Afterall, I needs tons of room to save the ever growing picture and video collection of my 4 cats and cocker spaniel. Sheesh.

[roger]

Liz,
How exciting for you. What a discovery. Looking forward to hearing it.
-rog
_________________
Roger Tremaine
www.MyFavoriteVoice.com
http://rogertremaine.voices.com/
No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. AESOP (The Lion and the Mouse)

[todd ellis]

liz - how very, very cool for you! i am really excited about the possibility of hearing it for myself! coincidently - i found a super-thick envelope of 2x3 and 4x5 negatives at my folks place over the holidays. they look to be from the 30's and 40's. i took a shot & scanned a few - then flipped the image in photoshop & viola! instant black & white print! i have one of my dad as a toddler carrying a basket of eggs!
_________________
"i know philip banks": todd ellis
who's/on/1st?

[Chuck Davis]

Such a cool story Liz. An instant rewind from all the techy stuff we talk about here to "magical talking machine".
_________________
Wicked huge.....in India.
www.chuckdaviscreative.com