Sveriges Radio Förvaltnings Implements NOA

Sveriges Radio Förvaltnings AB (SRF), which provides technical services to Swedish public broadcaster Sveriges Radio AB (SR), has added from NOA Audio Solutions a second NOA MediaLector workstation as well as 14 Sony R500 DAT recorders upgraded with NOA adaptation kits to its extensive installation of NOA equipment for migrating and managing audio archives. The 8-channel stereo MediaLector will handle migration of problematic DAT tapes for which highly sophisticated error notification is required.

SR is relying on SRF for a two-year project that will migrate some 200,000 hours of audio recordings to secure and readily accessible digital storage. For the project, SRF has deployed multiple NOA Ingest Line systems including MediaLector to migrate the content of legacy carriers into the managed archive where it will be available to staff via the NOA mediARC distributed Web interface. The overall project began in February and will conclude in 2012.

"SRF was having serious problems with a few of its DAT tapes when they called us in," said Sebastian Gabler, NOA project manager. "We were able to take an in-depth look at the workflow and develop a good solution to those problems so that SRF gained access to the content of those tapes. To accomplish this, we relied on an additional fully equipped MediaLector system and 14 Sony R500 DAT recorders, each refurbished and upgraded with the NOA Adaptation Kit. This is a good example of a complex and intransigent problem solved by a combination of NOA’s uniquely advanced technology and close cooperation with a customer."

NOA MediaLector, part of the NOA Ingest Line family, works in concert with mediARC to perform quality-controlled mass migration of audio stored on DATs, cassette tapes, and MiniDiscs. The platform is capable of transferring eight stereo sources in parallel with 16-bit, 44.1 kHz/48 kHz quality; extracting the audio information; annotating relevant subcode information; and scanning the signal using NOA’s proprietary algorithmic detection. MediaLector constantly monitors the status of the DAT drives’ error correction and annotates relevant status data synchronously to the audio stream with the Sony PCM 7040 and the NOA-adapted Sony R500 DAT. The result is a 100-percent documented audio transfer with a digitization-proof stamp written to the database along with the audio material.

NOA’s Adaptation Kit for the R500 DAT enables it to document errors and read problems at the hardware level – effectively transforming a DAT machine into a professional block error reporting device (BLER). As one of the last DAT machines on the market, the R500 supports 32 kHz and affords tolerant ATF tracking. The NOA R500 Adaptation Kit taps into the specified wiring to collect low-level drive information then translates it into readable data for collection and display via NOA MediaLector software over a standard 8x RS232 hub.