QUADRIGA - In depth

The use of conventional single carrier sound archives (e.g. tapes and records, or CDs and DATs) for broadcast, and for many other applications, includes a high labour cost component. Maintaining and protecting an audio archive in single carrier form also results in high maintenance costs. The transition from single sound media to 'eternal' data (i.e. digital audio files) provides solutions to both of these problems. Digital audio files can be stored in cost effective mass storage systems, reducing media costs and allowing multiple user access from virtually any location within or outside a facility.

Since 1999 QUADRIGA stands for highest quality and security in supervising the smooth transition from legacy media to digital audio archives. Initially developed in close cooperation with the Institute for Broadcast Technology (IRT), QUADRIGA soon became the world-wide standard as interface to audio archives. The practical, supervisual approach provides flexible solutions to many problems, and sophisticated technology unique to the system allows automated, quality controlled audio archival.

QUADRIGA Import-Modules enable simultaneous parallel ingest of audio material from up to eight devices in any desired combination: all types of sound media, including analog tapes, records, compact cassettes or DATs, can be captured on a single QUADRIGA workstation. You can freely decide for the amount and types of source devices. For example, you could control eight identical tape machines, or alternatively two 9-pin devices, two turntables, two cassette recorders and two DAT players at the same time.

The QUADRIGA Audio Analysis provides real-time inspection of the captured audio during recording and automatically produces detailed error reports and statistical information regarding the audio quality of the archived file. The automatic error detection includes clipping, clicks, hum, signal-to-noise ratio, azimuth/phase problems and many, many more.

The captured audio data can be stored in the standardized EBU Broadcast Wave (BWF) or RF64 file formats, among others, along with all related metadata and error reports inside the file. Additional metadata report files can be generated, and carefully laid-out XML Import/Export capabilities let QUADRIGA workstations easily become integrated with media asset management systems and other databases.