Record Industry's Digital Storage Crisis: Rolling Stone Magazine

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I'd imagine that most newer "hits" recorded on digital must be backed up several times. But at some point something will be lost, forever.
 
i'm hoping to be archiving my old digital DA-88 tapes from the mid-90's this winter.... we'll see how it goes.:eek:
 
Funny...in both articles, they never really describe why/how digital media becomes destroyed/corrupt over time...they just say that it does...???

And....they don't say which type of digital media they are actually talking about...magnetic or optical...???
 
Bottom line is analog is more reliable then digital. What a surprise
 
That happened to me twice. Granted I'm not a label artist who's sold anything. And it happened on a Tascam and a PC at two different times. And it was demo stuff. Recorded in a poolhouse and a spare bedroom that only a few dozen people cared about... :p but still it sucks
 
miroslav said:
Funny...in both articles, they never really describe why/how digital media becomes destroyed/corrupt over time...they just say that it does...???

And....they don't say which type of digital media they are actually talking about...magnetic or optical...???
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It doesn't necessarily get destroyed. The technology for reading it is just no longer available.

I had a data restoration job just a couple of months ago. A museum inherited the legacy of an author. Paper wasn't a problem, but some of the unpublished work was on 5.25" floppies. They tried reading those on a PC, but the disk format preceded the PC. It was from an IBM Visiotext word processor. Originally, these had 8" floppies, but this machine probably had the data transferred via an IBM36 to 5.25". I have a fair stock of old drives, but the only two able to read that format came from a Commodore 64 and a very first PC drive, the TEAC55. The C64 drive needed a custom interface. Fortunately, a geek in Germany makes a USB adapter for CS4 drives.

Because of the efforts they had put in on the new PC drives, the data had been damaged. Since it was text, I was able to reconstruct most of it. If the data had been of a more complex kind, such as digital audio or video, the loss would probably have been much more important.

And the same goes for the first MFM harddisks. Even if you find an MFM controller, you also need the old computer and OS to run it from. That's the big danger with dedicated hardware that doesn't adhere to standards. And that happens a lot because the standards were a later development.

Another thing: old paper can last for thousands of years. But the knowledge needed to make that kind of paper, has disappeared. Modern paper lasts hardly two to three centuries. And lower quality modern paper doesn't even last a century. The same goes for modern paint. So it's not purely a digital problem.
 
Bottom line is analog is more reliable then digital. What a surprise
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No it isn't. Magnetic tape fades. I have tapes from 25 years ago. Some are still very good, others are almost blank. Same tape, same age, same recorder, same storage...
 
dodgeaspen said:
Bottom line is analog is more reliable then digital. What a surprise
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Back in 1992, I looked at reels of tape that my Dad had had for years, some since the late 50s/early 60s. They were transparent ! Literally. You could see through them. I got something of a shock. I then realized all those stories about Queen recording so much on 24 track tape that it went transparent (during Queen 2) weren't just pop fantasy.
I've had negative experiences with storage both digital and analog. Neither is foolproof. Even our memories fade eventually ~ and so do we........
 
cyrano said:
It doesn't necessarily get destroyed. The technology for reading it is just no longer available.
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I assumed that's what they really meant to say...but the implication in the articles was that the digital medium is not reliable for storage, which paints a different picture than saying plainly it's the lack of proper players/readers that can make digital unreliable.

So the real question then...if you have/keep players/readers for each type, which is more reliable, analog or digital...and which kind of analog or digital format?

Heck...I've got 4-track 1/4" tapes from the late 70s, but if I no longer have a 4-track player, then those tapes are useless to me, same as if I had CDs but no CD player. :(

I just thought both articles were rather lame in that they failed to clarify any of these details...and instead chose to simply feed hype. :rolleyes:
 
miroslav said:
I just thought both articles were rather lame in that they failed to clarify any of these details...and instead chose to simply feed hype. :rolleyes:
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This is the same feeling I got only I thought maybe I missed something but couldn't be bothered reading it again. I felt as though they were talking about digital storage on magnetic tape rather than optic drives for most of the article as well but once again, they was very little clarification.
 
I understand about the updating technology and therefore certain file/media types becoming outdated and needing antiquated equipment to read them. I think they were referencing that as well. But I also think they were getting at the fact that when a digital file is corrupt or damaged, then it's basically gone, and you have absolutely nothing left (for the most part --- I'm sure there are some exceptions). And this is only about 25 years into the game.

