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Re: [ARSCLIST] CD-R question
Richard (and more so to Mr. Friedman),
Do we have any concrete expectations that CD drives will be available
in 50 years? Please point me to the information that guarantees that,
I would be happy to be reassured that CD drives will be available
then. I tend to be much more pessimistic about hardware/ software
availability given the 50-year target mentioned.
I think the context of Howard's question - "all other things being
equal" is a gamble at best.
So, I do think that it is not as safe to leave a non-mainstream CD
around in an archive.
I agree with your statement wholeheartedly.
Best,
John
John Spencer
BMS/ Chace LLC
1801 8th Ave. S. Suite 200
Nashville, TN 37203
office (615) 385-1251
fax (615) 385-0153
cell (615) 714-1199
email: jspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxx
web: www.bmschace.com
On Jan 5, 2008, at 3:52 PM, Richard L. Hess wrote:
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.