Recording Osho's discourses on audio and video

 This page is under construction, KEEP OUT. --Sugit (talk) 16:27, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

to do

Check Osho Source Book on audio and video
Check OshoNews on audio and video
Add audio material from Editing of sources

Introduction

This page describes the recording of Osho's discourses and interviews, and the various conversions and editing-processes that have occurred. This has resulted in several editions of the audio and video recordings existing next to each other.

This is based on accounts given by Sw Jalal, the main audio technician from 1979 to 1995, in E-mails from 28 June 2019 to 28 April 2020.

It also describes what is known about changes to the content of the audio. Up until about 2005 audio quality was being ameliorated, but content seems to have remained largely unchanged. Well, that is apart from occasional cuts made on the orders of Ma Anand Sheela, including one "lost" tape.

But from the audio edition of about 2010, systematic changes to the content are being made.

Recording

Pre 1974, Lecturing to mass-audiences throughout India; Bombay: Recording was done by various people around India (including Laheru, see his Blessed Moments with Osho).; Recording tape was on cassette and small tape reels (1/4 inch mainly at (xxx something missing here, see mail from Jalal 21-4-2020 18:30GMT)

1974-79 Poona 1: Recording was done by Ashvagosha and Pratik; There were occasional video recordings done by outside people. Most footage from this time was film footage.

1979-81 Poona 1 continued: Recording of audio was done by Hasibo and Jalal; Recording of video was done by Mutribo, Harp, Premraj; Recording was done on 10inch reels, 1/2 inch tape (Ampex 456, BASF) at 7.5ips on a Nagra IS [1] with a backup cassette on a Nakamichi 550.; Video was recorded on U-Matic recorders. Early tapes had a maximum recorded time of 20 minutes.

1982-85 Ranch: xxx I changed 1983 to 1981 to include video recording of celebrations etc); Recording of audio was done by Premartha, Arpito Hans and others; Recording of video was done by Mutribo, Harp and others; From 1983 to 1986 audio was recorded on PCM coded VHS cassette (first digital recording). There was also reel to reel recording that was used for the cassette masters.; From 1983 to 1986 video was recorded on U-matic tapes.

1986 World Tour: Recording of audio and video was done by Niskriya and others

1987-90 Poona 2: Recording of audio was done by Jalal; Recording of video was done by Niskriya, Bikkhu; From 1986 to 1990 recording was on Betamax for both video and audio (digital) (xxx check)

Throughout the period 1974-94 there were full notes kept of what was done by whom. The archive project information was kept on computer and I have that, but all before that was written in notebooks. I know the notebooks survived for a while (they traveled to the Ranch and back to Pune 2 I think) but then I lost track of them. Probably mouldering somewhere in a basement.

Conversions

Jalal: There have been various copying and archiving setups over the years.
Poona 1: 1/2 inch tape was copied on to a cassette master from a TEAC reel machine to a Nakamichi cassette deck. I think two cassette masters were made, one for production, one for storage/backup.; 90 minute discourses fitted on one C90 cassette, otherwise "third sides" were put on to a second C90 cassette.; These were then duplicated on Telex tape duplicators for sale in the shop and for sending out to centers abroad.

Ranch: Discourses recorded on reel to reel (as per Pune 1), cassette back up and PCM digital audio on VHS tapes. Reel to reels mastered down to cassettes and duplicated for sale and centers.

World Tour: Not known, video on U-Matic, audio probably taken from there.

Poona 2: All audio recording done on Super Beta and Betamax video tapes with digital audio. Audio was pulled off to make cassette tapes for sale and for centers.

Remastering/archiving

It's quite a bit more complex than the source information and I'm not sure where to start. Plus there are gaps in my knowledge (and my memory) so I need to get in touch with other people.

Let me give a couple examples of the journey a recording may take through time.

A Pune 1 recording made in 1980 or so. This would have been recorded on Ampex tape and mastered down on to cassettes. The original Ampex was then transported over to the Ranch in 1981 where it was stored in Zarathustra. After the Ranch, it was transported over to Zurich where it went in to a storage facility there. At some point (end of the 80's) it went through the first reprocessing with Hasibo in Zurich. This had some urgency due to some technical problems with the tape, see below (*1) and (*2). After the baking process and replay on the tape machine, the original master tape was basically unusable (in many cases) and went back into storage. The remastered VHS also went into back in to storage.
In Pune 2, the main recording was done on the video tapes (although backup live cassettes were also made) on Betamax. This allowed for an analog track and four digital audio tracks. Two master tapes were recorded live, one was used for remastering the discourse to cassette for sale and distribution to the centers. I'm not sure, but I think one master was sent off to Cologne. The other stayed in Pune.

The Audio Video remastering project was started in 1993 in London at a studio called Diva Ltd. This had a staff of about 8-9 people and a whole bunch of equipment. All tapes were gathered in FTS Storage in London. In Diva we remastered the audio and video tapes to digital format (D2 tape format). Sound processing was done by the latest technology, the CEDAR system [2]. The audio tapes were remastered on to DAT format with one track storing the original sound, the other track with the cleaned up sound.

