UNITED ARCHIVING

Giving past masters the respect they deserve

United Archiving is committed to preserving past masters for the ages in our purpose-built archiving facility housed right here at United Recording. Our professional archiving staff maintain the same standards of excellence and expertise that have long been synonymous with United Recording, ensuring your valuable and irreplaceable assets will continue to live on.

Features

In addition to our extensive analog and digital equipment, we also feature:

High level security

Climate controlled tape storage

Analog tape baking via state-of-the-art lab grade convection oven

Dedicated, clean electrical tech power

Custom designed and built anti-static flooring

In-house technicians who service and maintain all equipment to the highest operational standards

Chief Archiving Engineer

Bill Smith

The expression “there’s no substitute for experience” is especially apropos in describing the career of Bill Smith, Chief Archiving Engineer at United Archiving.

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Prior to his current position at United Archiving, which is housed within Hollywood’s renowned United Recording Studio, Mr. Smith spent thirty-five years as a successful and in-demand Grammy-nominated recording engineer and music producer. During that time he recorded and worked on numerous Gold and Platinum selling album and film projects, many of which also went on to become Grammy-winning and Grammy-nominated records and film soundtracks.

Few audio archiving facilities have the advantage of an engineer with such a broad and extensive background as Mr. Smith. His experience with vintage and current day analog and digital technologies, audio archiving and sound restoration is comprehensive and unparalleled in the industry. From such diverse operations as restoring and archiving entire tape catalogs for individual artists such as Natalie Cole, to preserving and organizing immense record label libraries, his knowledge and hands-on experience is key to the prominence of United Archiving as one of the top facilities in the world for audio archiving, restoration and asset management.

Smith began his career in New York City in 1985, working at many renowned recording studios such as The Hit Factory, Quad Recording and Todd Rundgren’s Secret Sound Studios. He worked on albums for artists such as The Violent Femmes, Lou Reed, Leni Stern, C&C Music Factory and Grandmaster Flash before moving to Los Angeles in 1990. Upon his arrival in LA, he secured a position as staff engineer at Capitol Studios where he remained for several years before transitioning into freelance engineering.

During this period he engineered and worked on albums for Barbara Streisand, Toto, Whitney Houston, George Benson, The Manhattan Transfer, Chris Botti, Steve Lukather, Natalie Cole, John Fogerty, YES, Queen Latifah, Diana Krall, Trevor Horn, Christopher Cross, Al Jarreau, Quincy Jones & Sammy Nestico and countless other top name artists. Some of the numerous film scores he has been involved with over the years have included “Forrest Gump”, “Midnight In The Garden Of Good & Evil”, “Payback”, “Godzilla”, “Wyatt Earp” and “Grace Of My Heart”.

Mr. Smith spent eleven years working as personal recording assistant, co-engineer and ProTools operator alongside 23-time Grammy-winning recording engineer, producer and music industry legend Al Schmitt. During those years Smith and Schmitt traveled both nationally and abroad working together on a sizable number of highly regarded album projects for some of the best-known names in the music industry.

Among his numerous record, film soundtrack and television credits in both the stereo and 5.1 surround sound formats, Mr. Smith has also contributed engineering work for many multifaceted corporate marketing and advertising campaigns. He has been involved with product and preset development for both the hardware and software versions of the award-winning Lexicon PCM96 Stereo Reverb/Effects unit and TC Electronic M6000 Multi-Channel Processor platform. Additionally, he has been instrumental in artist relations programs for both of these companies, as well as for Sennheiser and Neumann.

Mr . Smith has been the subject of feature interviews for Pro Sound News, Music Connection Magazine, Working Class Audio and other notable publications. He has been featured in press campaigns for TC Electronic, Mackie, Summit Audio and has been a featured lecturer on audio engineering at The Musicians Institute in Hollywood.

With such a lengthy and diverse background in both analog and digital audio technology it’s easy to see why Bill Smith was a natural choice for the position of Chief Archiving Engineer at United Archiving. Having spent over three decades working with virtually every recording format available, his knowledge of how to revive, recondition and restore every format of audio tape, including vintage computer-based tape systems, is a rare and valuable skill.

OUR PROCESS

Prior to transfer, condition of all materials evaluated for mold, water damage, baking needs or any other restorative procedures.

Spreadsheet provided for client review includes a detailed inventory of all assets, pre-archive status per asset and any transfer recommendations*

Analog assets transferred to Broadcast Wav files at the highest possible sample rate and bit depth.

Digital assets transferred within the digital domain at the original sample rate and bit depth.

