Subject: [removed] Digest V2007 #148
From: [removed]@[removed]
Date: 5/19/2007 4:18 AM
To: [removed]@[removed]

------------------------------


                            The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                              Volume 2007 : Issue 148
                         A Part of the [removed]!
                             [removed]
                                 ISSN: 1533-9289


                                 Today's Topics:

  More on DAT (for Mark and others)     [ Ken Greenwald <radio@[removed]; ]
  DAT fragility                         [ "Jerry Haendiges" <jerryhaendiges@c ]
  Need answer as to why this happens    [ [removed]@[removed] ]
  Cinnamon Bear Brigade                 [ jack and cathy french <otrpiano@ver ]
  Mid Atlantic Antique Radio club in t  [ seandd@[removed] ]
  Suspense books                        [ "Charles Salt" <charles_salt@hotmai ]
  Barbara Jo Allen (Vera Vague)         [ Bhob Stewart <bhob2@[removed]; ]
  DATs                                  [ mmartini@[removed] ]
  Hollywood Walk of Fame                [ <verotas@[removed]; ]
  Abraqtions & Digital                  [ Frank McGurn <[removed]@sbcglobal. ]
  5-19 births/deaths                    [ Ronald Sayles <bogusotr@[removed] ]

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 07:31:23 -0400
From: Ken Greenwald <radio@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  More on DAT (for Mark and others)

Thanks for your interest, Mark.
I am not a technical person and do not have at my fingertips the
various mathematical figures, the percentages, the plus and minus of
the various problems with DAT.
But I do know a few things from various recording engineers who have
had to deal with DAT taping. In order to make comment on DAT, I want
to comment on TAPE as a total medium.
Tape has been with us a long time; used commercially in the USA since
1947. That was open reel tape. The various sizes came in the form of
2 inch tape all the way down to 1/4 inch tape. Stretching and
shrinking, misalignment of the heads, tape guides askew, not to
mention single motor tape recorders being off speed --- all this
contributed to open reel tape problems. Then, along comes the amazing
audio cassette. Manipulating the electronic signal on such a small
sized tape and perfecting a finer oxide and binding material,
cassettes looked like they were here to stay, even with the warped
cassette cases, the stretched and shrinking tape itself. People often
recorded on cassette for preservation of their radio shows.
Sometimes, when going back to listen to a precious cassette some
years later, it doesn't run right, the sound is off, it's muffled
and, in general, the show is ruined. So again, another tape medium
was shown to be the wrong form for preserving radio shows.  Plus, if
you play a cassette enough times, it wears itself out because the
cassette housing is plastic, small and subject to wear much easier
than an open reel tape which is guided through the tape recorder by
all steel parts (guides, heads, etc) - and those steel parts last a
long time before wearing out. More than likely the tape in an open
reel and in a cassette will wear out first.
I think you are beginning to see what I am getting at. It's tape
that's the problem. Not the machines that play them.
Now, along comes DAT -- Digital Audio Tape. A great medium because,
unlike analog recording, DAT tapes produce no tape hiss, no matter
how many times you make copies. Instead,  after a while, you end up
with tape artifact noise, which deals with the Zeros and Ones and how
they are recorded. (I won't go into that here - too long to describe)
Again, the tape is in a little plastic housing, which is subject to
heat and cold, stretching and shrinking. The tape is pulled from the
housing and laid across a rotating head. The guides for this
extremely thin, small tape have to be exactly precise so that the
spinning heads which read the Zeros and the Ones travel exactly
across the recorded path. Any stretching or  shrinkage of the tape
disrupts the tape path and the spinning heads can miss any number of
recorded Zeros and Ones. You end up with no sound at all. Just a drop
into silence.
Tape, the flexible medium that has been with us so long has not
always stood the test of time. The tapes that seem to last the
longest are 1/4 inch open reel tapes that have been stored in a
constant temperature of 55 degrees. I know because I worked for the
Getty museum restoring audio tapes for them and ALL their tapes, not
matter what size or length, are stored at exactly 55 degrees, all
year round in special rooms that are powered by special equipment
that will continue to work even if the electricity of the city goes out.
Now, do most of us have such a means of storing tape?I don't think
so. I certainly don't. Which means that all tapes we own, including
DAT tapes, are always subject to temperature changes, all year round.
In time, this takes its toll, especially on the small, thinner tapes
--- as in cassettes and DAT tapes.

That is as simple as I can put it. I should mention that, in 1994,
the archivists of the National Archives and The Library of Congress
in Washington, had a conference specifically designed to discuss
nothing but the preservation of material on various mediums. Their
conclusion was that there were only two mediums that would last a 100
years:  Aluminum based acetate discs (Electrical Transcriptions) and
1/4 inch open reel tape recorded monophonically at 15 ips, full
track, recorded one way and with tails left out. I have since heard
that the CIA has transferred all pertinent recordings over to 12 inch
acetate recordings and stored at (you guessed it!) 55 degrees. I
cannot verify this information.

