Case study reveals preservation strategies for proprietary digital audio workstation formats in archival collections, highlighting tradeoffs between isolated stems and mixed environments.
This presentation will describe challenges and considerations when archiving audio material from digital audio workstations, including proprietary software widely-used within the industry, using a case study from the Ahmad Jamal Archive. While processing Ahmad Jamal's audio media, we discovered a large number of files stored in outdated Pro Tools Studio formats. This proprietary software is widespread within the music industry, but is not a stable format for digital preservation. Preserving the accompanying audio files alone is also not enough to be able to hear them "in situ", arranged in the right order and with all the effects that were applied in the production software. Deciding how to handle these important files required gaining familiarity with new software and hardware, considering various ways these files might be used in the future, and embracing imperfect digital preservation. Our solution led us to an end result that allows the user to play the mixed audio as a snapshot in time, as well as listen to the individual stems, but what are we losing when transforming AV media out of its original format? How can we leave room for the remix-- that is, for the music to have a life beyond our archives?
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Silvan Elliot Maxwell (2026) studied this question.
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