On 13/05/06, Richard L. Hess wrote:
II. Sound engineers and technicians: [1] perceived needs for standards or "best practices" to facilitate sharing of preserved material,
We already have standards for audio files that provide a lot of benefit. I am seeing an attempt to use 24/96 as a standard for everything. While I agree that 24/96 (or I actually prefer 24/88.2) should be the norm for musical recordings, I see the uncritical application of this standard to voice recordings as a waste of money. I do not subscribe to the argument that disks are cheap - their management is not. If the difference in archiving the oral history archive is between 300 TB and 1 PB, there is a huge cost difference there, long-term.
I disagree here. The cost of management is basically a cost per item (or file). The number of bytes in a file has little effect.
As storage disks get bigger, the same number of files on the same number of disks can be of higher quality with no extra cost.
A high quality file might be at most six times the size of a low quality audio file. Now compare the change in disk capacity from the 5 1/4 inch floppies of 20 years ago to the DVDs of today.
There is also an argument in favour of high quality sound for oral histories. In the future it may well be possible to perform computer analysis of speech patterns, accents, and voiceprints which are not possible today. Oral history material will reveal many things to researchers which those who simply want a text transcript of the words have not considered.
how such standards/practices should be determined,
Both scientific testing and industry consensus
and how often they should be subject to review
Probably every five years or so. Perhaps more frequently at the cusps of technology.
and by whom;
Industry experts as well as scientists
Regards -- Don Cox doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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