I saw the price list. How come you are so expensive?

This question is usually asked by consumers who have not done much in-depth “comparison shopping”. All the recording, restoration and remastering work is custom produced at our studios, one recording at a time, “by hand” and by highly qualified and experienced personnel. Unlike other low quality outfits, we do not have a button labeled “RESTORATION” or “REMASTERING” to push and apply uniformly to all recordings received. Just as the music is unique, each recording and each restoration job is unique. The variety of music types, recording techniques, recording sources and age, mechanical or electronic defects, are factors that combine into an infinitely large number of restoration techniques. Restoration is also a matter of taste and artistic choices. Only a highly qualified “human” can fit this job (not a piece of equipment called “restorer” or a $15 piece of software). Carefully handling the recordings (from unwrapping to re-wrapping) also needs to be done by “good quality humans” (if your recordings are important to you). It takes top (expensive) equipment and software to provide the technology to make the “Magic” possible. All these ingredients combine into a top quality product, judging from the enthusiastic feedback we have been receiving from our customers daily for the past 20 years. On a personal note, I shudder when I see on the Internet (or someone mentions on the phone) those unrealistically cheap audio and video transfer outfits. Almost every day we receive jobs that were first given to a cheap outfit and botched up. The client ends up paying twice for one transfer. The reality is: you get what you pay for! Sooner or later we all learn that.