Re: [ARSCLIST] Digital Audio Preservation Question

[Brandon Burke <burke@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tom,

Converting an accessioned archival MP3 file to WAV doesn't, in an of itself,
mean creating
a 24/96 derivative. And it sounds to me like you're jumping to that
conclusion.

In this case (Martha's original point), the issue is readability in the
future: 10, 20, 50 years down
the road. Of course, my guess is as good as anyone else's here but, i think
conversion to WAV
(16/44.1) still sounds like a pretty good idea..

Brandon.



Right, Richard, I read the original post. I was commenting about lossy
> formats in general.
>
> As for the original poster's specific question, I don't see any benefit in
> blowing up an already inferior file, but I'd make several extra copies in
> different places on the theory that one bad sector could destroy an MP3 file
> whereas it might only cause a fixable glitch in a WAV file due to the much
> denser info-pack of the MP3 (ie what's left after the lossy compression
> packs more audio linear time into fewer hard drive sectors than if the file
> had been left full WAV). However, there's equal probability that the sector
> that will fail first will be the file table so the whole drive is rendered
> damaged, perhaps fatally. So it's a gray area. It all comes down to many
> copies in many places as far as digital storage but as far as audio quality,
> I believe there is no good argument that lossy compression is ever a good
> idea with archival versions of things.
>
> -- Tom Fine
>