Digital archiving is about more than simply copying an old format onto a computer. It is about preserving recordings properly, with enough care and resolution to retain the original character, detail and information as far as possible. Whether the source is personal, historical, musical or professional, Blackparticle offers high quality transfer work for clients who want those recordings handled with more attention than a quick consumer-grade conversion can provide.

A wide range of legacy and consumer formats can be transferred for long-term archiving, restoration or later production work. That includes vinyl, two track and four track quarter-inch reel-to-reel tape, cassette, DAT, Mini DV and VHS, as well as arrangements for studio archiving from multitrack reel-to-reel, ADAT and other professional recording formats. The aim is always to choose the most sensible path for the source material, capture it cleanly, and preserve it in a form that remains useful well into the future.


Blackparticle approaches transfer work with the same care given to mastering and restoration. That means paying close attention to signal path, format condition, playback stability and noise, rather than treating the process as a simple one-button dump. In many cases the value of the material lies not only in the content itself, but in subtle details of tone, dynamics, timing and texture that are all too easily lost through careless transfer and poor handling.


For more involved projects, studio archiving and transfer can also be arranged from professional multitrack formats, allowing older sessions to be recovered, preserved and prepared for remixing, editing or reissue. That can be particularly valuable when important recordings are trapped on ageing media or in formats that are becoming harder to access reliably as the years go by.


For vinyl transfer, each record is first cleaned using the Moth MkII record cleaning machine before playback on a Michell Engineering Orbe SE / Naim Aro / Ortofon Rohmann configured turntable with a Pro-Ject Tubebox DS phono stage and custom PSU. In other words, the front end is taken seriously, because a good archive starts with a good capture. If you need older recordings transferred, preserved or prepared for further restoration work, Blackparticle can help you give them a cleaner and more dependable lease of life.