Charles A Taylor wrote: > From what I infer from the back-and-forth about my question, I suppose > that converting analog audio into a purely data form is most advantageous. > > From my point of view, I want my 29 years of IDs to be stored in a form > that economizes in media space.
One quick thought on this before I head downstairs for dinner - Especially when you're dealing with material that's as valuable (at least sentimentally, and in this case historically, too) as these tapes are, it's probably not a bad idea to approach a project like this with three questions: 1. How do I get the material into a form that's usable for me now? This argues for digitization, probably as high-bitrate MP3s that would take up half a dozen CDs or so if stored as data. Use those as the "day-to-day" listening copies, make dupes to send to all your fellow DXers to enjoy, post 'em on the web, what have you. 2. How do I preserve the content in the highest possible quality for future use? Data storage is cheap right now, and getting ever cheaper, so dubbing the cassettes to digital can and should be done in as lossless a manner as possible. Even high-bitrate MP3 compression (256 or 320K) still isn't quite as good as the original, so if I were doing a project like this with a relatively small number of original tapes, I'd be sure to save the material SOMEWHERE as uncompressed .wav files. That will still only take 20-30 CDs or a half-dozen DVDs, which amounts to a couple of bucks in blank media costs these days. Or you could store them on a hard drive, which would cost a bit more but might last longer. 3. What do I do with the originals? You never know when better technology is going to come along, so as long as the original cassettes remain playable, I'd keep them. There are a lot of people who copied their 8mm home videos from film to VHS in the eighties and early nineties, and you know what? Twenty years later, the film has often held up better than the VHS tapes, assuming it's been kept at all. And if you wanted to have a nice usable DVD dub of those films, it would look MUCH better if it's first-generation from the film, rather than second-generation from an aging VHS transfer that might not have been done all that well in the first place. The technology for dubbing audio is much better, so I'd have a little more confidence about discarding the cassettes at the end, but if it's just one box with 30 tapes in it, I'd keep it, if it were me. (He said, contemplating the closet behind him with 2000+ aircheck cassettes that will need to have something done with them sooner or later...) s _______________________________________________ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com
