Having been re-editing Sea Front with the newly-digitised HD footage my mind has moved to audio and whether to revamp the soundtrack. The audio for the larger project Sea City was recorded on DAT and MiniDisc (MD) which are both digital formats but require the recording to be played back in real-time.
As I write this, audio from around 2009 is being ingested over an optical digital cable in to the laptop and I’m hearing the sound of swifts, blackbirds – so a summer recording – and a distant police siren from an MD labelled ‘Garden ambience 28 May 09’. The disc holds 80 minutes of audio and by no means all of it matches the label.
The MD player had to be brought down from a shelf and dusted off and the discs brought from another room. Having revisited some Super 8 films in preparation for the digitisation a few weeks ago it’s strange to start hearing the past from the same era. Occasionally I’ll hear myself clicking fingers or speaking to test the recording setup. I wish I’d added an audio description of the recordings and a date. Some recording scenarios I remember but others are baffling. Right now I hear some sort of watery flapping machine sound (Track 29) but can’t place it although the recording lasts about 10 minutes. Most of the recordings haven’t been used in films and have resided unheard on their obsolete media.
Digital obsolescence has been on my mind as the soundtrack for Sea Front was created in Final Cut Pro 7 and Soundtrack Pro, neither of which will run on current Mac computers. This causes work-arounds and translation via XML export, translation and import to contemporary programs such as FCP X.
Two days ago I discovered that the future for two audio programs I have used and relied on for years is threatened by a dispute between two developers which could leave years of work inaccessible. Triumph and Myriad require authentication from the software company’s server belonging to one of the disputing parties -Aurchitect – in order to function. All that company’s online presence disappeared in May 2019.