Jean-Marc Fontaine

Jean-Marc Fontaine is a research engineer for the French Ministry of Culture.

ABSTRACT:
Jean-Marc Fontaine, research engineer for the French Ministry of Culture, leads research on sound recordings preservation and restoration at the Laboratoire d'Acoustique Musicale  (Universite Paris 6 / IJLRA  CNRS - Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, Paris). He has been in charge of research programs on preserving sound, audiovisual and multimedia documents within the Bibliothèque nationale de France for 20 years, and for the Ministry of Culture since 2000, implementing massive digitization programs. His research interest include preservation of different carriers of analogue recordings (cylinders, vinyl discs and magnetic tapes), audio signal extraction and signal processing restoration methods. His current research focuses on recordable optical discs, as preservation target carrier type.

Topic 1: Qualitative evaluation and physical description of restoration treatements of a Caruso recording (dated 1907) reedited on CDs
Our research focuses on sound information extraction from analogue carriers such as records and magnetic tapes to digital formats in order to preserve heritage recordings, i.e. MinistËre de la Cultureí collections. Obviously, this implies total absence of any restoration action (inevitably leading to original information transformation). However, communication and valorization of collections (more exactly copy exemplary to preserve original or original substitute recording) generally require "restoration" event by signal processing techniques in order to provide a "higher quality "document.
The present pluridisciplinary study aims to develop such an evaluation through the elaboration of an experimental protocol intended to determine how a diversity of audience appreciates different versions resulting from different "restoration" treatments from a single original musical recording.
As far as a subjective judgment is advocated, it implies the close collaboration of both cognitive scientists, mainly psychologists and linguists, and physicists, within a situated approach of cognition, as presently developed at LAM.

Topic 2: Archival on Optical Discs: Recordable Optical Discs ageing and durability
Digitization makes it possible to preserve huge amounts of data in compact and transportable (as Optical Discs) format. Anyway, the long-term preservation issue still has to be resolved. In theory, digital documents can be copied again and again ensuring an unlimited life span. But in practice we observe that material supports for digital information degrade at such a rate that the requirements for regular copies is very difficult to fulfil. There is a strong need for developing optical supports with guaranted long life spans in order to avoid that a large amount of the human digital heritage be doomed to deterioration and eventual disappearance. Archiving practice on Optical Discs is quite criticized. Hesitation, and even rejection judgment are formulated, rightly and wrongly. Optical discs & burners do not always benefit from the necessary strictness during manufacturing. When quality controls are in application by watchful users or service provider they are generally, not to say exclusively done with error rate measurement during playing process. But error rate measurements are revealing totally insufficient indicators to characterize discs, and even can be deceiptive. So determination of most relevant parameters (including error rate) describing original quality of discs and evolution during ageing is the main objective. This must be link with understanting chemical evolution of the disc. Considering suitable ability to conduct such programme, several organizations decide to create a Working Group.
So a Scientific Interest Grouping (GIS-DON), constituted by CNRS, the universities Pierre et Marie Curie and Blaise Pascal, and the Laboratoire National de MÈtrologie et d'Essais (LNE) has been formed recently in order to contribute to the national research policy on digital data preservation (Digital Optical Disc) under the auspices of the French Ministry of Culture, the French Ministry of Research and the French Ministry of Industry. Recently, the Laboratoire d'Electronique de Technologie de l'Information (CEA-LETI, Grenoble, France)