Cambridge, UK (March 31, 2021)—UK-based audio restoration specialist Graham Joiner of Audio Restored is using Prism Sound audio converters to digitize 233 analog master tapes for Good Time Records (GTR), an international catalog owner and label with offices in the UK and Nashville, TN.
The tapes include material from the Crash, Satril and Catawba labels, which were formerly administered by the Henry Hadaway Organization. HHO had great success during the 1970s and 1980s with artists such as The Sandpipers, The Rockin’ Berries, Kenny Lynch, Frankie Vaughan, Lyn Paul (ex-New Seekers), The Tweets, Marvin Gaye, Wilson Picket, Brook Benton and Jackie Moore.
GTR, which regularly buys vintage catalogs, acquired the Crash, Satril and Catawba labels in 2020 as part of a multi-label catalog deal. The masters currently being restored comprise the recording archive of the former Satril Studios in North London. Among them is “The Birdie Song” by The Tweets, which sold over 1.6 million copies in the UK alone.
Saving the Bob Dylan Archive from Adhesion Syndrome
Joiner, formerly a professional pharmaceutical chemist who set up his Audio Restored business in 2008 after taking early retirement, got involved in the project at the end of 2020, he says. “I was contacted by Oliver Murgatroyd from GTR and a few weeks later he turned up with a van full of two-inch 24-track master tapes, many of which were in quite a poor state. Some of the original boxes were moldy and falling apart, and all the tapes had to be baked at 55 degrees C for up to eight hours to prevent the oxide from shedding. It is painstaking work as I can only bake five tapes at a time, but this has to be done in order to stabilize them before attempting a transfer.”
He purchased three Titans with MDIO Dante cards and a Focusrite RedNet Dante PCIe card specifically for the GTR project. “GTR was adamant that they wanted their tapes transferred at a high-resolution sample rate of 192 kHz, 24-bit so that they could be stored as Ultra HD WAV files,” he says.
“At the time, my equipment wasn’t capable of that and after taking advice, it was recommended that I should consider Prism Sound AD/DA converters. That led to a conversation with Prism Sound’s managing director Jody Thorne who recommended Titan because the units could be linked and operated together over a Dante network.”
Prism Sound • www.prismsound.com
