Digitise sound recordings

Do you have sound recordings you want to be able to listen to long into the future?

We can create high-quality digital copies for you, suitable for long-term preservation.

We can work with collections of any size - from a single recording to a collection of hundreds. We'll also offer you advice and support with storing, packing and cataloguing your sound recordings.

Prices start at just £13.50 per item, and this income supports our wider work to preserve and share Norfolk's archives.

Supported formats

We can create digital copies of the following formats:

Compact cassettes
Mini-cassettes
Micro-cassettes
Coarse groove instantaneous discs, sometimes referred to as lacquers, acetates, or transcription discs)
Coarse groove replicated discs, sometimes referred to as 78s or shellacs
Microgroove discs, sometimes referred to as LPs, singles, vinyl
MiniDisc
DATs (Digital Audio Tapes)
Audio CDs (published or CD-R/CD-RWs)
Quarter inch audio tape. This includes:
- A variety of playback speeds - from 15/16 inches per second to 30 inches per second
- A variety of track configurations - like full track mono, half-track, quarter-track, and four-track

The range of formats we can digitise is expanding all the time - so please get in touch even if your format isn't listed above. We can also help you identify what media your recordings are stored on if you're not sure.

Why digitise sound recordings?

Physical media used to store sound recordings decays over time. It's also becoming more difficult to keep aging audio equipment working, even when it's of good quality. This means it can eventually become impossible to listen to or extract recordings stored on formats like cassettes, CDs and MiniDiscs.

Experts at the British Library recommend digitising recordings stored on physical media as soon as possible. This will safely preserve your recordings for the future, and open up unlimited possibilities for accessing and sharing them.

Why choose our sound preservation service?

Learn how the Norfolk Record Office can help preserve your historical sound recordings in this short video.

We have more than 20 years' experience of preserving sound recordings.

As well as work on our own collections, we've also worked on recordings from other organisations including:

Churchill Archives Centre
The British Antarctic Survey
Suffolk Record Office
Britten Pears Arts
Cambridge University Library

We look after any recordings loaned to us as if they were part of our own collections, and we're happy to talk you through the preservation process.

If you're not local, we can help with transporting your recordings to our office in Norfolk.

Support for this service

We're able to offer this service because of the Unlocking Our Sound Heritage Project. The project was led by the British Library and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.