Re: [ARSCLIST] Storing Mini-Discs

["McCormick, Kathleen" <kmccormi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks to everyone for the interesting discussion. Certainly, many things to think about. 

I suppose I should rephrase my original question slightly or perhaps better explain what I was getting at....

We transfer the content of all MD to gold archival CD and to cassette tape (currently part of the process for transcription reasons, although in the next year or so we will be moving away from this practice as we upgrade equipment & software). My plan in the next couple of years will also involve creating wav files for long term storage. 

My question about the MD was more of a practical than theoretical one (although, as I said earlier there are definitely some things to think about with the MDs that I can use to make the case to move away from using them for original recordings). From the discussion, I gather the consensus is it's not worth buying archival quality boxes to store the original recordings in (sure we may have transferred the content of the recordings but for a number of reasons I am not inclined to junk or disregard the originals until they demonstrate actual degradation). 

How are people storing MDs? Or is it that everyone is junking them once a transfer has been done?

Katie McCormick

Reference Archivist and 
Coordinator for the Oral History Program
Special Collections - J. Murrey Atkins Library
UNC Charlotte
9201 University City Blvd
Charlotte, NC 28223-0001
 
704-687-6288
kmccormi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx


-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List [mailto:ARSCLIST@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Lou Judson
Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2005 7:51 PM
To: ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Storing Mini-Discs

Too True!

Lou Judson * Intuitive Audio
415-883-2689

On Oct 13, 2005, at 4:17 PM, Tom Fine wrote:

> MD's got a big strike against it: the proprietary perceptual encoding. 
> So
> only MD equipment can read and decode it. How many MD players have been
> built and sold and how many will be around in 50 years, and of those, 
> how
> many will work?
>
> Newest version of MD will record WAV files, which is a Good Thing but I
> think the data pack is tighter. I'd never archive to a format that 
> needs
> both hardware and decoding software to play it and is obscure enough 
> that
> the players are far from ubiquitous in their heyday.
>
> One man's opinion, YMMV, etc.
>
> -- Tom Fine