So, Mark, without getting technical, I hope I have covered a bit on
why -- in the long run -- preserving on DAT tape (or any other tape)
for extremely long periods of time is NOT the way to go.
As for CDs, it's a toss up. Not enough time has passed to prove they
will last a hundred years. Although there was a time that TDK sold CD
blanks with the guarantee their CDs would last 100 years. Their
statement made no reference on how to store them. Then, they retraced
their 100 year guarantee.
Well, I guess nothing is permanent. Not even us. But we can certainly
try to keep radio shows going as long as possible.

I'm open to any further info and rebuttals.

Thanks for lending me your eyes and ears.

Ken Greenwald

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 07:33:41 -0400
From: "Jerry Haendiges" <jerryhaendiges@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  DAT fragility

I'm surprised that digital audio tape (DAT) would be so precarious.
Most of the digital tape formats are quite redundant, incorporating
algorithms for error detection and correction as well as arrangements
that'll help reconstruct noise bursts and framing errors.  Certainly CD's
are quite robust, and I'm surprised that DAT cassettes (if indeed this is
the medium Bob Hope's archivists used) aren't similarly formatted.
And so I wonder: have DAT cassettes proven unreliable?  I agree that I'm
more comfortable with analog

	Yes!  Ken's statement is dead-on target.  When I first read Ken's
message and then the above response, I had to chuckle a bit.  If my good
friend, Carl Amari is reading this, I'm sure he will be chuckling somewhat
also, although at the time, it certainly wasn't very funny.  As most of you
know, we supply programs to Radio Spirits.  When Carl owned the company, he
initially used open reel tapes.  When Digital Audio Tape (DAT) came into
existence, he switched over completely to that format.  Carl was always
dedicated to supplying his customers the highest audio quality possible and
DAT certainly seemed to be an ideal answer to archiving the material.  After
all it had far more frequency response than one ever needed and best of all,
being a digital format, there was no perceptible generation loss.

     I was fortunate (or maybe unfortunate) enough to have tried a digital
format in the late 1980's developed by Sony.  The system used PCM (Pulse
Code Modulation) recorded onto six tracks of a standard Sony 8mm
Videocassette.  The recorders I used were Sony's EV-700u. The system didn't
last very long because it only had a maximum frequency of 15 kHz.  The music
industry, for which the format was intended, didn't feel this was high
enough, although it was perfect for radio programs.  As mentioned earlier,
there was no generation loss and each little cassette held 6 hours of audio
(12 hours if recorded on monaural tracks.   Well, I recorded about 80,000
programs to this format before I began to realize there was a problem.
Every once in a while I would notice a slight "buzz" in the sound.  As the
tapes got older or were used more often, the buzz got worse and there would
even be gaps in the sound output.

	I told Carl about this problem and that I felt this would always be
a problem with any digital format recorded on magnetic tape.  In 1997, when
we began recording to audio CD, I recommended that he switch over to CD from
DAT.  He decided to stick with the DAT format as his entire collection was
now on that format.  I told him that was fine, but just remember I will
always have my analog masters :-)  Well, to make an already long story a
little shorter, it wasn't long before his engineers began seeing the same
problems I had experienced some ten years earlier and began asking for
replacements for programs I had supplied them earlier on DAT.  I always had
great respect and admiration for Carl's engineers.  Between us, we
eventually convinced Carl to go with the CD format.

	Now, there are two things going on here.  First of all, any digital
format is subject to corruption even under the best of conditions.  But in
the case of being recorded to tape, you have the added problem of tape wear,
deterioration and stretching.  When this happens with analog recordings, the
most that will occur will be minor dropouts and a change in the speed of the
program, again minor and easily correctible.  But not in the case of
Digital, which isn't real sound at all, but rather nothing but a series of
Ones and Zeros, which is later translated into the original sound.  So,
whereas a slight stretch in the tape (and ALL tape will stretch) will have
only a slight, usually imperceptible audio flaw, digitally recorded tape
will have major flaws ranging from what's called "digital buzz," which is
very annoying, to complete loss of audio.  None of this is fixable.

	I think any audio engineer that has used much DAT for any length of
time will tell you he's had the same experience.

	The redundant error detection and correction circuitries used in DAT
recorders (and they certainly are extensive) are there out of necessity to
allow recording to the tape and overcoming the inevitable manufacturing
defects of the tapes.  They have nothing to do with the playback of a later
damaged tape.

