What is IRENE?
- IRENE uses a non-contact, optical-scanning approach to digitize historical grooved audio formats such as lacquer discs and wax cylinders. Audio can be retrieved from fragile carriers without risk of groove wear, and from damaged and broken carriers that are otherwise unplayable.
Optical scanning is a process whereby the physical sound carrier is imaged at high resolution and preserved as a digital image file. This file may contain either a two-dimension photographic or three-dimension topographic rendering of the entire physical object. Once digital, the file may be analyzed and processed by software, in order to extract the audio and optionally apply restoration techniques in both the image and audio domain.
What does Project IRENE stand for? The title IRENE is a reference to the first audio that was produced by the imaging process from the disc “Goodnight Irene”, written by H.Ledbetter and J.Lomax and performed by the Weavers (1950) on a 78 rpm shellac disc. The acronym, as a result, is I.R.E.N.E— Image, Reconstruct, Erase Noise, Etc.