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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Iron Mountain Entertainment Services to Participate in
Archiving and Restoration Panels at AES New York 2019
— Iron Mountain’s Bob Koszela and Kelly Pribble will contribute to a
total of three panels over the convention’s four days —
HOLLYWOOD, CA, September 26, 2019 – At the upcoming Audio Engineering Society convention in New York, Iron Mountain Incorporated® Entertainment Services, the global leader in protection and preservation of entertainment content, will be represented at three panels in the convention’s Archiving and Restoration Track.
On Thursday, October 17, from 4:30 – 5:30 pm, the panel “AR01 – Long Term Preservation of Audio Assets” will take place featuring Bob Koszela, studio manager for Iron Mountain Entertainment Services, alongside fellow panelists Jeff Balding (The Recording Academy® P&E Wing), Rob Friedrich (Library of Congress), Jamie Howarth (Plangent Processes), Pat Kraus (UMG), Cheryl Pawelski (Omnivore Records) and Toby Seay (Drexel University), with moderator Jessica Thompson (Jessica Thompson Audio).
Panel abstract: Throughout the history of the recorded music industry, masters have burned, been lost in floods, been mislabeled and misfiled, neglected, forgotten, even systematically destroyed to salvage the raw materials. This panel is an opportunity to learn from the past and move the conversation forward, addressing current challenges with long term preservation of audio assets. Beyond rehashing well-established best practices, panelists will discuss barriers to preservation including technical hurdles, cost, long term storage, deteriorating media, maintaining legacy playback equipment, legalities, and the very simple fact that we cannot and will not save everything.
On Friday, October 18, from 4:30 – 5:30 p.m., the panel “AR06 – You Mean You Wanted Those Tracks?!: Challenges of Preserving Multitrack Recordings” will take place featuring Kelly Pribble, audio engineer for Iron Mountain Entertainment Services, alongside fellow panelist Bryan Hoffa and session chair Jeff Willens (New York Public Library). This event is presented in collaboration with ARSC (Association for Recorded Sound Collections).
Panel abstract: Whether on analog tape, digital tape, or born-digital media, multitrack recordings make up an increasingly large percentage of archival content in need of preservation. How are various institutions dealing with the problem of multitracks? Do they see a difference between analog and born-digital sources? Do they require alternative workflows? This panel will cover practical and technical considerations of multitrack preservation, including tape degradation, the need for backups, metadata storage, and file-level tagging, as well as the need to develop industry-wide best practices for archiving multitrack recordings.
Commenting on the upcoming panel, Kelly Pribble stated, “On this panel I will be discussing the issues of archiving and preserving multitrack recordings covering analog tape, digital tape and digital-born recordings. One of the main topics I will bring is the alarming degradation of analog multitrack tapes from 1972-1990. We are seeing a high number of tapes suffering from ‘Loss of Lubricant’ syndrome. We recently have been receiving a high number of major label artist masters with this issue. What we are afraid of is, what will these masters be like in 10 years? Will they play at all?”
On Saturday, October 19, from 9 – 10 a.m., the panel “AR07 – Archiving the 90s!” will take place featuring Iron Mountain’s Kelly Pribble, alongside fellow panelists David Ackerman (Harvard University), Eddie Ciletti (Manhattan Sound Technicians, Inc.) and Catherine Vericolli (Fivethirteen), with moderator Jason Bitner (Traffic Entertainment Group).
Panel abstract: Archival practice often spotlights the challenges of working with magnetic tape and grooved media. This panel shifts focus to the formats used frequently in 1990s recording production like ADAT and DA-88. Loads of great records were made on these formats, frequently in project studios with smaller budgets. Sadly, they are some of the most at-risk formats, both because the carriers are awful and because playback machines in working order are hard to find and maintain. The fact that most of the studios using these formats were smaller project studios with minimal budgets only heightens the urgency of preserving this content. Panelists will talk about playback and preservation of these formats, specific considerations in capturing audio, timecode and other data, sourcing and maintaining playback machines, and curating releases from this content.
Pribble notes, “On this panel I will be discussing the issues with 90s digital formats, focusing on why and how these difficult formats need to be archived. These semi-professional formats have created major problems to safely archive. It is very hard if not impossible to find a working system to play back all assets. In some cases, we have had to acquire multiple machines just to find one that operates correctly, and sometimes there is really no support for these formats. Formats that seemed like cheap alternatives in the 1990's have really put a strain on preserving this decade of historical music.”
About Iron Mountain Entertainment Services
Established to meet the needs of clients’ archives in film, music, television, academia sports and entertainment, Iron Mountain Entertainment Services provides unmatched security and safety tailored to these market sectors. Through Iron Mountain’s industry-leading services and best practices for security, archival/preservation services and expertise, clients can rest assured that their works will be safe and accessible for future generations. Iron Mountain currently preserves nearly 41 million individual media elements (motion picture film, music recordings, videos, photographs, etc.) for over 3600 customers in 34 dedicated facilities around the world, digitizing over two million hours of content and storing more than 50 petabytes of data.MEDIA CONTACTS:
Meg Travis / Iron Mountain Entertainment Services / 617-535-8366 / Margaret.Travis@ironmountain.com
Robert Clyne / Clyne Media, Inc. / 615.662.1616 / robert@clynemedia.com
Lisa Roy / Rock & Roy / 310.463.1563 / lisaroyaudio@mac.com
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