Archives & Musées on Cube-Tec

The Archives et Musée de la Littérature (official name: Centre de documentation et de recherche sur le patrimoine littéraire, théâtral et éditorial de la Belgique francophone) was founded in 1958 as a center for study and documentation of the french litterature and theatre in Belgium. The center is housed in de Bibliothèque royale de Belgique and houses a large archive of manuscripts, art works, recordings, vidéo's etc.. Daniel Van Meerhaeghe the archives' sound engineer was looking for a system to archive all the different sound recordings into to the digital domain, and be able to apply some restoration and mastering processing. The total audio archive consists of more than 2000 audio documents from 1957 until today (magetic tape, mini K7, DAT and mini-disc).

After evaluating most of the systems available on the market, the choice fell on the Cube-Tec system for its unique flexibility and huge choice of restoration and enhancement tools. Transfers can be done starting from tapes, DAT's, vinyl discs, mini cassettes etc. Everything is transferred via the Tascam DM-24 console into the Cube-Tec. Cube-Tec VPI processes can handle 192kHz/24bit audio signals with a precision of  64bit internal floating point. Optionally the system can be equipped with a Quadriga module for automatic Tape Archiving with the automated creation of error reports. Depending on necessity or demand, archiving can be done on CDR or AIT backup tape drive. Sound to picture work is also possible thanks to Time Code interfacing with DAT and DA88. To be able to judge the effect of precise and natural sounding restoration processing a pair of PMC AML-1 active speakers is used.