Box labels, track sheets and notes are scanned and included as .pdf files with each transfer.

Tracks and files within ProTools named and labelled with corresponding instrument or mix names and reel numbers.

Additional Metadata tags added to individual audio files*

Following transfer, tapes receive a library wind for even, tight packing for return to long term storage.

Completed work is prepared on the media of client’s choice (hard drive, USB, DVD, or Bluray with digital deliver)

We adhere to “Standards and Best Practices” guidelines as set forth by the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA), The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), The Audio Engineering Society (AES) and the United States Library of Congress.

*Upon request

benefits

Recovers and preserves assets from deteriorating analog tape or outdated digital media while keeping them viable for future use and repurposing.

High resolution digital copies can be used for remastering or remixing with no damage to fragile original master tapes.

File-based metadata for cataloging purposes.

Digital files can be electronically delivered to the client or third party.

Original assets are always kept secure and available.

Provides confidence that valuable assets will never be lost.

EQUIPMENT

Analog MAchines
  • Studer A827 Multitrack machines
    • 2” 24 & 16 track headstacks
    • 1” 16 & 8 track headstacks
  • Ampex ATR-104 machines
    • ½” 2 track extended frequency, 3 track, 4 track headstacks
    • ¼” 2 track extended frequency, 4 track, full track mono headstacks
    • Ampex VS-10 Vari-Speed for ATR machines
  • Fostex E-16 1/2” 16 track
  • Tascam 38 1/2” 8 track
  • Tascam 122 MKIII cassette decks
Digital Machines
  • Sony PCM 3348HR Multitrack 1/2” 48 track (compatible with Sony PCM 3324 & Studer D827)
  • Mitsubishi X-850 1” 32 track
  • Sony PCM 3402 1/4” 2 track DASH format
  • Mitsubishi X-86HS 1/4” 2 track ProDigi format
  • Tascam DA-98HR / DA-78HR / DA-88 machines (Hi-8 tapes)
  • Alesis ADAT M20 / LX-20 machines (SVHS tapes)
  • IZ RADAR-24 hard disk recorder (fully compatible with Radar II sessions and data)
  • Panasonic SV3700 DAT Machines
Noise Reduction
  • Dolby MT24 racks (48 channels of Dolby SR & Dolby A)
  • Dolby XP rack (24 channels Dolby SR)
  • DBX 911 Type I cards in DBX 900A racks (32 channels)
  • DBX 942A Type II cards in DBX 900A rack (16 channels)
  • Dolby 363 units with SR/A cards (4 channels)
  • DBX FS900 rack with 911 Type 1 cards (4 channels)
ProTools / Computers and Peripherals
  • (2) 2012 Apple Mac Pro 12 core, 64GB RAM
  • AVID Pro Tools HD 2022 Ultimate w/HDX cards
  • Digidesign 192 I/O’s (40 analog inputs / 56 digital inputs)
  • AVID Sync HD I/O’s
  • Apple Mac G4 OS 9.2.2 with ATTO UL3D 68pin / Adaptec 2930 50pin SCSI cards
  • Apple Mac G5 OSX with ATTO UL4D 68pin SCSI card
  • Glyph 2 Bay SCSI Rack w/ 36GB Hot Swap Drives
  • Dantz Retrospect Version 6.1 for Mac OSX
  • Dantz Retrospect Version 4.3 for Mac OS9
  • Sun Microsystems DDS3 SCSI tape drive (backwards compatible)
  • Sony DV-700 AIT-3 SCSI Tape Drive (backwards compatible)
  • Quantum LTO-4 SCSI tape drive (backwards compatible)
  • Iomega Zip 250 drive
  • Iomega 1GB Jaz drive
Digital Convertors / Master Clock
  • Apogee Rosetta 200 24/192K 2-channel A/D convertors
  • Universal Audio 2192 24/192K 2-channel A/D convertors
  • Otari UFC-24 digital audio format converters
  • Antelope Audio OCX/HD master clock
  • Antelope Audio ISOCHRONE OCX master clock
Synchronization
  • Timeline Lynx 1 synchronizers
  • Timeline Lynx 2 synchronizers
  • Brainstorm SR-15+ Time Code Distripalyzers
Monitoring
  • JBL LSR 6328P monitors
  • JBL 308 MKII monitors
  • Audio Technica MHX-50 headphones
  • Coleman Audio M3PH MKIII monitor controller
Tape Baking
  • Yamato Scientific DKN602C Lab Grade Mechanical Convection Oven
Audio Forensics & Repair
  • iZotope RX10 Advanced
  • Audio clean-up for music, post-production, and law enforcement applications