	So, whereas DAT is an excellent mastering format, in my opinion, it
should NEVER be used as an archival format.  Actually, with the low cost of
very large hard drives today, there really is no reason anymore to use DAT.
The last couple of 500 gig drives I purchased were under $[removed]  As with
any digital format, redundancy is very important.  I always archive
redundant to two different drives.

	I do want to make it clear that I am not saying that I feel analog
is better than digital, quite the opposite.  But it is highly important to
have redundancy, the more the better.

	If you'd like me to expand on this, please let me know.

     Jerry Haendiges

     Jerry@[removed]  562-696-4387
     The Vintage Radio Place   [removed]
     Largest source of Old Time Radio Logs, Articles and programs on the Net

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 09:24:27 -0400
From: [removed]@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Need answer as to why this happens
X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: from multipart/alternative
X-Converted-To-Plain-Text: Alternative section used was text/plain

I periodically acquire mp3 files of  OTR or professional conference
recordings.  Sometimes they play in my mp3 cd player, other times they
only play in my computer.

The cd's that only play in my computer all have the ".mp3" suffix but
there are other non-mp3 files on the  cd.  I thought that was what was
throwing my cd-mp3 player off.

If I burn only the mp3 files to a  cd and then insert it into a cd-mp3
player, it still doesn't work.

I had a brainstorm- - for what's it's worth, re-convert the mp3 files to
mp3 format and then burn the file.  When I do this I receive an error
message which simply states that "all of the metadata was not transferred"
(whatever that means).  But who cares- - it now plays when I put it into
the cd-mp3 player.

What's happening here?

  *** This message was altered by the server, and may not appear ***
  ***                  as the sender intended.                   ***

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 09:24:50 -0400
From: jack and cathy french <otrpiano@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Cinnamon Bear Brigade

On Friday, May 18, 2007, at 07:42 AM, Don Jensen wrote:

Even with help from Dennis and a devoted Portland woman, Carolyn, the
efforts to keep the Cinnamon Bear Brigade were too much for me.  And
so, after 1991, the Brigade disbanded.

I think Don meant to say "the Cinnamon Bear Brigade went into
hibernation."

Jack French
Editor: RADIO RECALL
<[removed]>

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 09:25:32 -0400
From: seandd@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Mid Atlantic Antique Radio club in the news
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This article is on a museum of old radios and televisions in Maryland.

[removed]

Also, the Historical Society in Aurora, apparently somewhere near Denver, is planning an evening tribute to [removed] here: 

[removed]~[removed]

Sean Dougherty
SeanDD@[removed]

  *** This message was altered by the server, and may not appear ***
  ***                  as the sender intended.                   ***

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 10:26:59 -0400
From: "Charles Salt" <charles_salt@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Suspense books

Someone posted a query about the two SUSPENSE books.

Thanks Martin, for taking time to reply to my Suspense question. I can see
now that I will have to get all three books as they all sound good!

Regards,
Charles

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 10:27:31 -0400
From: Bhob Stewart <bhob2@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Barbara Jo Allen (Vera Vague)

With so many posts re Bob Hope, maybe I can get an answer to
something I've wondered about for years. Barbara Jo Allen's Vera
Vague was a hugely successful and popular character of the 1940s.
This is especially evident in the film of her performing with Hope at
some military base and getting a great reaction from the audience.

Yet when Hope moved to television, she was dropped. To say that she
had grown tiresome or that Hope wanted the focus on his female guest
stars is an easy (and vague) answer re her absence. Given the
continual popularity of Barbara Jo Allen's character, why didn't Hope
feature her on his television shows? (Her own 1952-53 TV shows
apparently didn't score big.) Is there a solid answer for this or
does it remain a mystery?

Bhob @ [removed]

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 13:32:38 -0400
From: mmartini@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  DATs

Hi all,

Let me briefly second and third any commentary about the short-lived and
fragile DAT format and offer a little advice.  We, too, were snookered into
exclusively using DATS for archival purposes during the 1990's.  By 2000 we
realized that about 10-percent would no longer play.  Since then, we've been
transfering like crazy, hoping to get as much as possible before the
percentage increases.  Luckily our policy is and always has been to retain
the original source media as technology is always changing.

Now the advice:  if you're in "transfer mode," like we have been, we've
discovered that the longer the DAT, the more likely the failure.   120's are
notorious for failure while 60's aren't quite so bad.  (90's in the middle).
So prioritize by length, if you can.

-Mike

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 13:32:53 -0400
From: <verotas@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Hollywood Walk of Fame

I'm hoping someone reading this is a somewhat accomplished photographer in
the Hollywood-Los Angeles area, who can help me.

I am seeking photos of the "Walk of Fame" sidewalk stars for Arthur Godfrey.
I am told that one of them is at 6233 Hollywood Blvd.  I think the Walk of
Fame office at the H'wood C of C can provide addresses for the others.  There
are three for Arthur Godfrey, one each for Radio, TV and Recordings.

