The process of remastering old recordings comprises two basic stages: the transfer of the material from the source to a modern format, and the subsequent restoration of the transferred material through various forms of signal processing. The transfer stage in particular requires an understanding of issues which are becoming increasingly less familiar to engineers as the science of recording progresses further into the digital era. To a lesser extent, the restoration stage involves the use of certain techniques and forms of processing which are specific to this application. / This thesis is intended as a reference for those recording engineers who occasionally undertake remastering projects, but who are not thoroughly acquainted with the many different situations and problems which can be involved. Emphasis is given to those areas which are likely to be least familiar to most engineers. / In order to enable the engineer to properly assess a given source, the evolution and characteristics of each type of source--cylinder, disc and tape--is surveyed. This is followed in each case by an examination of the preparation, equipment and method used in transferring the source. Finally, the various types of processing which can be applied to the transferred material are presented, focusing on the techniques and forms of signal processing which are specific to audio restoration.

This thesis attempts to chart the development of a Jamaican musical form known as dub. This development is considered primarily in terms of the island's encounter with a series of new playback, amplification, recording, and sound treatment technologies. Section I focuses on the formation of the Jamaican sound system (a network of powerful mobile discos) and its pivotal role in the birth of a fertile domestic record industry. Section II extends the investigation to the Jamaican recording studio and record industry. What distinguishes this work from others on Jamaican dub is its emphasis on technology, and theories of technology, within a geo-political framework. In Section I, this emphasis is most notably informed by the work of Harold Innis, Karl Marx and Lewis Mumford, with Marshall McLuhan and Walter Benjamin becoming more prominent in Section II. Key technologies in this analysis include mechanization (mechanical reproducibility), the Williamson amplification circuit, the House of Joy speaker, the dub plate (acetate phonograph) and vinyl record, twin-turntables and the microphone, the magnetic tape recorder, and perhaps most importantly, the multi-track recorder and interface (the multi-track mixing-board).

Algorithms exist which will perform independent transformations on frequency or duration of a digital audio signal. These processes have different results different types of audio signals. A comparative study of granular and phase vocoder algorithms, implementation, and their respective effects on audio signals was made to determine which algorithm is best suited to a particular type of audio signal.

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This thesis is concerned with an examination of the reliability of R-DAT recording media in regard to professional and archival applications. Four brands of R-DAT tapes were subjected to mechanical stress, environmental stress, and a combination of both the mechanical and environmental stresses. Data generated from these tests were analyzed objectively, subjectively evaluated, and subsequently compared. Findings showed that in the majority of cases, the subjective evaluation results corroborate the objective measurements. The study concludes that only one brand of tape exhibited no deterioration of data, while the other three brands failed at various points throughout the testing.

This thesis presents high-level strategies for controlling existing audio morphing algorithms. Prominent methods for spectrally representing audio data in the context of audio morphing are surveyed, and techniques involving manipulating and interpolating additive models are explored. Additionally, a combination of past audio-morphing approaches (sinusoidal morphing techniques as well as techniques taken from an MFCC approach) are employed in order to facilitate any type of sonic input. The system presented herein is meant to accommodate a wide range of inputs, and will adjust the impact of a high-level feature depending on the type and quality of the input.* / *This dissertation is a compound document (contains both a paper copy and a CD as part of the dissertation).

This thesis explores how the study of culture can benefit from Western technology by reviewing anthropological theoretical and methodological processes and issues concerning reciprocity between the ethnographers and research subjects. In this case I am exploring the process of digitizing and dissemination of 400 hours of Kiowa song recordings. New digitizing equipment has made audio preservation and access relatively easy and affordable. These issues are most critical to groups like the Kiowa whose songs I have already started digitizing. In this thesis I closely examine existing collaborative theory and methodology in order to demonstrate the balance that can and should be maintained when using technology to preserve traditional music. In general, applying audio technology to an anthropological problem can enhance or inhibit the ethnographic process. My thesis focuses on how audio technology can contribute to this process without inhibiting, complicating, or distorting the way ethnomusicologists, folklorists, and anthropologists practice go about recording sound. / Department of Anthropology

The objective of this research is to improve the analysis of musical sounds in comparison to traditional additive analysis, i.e. Fourier Analysis. Namely, the focus of this study is to improve the tracking of time-evolving partials. Traditional analysis methods assume constant amplitudes and frequencies over each successive frame in which a signal is analyzed. Tracking the time-evolution of these partials, however, can require the implementation of complex probabilistic techniques. This thesis presents an alternative method in which the Ambiguity Function, a distribution in both time and frequency, is used to create a clearer, more accurate representation that requires fewer complex methods to track partials. Through the use of a more accurate spectral representation and the inclusion of a chirp rate parameter, partials may be more readily followed based upon spectral parameters alone. This new method that is presented will build upon the traditional methods by first employing Fourier analysis to identify partials, and then utilizing the Analytic Signal and Ambiguity Function to improve individual spectral parameter estimations and partial tracking. The overall intent of this work is that through this method, one may create an improved spectral model that is more useful to musical analysis.

We show that recent results in [3] on risk bounds for regularized least-squares on reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces can be straightforwardly extended to the vector-valued regression setting. We first briefly introduce central concepts on operator-valued kernels. Then we show how risk bounds can be expressed in terms of a generalization of effective dimension.

This thesis investigates the extent to which networking technology can be used to provide remote workstation access to a pool of shared music studio resources. A pilot system is described in which MIDI messages, studio control data, and audio signals flow between the workstations and a studio server. A booking and timing facility avoids contention and allows for accurate reports of studio usage. The operation of the system has been evaluated in terms of its ability to satislY three fundamental goals, namely the remote, shared and centralized access to studio resources. Three essential network configurations have been identified, incorporating a mix of star and bus topologies, and their relative potential for satisfYing the fundamental goals has been highlighted.