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Our Proposal for CKUA in Edmonton Canada

(by Craig Meyer, craig@reclaimmedia.com) (All Articles)

CKUA is a publicly-supported radio station in Edmonton, Canada. They have an impressive library of Canadian music including almost 200,000 vinyl records and 75,000 CDs.

Unfortunately, the wonderful scale of CKUA's library has also become an impediment to its use. The larger and more inclusive the CKUA library has become, the more expensive it is to actually access and include their programming. While their library is sufficiently organized to allow one to find a specific album already in mind, it's still very difficult to "search" it for different kinds of music or songs about a particular time or subject, etc.

Further, searching and accessing is only possible from their single location in Edmonton. Especially in a part of the world where people are so spread out and withstand such intense winters, it would be especially beneficial if the CKUA music library could be accessed and researched from multiple locations.

This ever-increasing "transaction cost" of searching, discovering and programming from their analog music library is a growing threat to CKUA's cultural mission, and therefore its financial well-being. To counter this trend, they've decided to digitize their entire library. When the project is completed, their music library will be qualitatively easier to search, discover, audition and program, from either their current facility or other locations all over Canada and the world.

Edmonton is 1300 miles (2100 km) as the crow flies from KCRW in Santa Monica, California, but CKUA had heard about the music digitization project that Reclaim Media was finishing up for them. KCRW is so pleased with our work that they referred us to them to give a proposal for how we would handle the digitization of their entire music library.

Reclaim Media has not yet won the green light to set up a temporary digitization facility in Edmonton and transfer CKUA's music library, but we have submitted our proposal and understand ourselves to be the current front-runner.

We have proposed to set up and staff a temporary (~2 years) digitization facility in CKUA's building in Edmonton that is based on the hardware, software and process we use at our central facility in Seattle, Washington.

We will generate two file sets from their vinyl records, cassettes tapes and CDs:

1: Archival File Set: FLAC Audio and JPG's of All Surfaces
The "archival" set will consist of lossless FLAC files recorded at 96,000 sample/second 24-bit stereo (the same fidelity recommended and used by the Library of Congress) from the analog pieces and 44,100 sample/second 16-bit stereo from the CDs. We have chosen FLAC as the archival file format because it is lossless, compressed, open-source and not tied to the whims or fortunes of any proprietary rights-holding vendor. Whatever happens, FLAC files will stay decodable.

Also, the archival set will include fine-print-legible multi-megapixel images of every printed surface like the records' jackets, booklets and labels, and the CDs' jewel case, the CD itself and the pages of its insert. We can generate these graphics quickly and consistently thanks to our investment in computer-controlling multi-megapixel digital cameras.

With its reference-quality lossless audio files and inclusive photographic data, the archival file set is "complete" and will include all information "about" the analog recordings as is observable, both aurally and visually.

2: Play-Front File Set: 320 kbps MP3s
The one important property that the archival file set does not have is being playable in the digital audio content management systems that are currently available like Dalet and OMT. In order to do day-to-day searching, auditioning and programming, CKUA will need a second derivative "play-from" file set. The OMT digital audio management system, CKUA's current front-runner, supports both WAV and MP3. Either can be produced from the archival set, but we're recommending 320kbit/sec MP3 because it delivers better fidelity than FM or internet radio can use and will save disk space over uncompressed WAV.

While the best possible sample rates and bit-depths in the archival file set for analog media (96,000 sample/sec 24-bit) are different from those for CDs (44,1000 sample/sec 16-bit), the play-from file set will come in a single and consistent format across all sources.

The above is our "best answer" for how CKUA can leverage digitization, which can probably only be afforded once, to satisfy their goals of not just streamlining day-to-day operations, but also sufficiently archiving their music library digitally and protecting it from any disaster that could result in the loss of the CDs or vinyl records themselves.

Any comments or questions are welcome as ever!

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