Digitizing Speech Recordings for Archival Purposes

In this paper, we describe the best practices for digitizing speech recordings for archival purposes. Many current guidelines do not give adequate rational and are not specific enough about audio digitizing practices for spoken word digital repositories. By analyzing frequency response, dynamic range, formant bandwidths, noise, and psychoacoustic, and perceptual quality, spectral evaluation of recordings was used to develop digitization best practices. Given the available technologies and the demands of archival preservation, weighed against expense and storage, the following digitization practices were determined acceptable for digitizing spoken word resources; sample rate: 96,000 Hz; bit-depth: 24-bit; and oversampling delta-sigma A/D converter with dither added prior to sampling. Best practices for digitizing equipment and digital format are also described