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Purpose - This paper examines the metadata practices of various types of memory institutions digitizing audio documents. Sound cultural heritage is not under the responsibility of any one Czech national memory institution to identify, describe, collect and preserve it, and so its digitization is carried out in different ways in different types of institutions. The theoretical basis of the present research study is the memory practices of G. C. Bowker. Through their perspective, we observe how the societal memory, represented as a digitized sound recording, is stored. Design / methodology / approach - Information on metadata practices was gathered through an online survey and from content analysis of a metadata sample. Four archives, two libraries, one museum, and one research organization participated in the research from a total of 20 contacted relevant institutions. Results - Memory institutions are building their digital collections and holdings based on two different variants of the modern concept of time. These are reflected both in their different missions and in the subsequent application of metadata practices and standards. The deterministic mechanical conception forms the computer memory regime; the transformative conception forms the database memory regime. Standards and rules for describing audio documents are as diverse as the mission of memory institutions, but again, one or the other variant of the concept of time can be identified behind them. Universal among institutions is the desire to preserve provenance information. The preservation of provenance information of the original physical media is widespread, involving in particular identification and basic description; context relating to specific features of the recording is more rarely preserved. The authenticity of digital documents does not receive much attention from memory institutions; the actual process of transformation of a digital document after digitization is unrecorded. Despite the fact that memory institutions digitize holdings primarily for research use, they do not create sufficient conditions for quality digital research. Originality / value - The paper highlights the importance of preserving provenance and contextual information about digitized sound documents, which is central not only to confirm the authenticity of the recording, but also to reconstruct historical events related to music and sound and to the establishment of the sound industry in our country. The paper also opens a perspective on the theory of memory practices that have not been introduced in the Czech environment yet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]