Obvioulsy backing up any type of art or data is never foolproof. Analog masters could be destroyed by fires, etc., or I suppose the tape itself could just age and fade. I've personally never had that problems. I still have four-track cassette tapes that I recorded when I first started in the mid-eighties, and the music on them still sounds just as shitty as when I first recorded it. :) And that's with no thought given to storage whatsoever. I imagine that analog masters of important albums are in pretty good hands.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that analog masters will last forever. It does make sense to me though that it's a more robust storage medium in that it's simply harder to do damage to the whole thing (unless you do something like store it next to your magnet collection or something). I mean, you could jump up and down on a cassette tape and smash the casing to bits or slice and dice a R2R tape to bits and still probably be able to retrieve just about everything on those tapes, whereas if you did the same thing to a CD or hard drive, you'd be SOL. (Obviously magnets are the achilles' heel of analog.)

I dunno ... I don't mean to get on a big digital bashing session. I think it's awesome for certain things. I just don't prefer it when it comes to music.
 
famous beagle said:
I understand about the updating technology and therefore certain file/media types becoming outdated and needing antiquated equipment to read them. I think they were referencing that as well. But I also think they were getting at the fact that when a digital file is corrupt or damaged, then it's basically gone, and you have absolutely nothing left (for the most part --- I'm sure there are some exceptions). And this is only about 25 years into the game.
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Some digital files can be restored if not badly damaged. That is an obvious advantage. And every copy is as good as the original - another BIG advantage.

So, yes, I think the article isn't really to the point.

Obvioulsy backing up any type of art or data is never foolproof. Analog masters could be destroyed by fires, etc., or I suppose the tape itself could just age and fade. I've personally never had that problems. I still have four-track cassette tapes that I recorded when I first started in the mid-eighties, and the music on them still sounds just as shitty as when I first recorded it. :) And that's with no thought given to storage whatsoever. I imagine that analog masters of important albums are in pretty good hands.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that analog masters will last forever. It does make sense to me though that it's a more robust storage medium in that it's simply harder to do damage to the whole thing (unless you do something like store it next to your magnet collection or something). I mean, you could jump up and down on a cassette tape and smash the casing to bits or slice and dice a R2R tape to bits and still probably be able to retrieve just about everything on those tapes, whereas if you did the same thing to a CD or hard drive, you'd be SOL. (Obviously magnets are the achilles' heel of analog.)

I dunno ... I don't mean to get on a big digital bashing session. I think it's awesome for certain things. I just don't prefer it when it comes to music.
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Magnetic media is just that. Digital or analog doesn't really matter that much. After some years, the magnetic force disappears slowly. Analog has a small advantage in that it can still be read with a lot of errors and will still sound like the original, albeit with noise. Digital has a threshold; if there are a lot of errors, everything is lost...
 
I can say I don't trust it and I think the whole process is a PITA. After spending over a hundred hours working on a paid project for some friends and backing the whole thing up I still never trust it's going to be there when I go to retrieve it. I want to get it out of my hands as fast as possible because I don't want to be responsible for it being gone. :o
 
the biggest drawback with digital is the formats are constantly changing ... this is truly not the case with analog. almost all formats have been fairly standard for well over 30 years and the playback machines are simple and relatively easy to service and modify.

so, yes analog tape is vulnerable (as everything is). that's why safety copies were routinely made for important tapes and the orginals were duplicated if they were having any problems.

the library of congress know what they are talking about for long-term storage (more so than any of us) -- there is no argument.
 
I suppose it's the same argument that happened when paper was introduced. All the old school clay tablet people getting down on paper because it's so fragile. And many, many paper documents HAVE been lost over time--but the huge increase in the number of documents that paper made possible means we still have more paper documents from the past than clay tablets.

Most of the problems digital has is a result of it being a new medium and people not recognizing its differences. Not all the differences are positive, but many are. I think the chances of a CD reader hooked up to a computer that can read a wav file being available in 20 years is much greater than a 5.25" floppy reader hooked up to a computer that can read a proprietary word processor format. The main lesson is that the paradigm of analog--the original master preserved forever--doesn't work with digital very well. But digital can be copied without loss of quality, and it should be, regularly. I find it a bit funny, really, that at this late date the mantra of backing up early and often still hasn't sunk in with everyone.
 
For me its no big deal. There hasnt been anything recorded in the last 40 years I give a crap about listening to.
Yes Im old and stuck in the 60,s now. I dont listen to anything past 70 much.
 
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