Nadja Wallaszkovits
Chief Engineer Audio
Phonogrammarchiv - Austrian Academy of Sciences

Nadja Wallaszkovits studied musicology and audio engineering in Vienna and has been working as sound engineer for national and international recording companies since 1987. In 1998 she joined the Phonogrammarchiv, where she manages the audio department as a specialist for audio restoration, rerecording and digital archiving. She is consultant for archival technology for national and international institutions and has held several training seminars. She works as guest lecturer at the University of Vienna and at the University of Applied Sciences HTW in Berlin.

Nadja Wallaszkovits is vice chair of the IASA Technical Committee, Vice Chair Central Europe of the Audio Engineering Society (AES),and is member of the AES Technical Committee and IASA Training & Education Committee.

Digitisation of the three oldest magnetic tapes of Norway: A special challenge

The workshop discusses the restoration, transfer and digitisation of the three oldest magnetic tapes held in the archive of the Norwegian Radio Museum. The tapes, based on cellulose acetate and recorded around 1940/1941, were already heavily degraded and therefore completely unplayable.

The presentation starts with a short historical overview of early magnetic tape developments and the beginning of audio tape recorder technology, focusing on the characteristics of the machine most probably used at the time of recording. Hence the problems of carrier handling and physical as well as the recently developed method of chemical restoration of such highly degraded original tapes are outlined, as well as possible signal enhancement on the playback process only. Accordingly, ideas and proposals for the digital restoration of the irregularities of the audio signal are discussed.