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Re: [ARSCLIST] CD-R question
Happy New Year to you as well, Tom!
You made the following statement:
Now, there's also the argument that magnetic tape and grooved disks
are technologies that can be replicated with mid-20th century level
or older technologies whereas CD playback is, well, somewhat akin
to rocket science.
I could not agree more. Much easier to reverse-engineer disks and tapes.
But, 5" discs got another leg with the DVD medium and they might
get yet another fresh wind with hi-def discs. Blowing the other way
is the wind of downloads and iPods -- where there are not physical
mass media but rather computer files transmitted over the Internet
and then perhaps around homes to media-less playback systems. I
don't doubt the future is one without packaged physical mass media
for audio and video content, but it's not all there yet and the
installed and owned base of 5" discs is enormous (I _think_ that
more CD's were sold worldwide so far than all mesaured sales of all
LPs since 1949 -- and that's not counting the fact that there might
be a 1:1 ratio or greater of pressed CD's to legal or illegal
copies that are essentially bit-by-bit replicas). Plus, as of now
the quality of the 5" disc media is usually better than what you
can get over the ether on your media-less playback system (that
will not be true forever, indeed hopefully not for much longer).
Here's where we diverge on opinion - there are currently (I think) 13
DVD specs (at least 6 of which are not recognized by the DVD patent-
holder consortium), and now we have blu-ray and DVD-HD - a battle on
many levels (one is the movie studios desire to continue to have a
physical disc to sell that is not easily copied). This convoluted
"soup" of formats (notwithstanding patent issues) does not convince
me that the life of the CD will be greatly enhanced.
Plus, as of now the quality of the 5" disc media is usually better
than what you can get over the ether on your media-less playback
system (that will not be true forever, indeed hopefully not for
much longer).
The quality of the music may be better, but the quality of the media
(as evidenced by the dumping of crappy CD-R media in every store,
from Wal-Mart to Walgreens) does not relieve my confidence.
I, probably like many others, have no idea how we will get music in
the future (streaming, subscriptions, downloads, mind-melds -just
kidding on that one), but I think the original question was should
there be a "comfort level" with CD playback 50 years in the future.
Irrespective of the life of the media, I just get worried over these
generalizations.
Best regards,
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 8:15 PM, Tom Fine wrote:
You could think, once a medium goes out of "mass" status, how many
years until all the playback equipment dies and nothing new is
being made? Well, when exactly? LPs haven't been a mass medium for
almost 2 decades now. Still plenty of turntables and cartridges
available and the LP medium has a healthy niche (some could argue
more economically viable than most CD releases). How about
cassettes? They seem to be a quicker-to-the-grave medium. CD's
passed cassettes in I believe the early 90's. But cassettes are
still a mass medium in some parts of the 3rd world. You can still
buy a variety of cassette decks and walkmans:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_kk_1?ie=UTF8&search-alias=audio-
video&field-keywords=cassette%20player
Now, there's also the argument that magnetic tape and grooved disks
are technologies that can be replicated with mid-20th century level
or older technologies whereas CD playback is, well, somewhat akin
to rocket science.
But, 5" discs got another leg with the DVD medium and they might
get yet another fresh wind with hi-def discs. Blowing the other way
is the wind of downloads and iPods -- where there are not physical
mass media but rather computer files transmitted over the Internet
and then perhaps around homes to media-less playback systems. I
don't doubt the future is one without packaged physical mass media
for audio and video content, but it's not all there yet and the
installed and owned base of 5" discs is enormous (I _think_ that
more CD's were sold worldwide so far than all mesaured sales of all
LPs since 1949 -- and that's not counting the fact that there might
be a 1:1 ratio or greater of pressed CD's to legal or illegal
copies that are essentially bit-by-bit replicas). Plus, as of now
the quality of the 5" disc media is usually better than what you
can get over the ether on your media-less playback system (that
will not be true forever, indeed hopefully not for much longer).
So bottom line, I'll give the 5" discs another 50 years of
viability but I don't think they will be the dominant mass medium
in the "first world" for too much longer -- and I think the places
still cassette-dominant will leapfrog over the 5" disc media and go
right to the over-ether media-less model. For what it's worth, I
have a 1986 CD player that still works just fine. To my great joy,
it was designed future-looking enough to be able to play most CDR
media. The make is Teac and the price was not very high when I
bought it as a poor college kid blowing some summer loot, so this
was no high-grade special machine in its day. My point is, 20-year-
old CD technology works fine in a modern context. I have no reason
to believe my 2005 vintage Marantz SACD/DVD/CD player won't work in
20 years. That would get past the 50-year-viability mark for the CD
medium (introduced 1982) and I betcha 5" disc players will be
rolling off Asian assembly lines for at least another decade,
probably longer.
Let me just add that I think managed hard-drive-based archiving is
a better idea nowadays and will be an ever-better idea as the
storage media get cheaper, denser and hopefully more reliable.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard L. Hess"
<arclists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2008 8:36 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] CD-R question
At 08:11 PM 2008-01-05, John Spencer wrote:
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.
Hi, John,
Happy New Year!
I think we'll be in as good or better shape playing back CDs in 50
years as we will be playing back reel tapes in 35-40 years which
is approx the 50-year time frame that LoC was still advocating
transfers to 2-track tapes.
There are just too many, and they're not going to all break.
As with any media, as the supply of machines dries up it's the
archive's responsibility to migrate/reformat before they cannot. I
think we've had this discussion before <smile>.
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.