As well as the remastering of all the tapes, we also created copies to be sent to the Archive purchasers (*3)

After Diva Ltd went insolvent, the remastering and archiving passed to Masterzone Ltd (London) until completion.

Concurrent with this, there were also tape duplication happening in Cologne, in Osho UTA.

The next I came across the remastering process was in 2007 when I was in Pune and was invited to come and share my expertise with the Audio remastering project that was happening in Mirdad. :They had the DAT tapes archive (from London) and were 'cleaning them up' (*4). We also had meetings and discussed converting them all to MP3 and/or FLAC format for long term storage and possibly for sale. I'm not sure how that progressed as I've had no contact since then.

notes: (*1) Technical problems with Ampex tapes. The Ampex tapes had been manufactured with a binder that started to disintegrate after a decade or so, and also became sticky. This meant that the recordings from the late 80's needed to be treated. This involved 'baking' in an oven to dry out the tape enough that it could be passed through a tape machine and recorded on to PCM encoded VHS tapes (or DAT???) at the same time as trying to run them through a signal processor. This was before computer based DSP, so was analog noise reduction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky-shed_syndrome

(*2) In general, magnetic tapes on a spool suffer from print-through, where one layer of tape will effect the next layer. This is why so many discourses from that time have a strange delay (or precog) of up to a second or so. In a professional studio all tapes will be rewound every year or so to make sure that this didn't happen, or at least to mitigate the effect. This wasn't done.

(*3) At the time of remastering, the Archive purchasers were in: London, Berlin, Pune, Cologne, Sweden, Columbia, USA (LA), Korea, Japan, Switzerland.

However, I think this may have changed before final shipping

(*4) Note about improving sound quality. When working on an audio recording it's normal to do A/B comparison to check that the voice is not degraded too much. It is possible to take out so much noise that the voice will sound alien. So, take out just the right amount of noise to improve the recording but without effecting the quality of the voice. To do this we would A/B switch between source and output to find the right balance.

The problem is, in 10 years time, someone repeats this with the processed audio, this time B/C, to get a cleaner recording, but with further voice quality distortion and, in some cases, this is repeated (C/D) again a decade later. So the final result is a sound that would not be acceptable if you compared it to the original, but as that never happens, it is considered OK.

Editions

How to identify and name the different editions?

#	When	Edition name	Location of the originals	By
1	throughout	Original master tape (Reel, Digital PCM, Betamax audio track)	New York (probably)	?
2	throughout	Distribution tape (*1) (Pune 1 & Ranch: cassette; Pune 2: S-VHS audio track)	Everywhere	?
3	1993-96 (*2)	London remaster (*3) (first digital)	11 remastered archives around the world	Loki, Jalal, Michel, many others
4	ca.2005-10	Resort 2000 remaster (*4) (digital)	Pune resort	?

notes: (*1) Distribution tape: we could call it First Generation tape or master cassette. After a discourse, the Master tape was taken up to the studio and checked, copied down to a master cassette which was duplicated for sale. Sometimes there were more than one master cassette.

(*2) xxx check the start-year with OMT data

(*3) The London remaster-edition can be recognized by it's intro, always spoken by Amrito. It does not have any extra music.

"Osho, <Series-title>, <Series-subtitle>, given at <venue> <place> <country>, discourse number <number>"

(*4) The Resort 2000 remaster-edition can be recognized by it's copyright statement at the end "1953 to 2003". The intro and outro have soothing elevator muzak around it. The intro is spoken by Amrito, or for Hindi audios a Hindi speaker:

"An Osho talk, <series-title>, <series-subtitle>, number <number>"

Content editing

Jalal: As far as I recall, there was no editing of the audio in Pune 1. Many people would only buy the main cassette of a discourse (and not the third) so would miss the end of the discourse....

During the Ranch, the discourses were occasionally edited, mainly for legal reasons. The PCM digital audio on VHS could not be edited, so when in doubt, these were definitive. And there is of course the infamous "missing tape" from Dec 19 1984, which was destroyed.

In Poona 2, as far as I am aware, none of the original Betamax video tapes were edited. Sometimes Osho requested that we change something in the recording but this was rarely possible and is somewhat obvious when it was attempted.

All of the above cover the original source recording of the audio (and duplication for sales). This all happened before 1990 (of course) and most of the archiving has been since.

Instructions for content editing came from Amrito, and possibly from Klaus Steeg (Pramod).

Editor: we have listened to many Resort 2000 remaster-audios now. This is what we hear:

In many places, at the beginning of a question, also and often in the middle of the discourses, the word "Bhagwan" has been systematically edited out. Possibly all of them.

In many places the names of sannyasins, i.e. the one who asked the question and is referenced by Osho, has been edited out. Possibly all of them.

We do not know yet if there are other edits, but there could be.

What we have seen so far is that when there is a specific discussion about "Bhagwan", then that has been retained. Of course, not all has been checked.

If you, dear reader, know of any edits, please let us know, with name of the audio and the exact time where it occurs.

see also: Editing of sources