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Re: [ARSCLIST] CD-R question
I had a go-around on a related topic, about whether CDR's full of MP3's get more damaged from
over-time breakdown vs. audio CD's. My suggestion was that since data is packed tighter on an MP3 CD
due to the lossy-compression format of the data, a relatively small glitch in the CD would zap more
audio content. I was told this is not the case but was unconvinced by the argument -- which was
basically that both audio and data CD's have robust error correction and a glitch of the same
physical size would be correctable in both cases, or not. I still don't archive anything in a
lossy-compressed format.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard L. Hess" <arclists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2008 4:52 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] CD-R question
At 04:21 PM 2008-01-05, Howard Friedman wrote:
And are you saying that a 534 minute CD will not survive as long as an 80 minute CD, all other
things being equal?
That is an interesting question. I would suspect that the likelihood of the 80-minute CD being
useable is higher than the 534 minute CD because in 50 years someone will try and play both in a
CD player and when one plays and the other one doesn't they may assume that the one that doesn't
play is no good and dispose of it.
I realize that putting it into a PC drive and reading it would quickly educate the user, but I
fear the least-common denominator when it comes to technical savvy in at least some archives. Many
archivists try very hard to keep up with the technology, but archivist salaries are, sadly, rather
small in many places and their workload is heavy.
When tapes started to squeal, many got dumpstered as "unplayable" with no recovery attempt made.
So, I do think that it is not as safe to leave a non-mainstream CD around in an archive.
As to the survival of the two from a photo-chemical perspective, I think that Jerry has provided
information about what that depends on. Disc type, storage conditions, and quality fo writer are
all key.
The other thing to worry about with the compressed audio CD-ROM is that you will need to have the
proper codec to extract the compressed files. With WAV files, while you need a codec, it is the
simplest variety. MP3 will be decodable, I suspect, longer than many other formats.
Cheers,
Richard
Richard L. Hess email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Aurora, Ontario, Canada (905) 713 6733 1-877-TAPE-FIX
Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.