The ITU Radiocommunication Assembly considering a) that preservation of important sound programme recordings is essential and it forms an integral part of the activity of a broadcast organization; b) that a compromise may generally need to be found between archived sound quality, volume of the archive, speed of access to archived programmes, and number of work stations that can simultaneously access the archive; c) that recourse to digital audio servers, using Information Technology (IT) equipment, is currently a viable approach to an efficient archive of sound programmes; d) that the storage medium plays an important role in determining the life span of archive material; e) that the archival method may require audio coding parameters different from those required for the studio and for the emission of high-quality broadcast signals; f) that impairment to audio signals is minimized and the implementation of transcoding equipment is simplified if there is a simple relationship between the digital audio coding standards used for production, transmission, emission and archiving; g) that Recommendations on digital audio coding and bit-rate reduction standards are already available both for the studio and for the broadcast environment; h) that the quality of legacy recordings could be improved by using restoration techniques, which, with advancement in technologies, may undergo improvements, and this may require the preservation of the original recordin