Anyone who can help, please contact me direct at:
verotas@[removed]

Also always looking for candid snapshots of Mr. Godfrey.
Thank you so much - Bestus from Lee Munsick      That Godfrey Guy

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 20:27:56 -0400
From: Frank McGurn <[removed]@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Abraqtions & Digital

First of all a;lot of those who contribute to the Digest use aerations
the only one I'm sure of is OTR I'm not good at guessing.

Second topic is digital and complaimts about quality of recording of OTR
shshows. I don't use disks of any kind, not because I can, but why
change. I use my tape for my [removed] someone want a copy of  a show
I send a cassette.

I started using cassettes in 1971, when you had to look for a store that
sold then. There weren't to many. My source of OTR was the radio. In the
70's I was  reaching for the radio signal, but as more station carried
OTR they ere closer to me and my quality improve.
So I have been retyping my earlier shows. I have spent one cent for an
OTR show. I have gotten them off the radio or buy trading.
My quality is as good as the FM stations quality, or what I copy of the
computer. I have over [removed] shows that I selective copied. I don't want
Soaps or kids shows, although I have a few for historical reference.
I buy good quality tape, 62 minutes, for about 14 cents and a few cents
for a plastic box.

The quality of my recordings is good as it was in 1971,after 36 years.

Frank McGurn

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 23:06:06 -0400
From: Ronald Sayles <bogusotr@[removed];
To: Olde Tyme Radio Digest Digest <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  5-19 births/deaths

May 19th births

05-19-1870 - Wright Kramer - Somerville, MA - d. 11-14-1941
actor: Walter Jamison "Showboat"
05-19-1894 - Henry Busse - Magdeburg, Germany - d. 4-23-1953
orchestra leader: "Fitch Bandwagon"; "Spotlight Bands"
05-19-1895 - Harry Saxe - Montreal, Canada - d. unknown
actor: Daddy Warbucks "Little Orphan Annie"; Dr. Burr "Mryt and Marge
05-19-1906 - Bruce Bennett - Tacoma, WA - d. 2-24-2007
actor: "Proudly We Hail"
05-19-1910 - Wayne Nelson - d. 2-xx-1984
announcer: "The Camel Caravan"; "The Ted Lewis Show"
05-19-1913 - Warren Asher - d. 1-xx-1984
disk jockey: WFOR  Hattiesburg, Mississippi
05-19-1919 - George Auld - Toronto, Canada - d. 1-8-1990
bandleader: "Saturday Night Swing Session"

May 19th deaths

02-02-1915 - Frank Telford - d. 5-19-1987
producer: "This Is Our Enemy"
02-09-1891 - Ronald Colman - Richmond, Surrey, England - d. 5-19-1958
actor: William Todhunter Hall "Halls of Ivy"; "Jack Benny Program"
02-12-1867 - Joe E. Howard - NYC - d. 5-19-1961
singer, composer: "Gay Nineties Revue"
03-14-1913 - Jay Barney - Chicago, IL - d. 5-19-1985
actor: Bugsy O'Toole "The Romance of Helen Trent"
03-25-1913 - Prescott Robinson - Montreal, Canada - d. 5-19-1999
newscaster: "Eight O'Clock Morning News on Mutual"
03-31-1915 - Henry Morgan - NYC - d. 5-19-1994
comedian: "Here's Morgan"; "Henry Morgan Show"
05-07-1895 - Thomas Darcy, Jr. - Vancouver, WA - d. 5-19-1968
conducted the United States Army Band on CBS during the 1938 season
06-14-1907 - Nappy Lamare - New Orleans, LA - d. 5-19-1988
jazz guitarist: "The Bob Crosby Show"
06-17-1921 - Earl Hammond - NYC - d. 5-19-2002
actor: "Coounterspy"; "Martin Kane, Private Eye"
07-29-1869 - Booth Tarkington - Indianapolis, IN - d. 5-19-1946
writer: "Maude and Cousin Bill"
08-19-1902 - Ogden Nash - Rye, NY - d. 5-19-1971
poet: "Three Ring Time"; "Kaleidoscope"
11-16-1916 - Daws Butler - Toledo, OH - d. 5-19-1988
actor: "Sears Radio Theatre"; "Stan Freberg Show"; "That's Rich"
11-21-1904 - Coleman Hawkins - St. Josephs, MO - d. 5-19-1969
tenor sax: (Father of the tenor sax) "Saturday Night Swing Club"
12-12-1913 - Winston Burdette - Buffalo, NY - d. 5-19-1993
newscaster: (protege of Edward R. Murrow) "CBS World News Round Up"

Ron Sayles

--------------------------------
End of [removed] Digest V2007 Issue #148
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