Re: arsclist reel to reel player/recorder

[Don Cox <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 13-Jun-01, Doug Pomeroy wrote:

>> The problem is getting from one to the other without losing
>> information.
> 
> What does this mean? Why should there be a loss? I havn't read
> Watkinson's book, so maybe the answer is there. My understanding is
> that the advantage of digital is precisely that program can be
> migrated *without* loss of info, error correction being extremely
> robust. Contrast that with analog tape, where frequency-response and
> phase variations are *invariably* imposed with every copy, not to
> mention the matter of added tape hiss and modulation noise.

Once you have a digital signal, you can copy it repeatedly with no loss.
If you start processing it in the digital domain, there may be problems
with aliasing. 

Analogue signals, as everyone knows, degrade with each stage of copying. 
So do any digital signals on which lossy compression has been used (MP3, 
Minidisc, etc), but nobody would use those for archiving.

What I am saying is that, given an old tape or disc, playing it back so
that nothing is lost is hard, and converting from analogue to digital
without losing more is also hard.  This is what other people have said
in their mails.

Regards
-- 
Don Cox
doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx