Transcription record question

[rogerkirk]

John Francini wrote:

>But that assumes you know what eq was applied in the first place 
>when  putting the signal onto the record.  

If one did not know what eq was applied, there are a modest number of permuatations (quasi-standards) of variations from NAB that could be tried - whatever sounded best (subjective, I know) would be what I would use.

>I would argue that, if  preservation is the goal, you'd want to 
>create that maximum-fidelity/ lowest noise master.

In the abstract, true.  However, preservation might also be viewed as retrieving the sound from a deteriorating medium where time is of the essence and failure to act might result in loss of the recorded sound forever.

Come to think of it, assuming a one used a low-noise, low-distortion phono preamp (with adequate headroom), proper stylus and recorded the playback digitally (with a high-quality sound card,) then applying the eq difference between the NAB curve and another curve after the fact should yield the same result as eq'ing within the pre-amp.

N'est ce pas?