Audio Visual Commission.

Justice, Andrew

The session of the Audio Visual Commission on 22 June 2015 was entitled Sound Recordings and Digital Libraries, chaired by Andrew Justice (Associate Head Music Librarian, University of North Texas, Denton, TX).

The first paper was by Jeremy Allen Smith (Special Collections Librarian and Curator of the James R. and Susan Neumann Jazz Collection, Oberlin Conservatory, Oberlin, OH) on "Music Has Its Destiny: On Collecting Audio in a Digital Age."

This presentation explored the history and evolving discourses around notions of collecting and the relationship between audio collectors and music special collections libraries.

With an emphasis on the unique issues surrounding born-digital and digitized audio, Smith addressed the ramifications of what has been termed "post-material" cultural production for the ongoing library work of preserving and providing access to recorded sound. Private collectors, long playing an influential role in determining the holdings of audio archives and music special collections libraries, can be partly understood as demonstrating a practical strategy for librarians in building efficient collections. This approach also recognizes that individual collectors often have the ability to develop unique expertise and collections in highly specific areas that would not otherwise be accessible to institutionally-based librarians with wide-ranging responsibilities.

Traditionally, audio collectors have necessarily focused on physical formats from across the twentieth century, including wax cylinders, 78s, LPs, and CDs. However, in a digital age where audio is more commonly accessed by streaming and downloads, what happens to collectors? Instead of building collections fueled by the thrill of the hunt, passion for scarce material items, cultural preservation, obsession, or completism, the digital age makes us question whether it is even possible collect that which does not exist as a physical object.

Smith presented five observations of what it means to identify as an audio collector in an era where abundance replaces scarcity and streaming access substitutes for physical formats:

* Access, sharing and participating become more important than owning

* Music as product versus music as service; collecting lists instead of objects

* Broad communication of best practices for digital preservation is even more essential

* The tactile cannot be replaced

* The thrill of the hunt lives on, but through obscure corners of the internet; since we still like to access audio content, the future holdings of audio archives and music libraries will be affected

An extensive discussion followed Smith's presentation, with specific focus on list (and hence metadata) collecting, digital preservation best practices, and the age-old question of how music libraries can continue to collect nonphysical sound recordings.

The second paper was presented by Andrew Justice (Associate Head Music Librarian, University of North Texas, Denton, TX) on "So Many Bits, It Hertz: Digital Recordings and Sound Quality."

Addressing the question of sound quality in digital recordings, Justice began with the histories and attributes of various digital sound platforms: Compact Discs, digital tape, and file formats. Focusing on compression, the attributes of uncompressed, losslessly compressed, and lossy compressed files were explained, along with major examples of each type. Emphasizing the importance of listening, examples of the same extracted section at various levels of compression were provided for side-by-side comparison: Michael Jackson's song "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' " from 1982's Thriller album, the opening to the scherzo from Minnesota Orchestra's 2013 Grammy Award[TM]-winning recording of Sibelius' first symphony, and Moment's Notice from John Coltrane's 1957 album Blue Train (1997 remaster).

Justice then turned to streaming services like Spotify, Pandora, Naxos, and YouTube, presenting information about file type and bitrate taken from the services' websites; a noticeable lack of sound quality and/or vague language about it from the providers themselves warrants further consideration.

YouTube                       Spotify

AAC (lossy)                   OggVorbis (lossy)
Bitrate: 64-128
mono, 128-384                 ~96: Normal quality on
stereo, 196-512               mobile
Dolby 5.1 "High quality
  uploads for creators with
  enterprise quality          ~160: Standard quality
  internet connections"       on desktop & web player,
                                high quality on mobile

Extremely dependent upon      ~320 (Premium): High
the uploader                  quality on desktop,
                              extreme quality on mobile

Pandora                     Naxos

AAC+ (lossy)                AAC (lossy)

Web: 64 free & 192          Dependent on
for subscribers             Internet connection

In-home devices: 128        Broadband: 128 (CD)
  Mobile devices "receive
  a variety of different
  rates depending on the

capability of the device    DSL: 64 (near CD)
& network but never         Dial-up: 20 (FM)
more than 64"

High-Definition Audio was then explored, specifically in terms of bit depth and sample rate; the standard of 24 bits / 96kHz was briefly touched upon, including the Nyquist Theorem and how IASA's (as well as the Library of Congress' and Sound Directions') statement emphasizes the fact that encoding audio outside of the range of human hearing improves the quality within that range, as well as the importance of preserving all audio artifacts (both positive and negative) with the "utmost accuracy".

Discussion following the presentation included questions about remastering and the essentially anachronistic release of older versions (The Beatles' albums in mono, specifically), as well as National Public Radio's recent release of a sound quality listening test. As always, the subjective nature of listening presents a challenge to this line of inquiry, since it is often difficult (if not nearly impossible) to generate objective scientific data on how people listen, how good their ears are, and exactly how much they invest their concentration into everyday listening situations.

The final paper was by Jann Pasler (University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA) on "The Treasures of Gallica, or How Digital Sound, Visual, and Print Archives Have Transformed Research."

Nothing substitutes for working in archives, having direct access to documents without the mediation of other scholars' agendas. Eavesdropping on conversations and debates between individuals; pouring over the debris of history and looking into its crevices to understand how musical taste took shape and evolved; discovering so much more than could be imagined in advance of such research--archives broaden our questions as well as our conclusions.

The Bibliotheque Nationale's Gallica, and other digital archives, can function similarly. A few examples from Pasler's research suggest not only their potential, but also the tremendous contribution they have made, especially when used in conjunction with library collections. In studying French musical life over time, the word-searchable music journal, Menestrel (1833-1940), has been indispensable. Using digitized French newspapers, Pasler was able to study the musical scores reproduced weekly in Le Figaro from the 1870s-1920s and compare them with urban popular songs reproduced in the mass-marketed Petit Journal. Digitized newspapers and government documents in Algeria and Madagascar--countries that are very difficult to visit for reasons of distance or political instability--helped to understand musical and theatrical life in the colonies, the dynamics of government subventions, and local reception of performances.

Digitized non-music journals, such as L'Eveil economique in Saigon, have shed light on musical taste in the context of local politics and colonial radio. Digitized newspapers also can unveil the lives of minor cultural actors, such as the person responsible for choosing the scores published in Le Figaro. Gallica's digitization of newspapers across the Mediterranean region has allowed Pasler to track the careers of musicians, such as the conductor Saugey who, after premiering works by Massenet in Algiers, later won positions in Nice and Marseille, and female singers who did well in Algeria and later directed opera troops in Indochina, positions unavailable to them in France.

To understand how French scholars heard non-western music, Pasler has compared Azoulay's newly digitized wax cylinder recordings of performances at the 1900 Paris Universal Exhibition (currently at the Centre d'Ethnomusicologie in Paris) with her transcriptions, and studied field recordings (made in North Africa from 1904-1920s) being digitized at the Berlin Phonogramm Archiv. Gallica's rare, digitized photographs, such as one of young Africans learning solfege from missionaries and those made at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris, have also been useful. Gallica's possibilities are limited only by one's imagination, time, and energy. A brief discussion following Pasler's presentation included other specific instances where scholars have greatly benefited from digital archives.

Andrew Justice

Chair