Audio
Digitisation

Audio Digitisation

High-grade audio digitising from just about any legacy format, is another service we offer. Whether it’s from a standard audio cassette or reel to reel, Crystal Mastering houses one of Australia’s largest collections of audio playback equipment. All transfers are carried out on only the best studio grade machines, as well as being captured on archival grade converters.

The engineers at Crystal Mastering are well versed in the use of all analogue playback equipment and are thorough in the calibration and set up of all transfers. We operate to world’s best practice and adhere strictly to the IASA technical guidelines. Our technicians can also enrich digital assets by adding accurate and detailed metadata.

Not only can we digitize your audio assets, we can also improve the quality of the source material through digital restoration processes or full re-mastering. We are also happy to digitise multi-track recordings and organise the re-mixing and mastering.

We have tape machines that cater to all playback speeds; from 15/16 ips all the way to 30 ips. We also have a wide selection of track widths. From standard stereo playback, through to 1/4 track and mono.

Audio digitising equipment includes;

• Studer A80, A807 & A810 tape machines
• Heat treatment facilities
• Tascam 122 MkIII cassette decks
• Prism & Digital Audio Denmark A/D
• 16 bit and 24 bit DAT players
• Alesis ADAT players
• Sony Mini Disc players
• 16 inch, transcription disc players
• Record Cleaning Machines
• Archival phono pre-amps
• Dolby & dbx decoder units
• 4 Track Cassette machines
• Mulit-track machines: 4, 8 & 16 track
• Cedar™ Digital Restoration Tools

Video Digitisation

As well as audio digitising, the studio also carries out hi- grade, video transfers. The studio has the ability to capture lossless, Motion Jpeg2000 as well as FFV1, ProRes and most other common formats.

Our in-house technician ensures all our video and audio playback equipment is perfectly maintained and calibrated, resulting in the best transfers possible.

Video formats catered for include;
– EIAJ (1/2 inch)
– Betamax
– VHS, S-VHS (PAL/NTSC)
– U-matic /SP
– Hi-8
– Video8
– Betacam/SP/SX
– Digi Betacam
– MPEG IMX
– Mini DV

Film Transfers

All 8mm, 9.5mm & 16mm film is scanned frame by frame, at 2K resolution. The studio can scan Colour, Negative as well as Black & White film.
Our scanner is a sprocketless machine, with a very gentle film path, making it ideal for playing aged or fragile film stock.

These high resolution scans can then be supplied as any number of formats, such as DPX files, Image sequences as
well as H.264 files for streaming and access copies.

All film is cleaned by hand, inspected for any damage and repaired if necessary. If requested, films can also be colour
corrected, as their colour may have degraded over the decades. Further digital restoration work can also be carried
out to reduce or remove scratches, dust marks and other impurities on the film surface.

Our film transfer service also caters for film sound. Magnetic or Optical sound tracks can be digitised and perfectly synchronised back with their picture.