Recipients of ARSC's
Independent Initiatives Award, 2026
T. Christopher Aplin
Architect of a tribe-centered model
for preserving and reintroducing imperiled Native American audio recordings
For more than two decades, T. Christopher Aplin has pursued independent, community-based initiatives to preserve imperiled Native American sound recordings and return them to their communities of origin. Working most closely with the Fort Sill Chiricahua/Warm Springs Apache, he has developed methods for identifying, prioritizing, and preserving recordings that document the community's stories, language, and music, with particular emphasis on supporting language revitalization and cultural continuity.
Aplin’s work is distinguished by its dedication to building tribal capacity. Working largely outside formal institutional structures, he trains community members to steward their own recordings, sustain their own collections, and develop tribe-centered digital repositories. In reaction to the clawback of a major grant, Aplin seeks to advance this work through grassroots fundraising and collaborative partnerships with the goal of expanding this model across Oklahoma and ultimately to tribal communities nationwide. His initiative demonstrates how tribes can be empowered to control, interpret, and sustain their recorded audio heritage.
T. Christopher Aplin is an ethnomusicologist whose work centers on the documentation, preservation, and interpretation of Native American music and language as preserved in historical sound recordings. Currently an Affiliated Scholar with the University of Oklahoma Center for Applied Social Research, he is writing a book on the music of the Apache prisoners of war taken with Geronimo in 1886.
Nicholas Bergh
Developer of state-of-the-art platforms
enabling preservation transfers of unprecedented fidelity
Transferring a signal from the physical world into the digital domain is the first and most consequential act of audio preservation. In this mechanical realm, the inviolable laws of physics determine what can and cannot be recovered—and with what fidelity. The cylinder is among the most physically imperfect sound carriers and therefore one of the most challenging to transfer well. A self-described “sucker for the impossible,” Nicholas Bergh set out in 2017 to “build a cylinder player with the mechanical specs of the best turntable.” From that improbable ambition emerged the Endpoint—a platform now encompassing other demanding formats, including Dictabelts, Magnabelts, and wires. The Endpoint extracts levels of sonic fidelity from these media once thought unreachable.
Bergh studies the first century of sound recording and playback through his extensive technical library and private museum of carefully restored historical equipment—from early wax cylinders, to a reconstructed 1925 Western Electric recording system, to rebuilt studio gear from Hollywood’s golden age. From these artifacts he learns how earlier technologies worked—and, just as importantly, what they were capable of achieving. For audiences ranging from schoolchildren to studio executives, he demonstrates how recorded sound has been heard across time. Together, these initiatives exemplify how an individual’s obsession with precision and uncompromising pursuit of accuracy can materially advance the field of audio preservation.
Nicholas Bergh has worked in sound preservation and restoration for nearly 30 years. He founded Endpoint Audio Labs in 2003. He holds a B.A. and M.A. in Ethnomusicology from UCLA where he specialized in the history of recording technology and sound archiving.
Henri Chamoux
Inventor of the first widely adopted professional cylinder transfer platform
and operator of a public website providing access to thousands of the world’s oldest sound recordings
For years Henri Chamoux has been celebrated for his Archéophone—the "Swiss Army knife" of cylinder transfer platforms in use in sound archives and private collections around the world. Yet his independent initiatives extend far beyond that singular contribution. His decades-long commitment to early sound recordings reflects a sustained belief that preservation is not merely a technical act, but an intellectual and cultural responsibility.
That ethos finds its clearest expression in Phonobase, his website through which visitors can explore and study more than 16,000 early European sound recordings. Alongside this work, Chamoux has undertaken wide-ranging independent and institutional projects to identify rare and fragile collections, develop methods for preserving and digitizing their content, and carry out large-scale transfers for public access—most notably the complete digitization of the Dictabelt recordings of Nelson Mandela’s 230-hour Rivonia trial. His continuing expansion of Phonobase promises to be as consequential as the contributions already realized.
Henri Chamoux designed the Archéophone in 1998. In 2015 he completed his PhD in History on the early French phonograph industry. He is an engineer at LARHRA, a public research laboratory, and serves on the board of the organization that supports the Phono Museum Paris.
Database of Early Gramophone Records & Phonograph Cylinders
Latest additions to Phonobase
The many adventures of the Archéophone