[Mxsmanic]

Mike Rivers writes:

I can't imagine that the
documentation for the WAV format, or a data reduction
algorithm, will be around for a thousand years. Unless we
get really stupid (depends on how long Facebook lasts) in
the next thousand years, I suppos it would be possible with
enough time and trials, to reverse engineer the process from
the data, but people like me aren't going to do that. The
material would have to be really important to spend much on
recovering it.

WAV file format is trivially simple. It will be very easy to figure out in the
future, even for someone with no documentation.

[Mxsmanic]

Trevor writes:

You think anybody will care in 10,000 years?

People today are still looking at things that are 10,000 years old. And 10,000
from now, there will be a lot more to look at.

I'm sure there will be people around who will want to know how people talked
today. It's unfortunate that we don't have digital sound recordings from
10,000 years ago. But we do have digital text recordings from thousands of
years ago, and those have been extremely instructive.

[Mxsmanic]

Mike Rivers writes:

How can you justify that?

Well, text has been around for thousands of years, and putting it into a
computer file instead of engraving it on a clay tablet is not a significant
transformation.

Neither of them have been around
half the time of a phonograph record or analog recording
tape yet. We can still play those because it's easy.

We can play sheet music from centuries ago; in fact, we can play sheet music
from as long ago as it has existed. We can read the words written by people
even further back into the past.

But if I were to hand you an 8" floppy disk, what would you have to
do in order to read it? Sure, there are probably still some
drives in computer museums (and in my friend Don's storage
shed) but you'd pretty much have to build a computer around
it, which means figuring out the hardware interface, for
starters.

There is still abundant documentation for all of this, and old 8-inch drives
are still easy to find if you really need one. It's possible to build one if
necessary.

Then figure out how the data is written, what bits
are the data you want to recover and what bits are checksums
and parity bits. It's not a trivial task, and most people
aren't going to take that much trouble to save what might be
a musical recording that hasn't been preserved in some other
medium.

It is indeed a trivial task. Keep in mind that cryptologists accomplish a lot
more than this with a lot less to go on.

Your presumption is that you'll know what a WAV file is.

The raw data and the extension will make it obvious.

I'm not worried about WAV files.

[Mxsmanic]

Mike Rivers writes:

The two really can't be separated. There are already tales
of digital magnetic tapes that can't be played now, though
this seems like it's more along the line that nobody cares
enough.

Yes, nobody cares enough. And reporting tapes that _can_ be read isn't
particularly newsworthy.

But some of them aren't. rec.music.makers.synth has been
around longer than Google. Can you find my posts about the
first NAMM show I attended, 1988, I believe. I can't.

I can still find my Usenet posts from much earlier than that (which is not
necessarily a good thing in my case, but that's the way it is).

While data storage cost for media may have dropped, we're
putting more data in smaller containers, which means that
the risk of greater loss with smaller mishaps is greater. So
refreshing the archive must be done more frequently. Even
though this can be automated, it still involves labor, and
that's getting more expensive.

You can put all the world's literature on a single drive today. With millions
of such drives scattered around the world, chances are that there will always
be some that are still readable.

And what makes you think there won't be a nuclear holocaust?
Or a great electromagnetic pulse?

Anything extreme enough to wipe out every disk drive everywhere will be
extreme enough to make the recovery of those drives unimportant.

[Mxsmanic]

Frank writes:

Okay, but remember that a .wav file can quite validly contain other
than LPCM audio data.

Yes, but that won't make the files that do contain LPCM any harder to read.

[Mxsmanic]

Mike Rivers writes:

There's a common example of this in the DAW world. Questions
about why a WAV file recorded in one program (or on one
recorder) won't import into this or that DAW? The usual
answer is "open it in Audacity and export it as a WAV" with
no understanding of why this works (though, it often does).

You may think you're archiving a file, but you may have
inadvertently done it in a format that will become
unsupported sooner than others. Professional archivists have
their club and secret handshake and try to limit the chaos.

You can write something in half an hour that will read PCM audio from a WAV
file. It's just not that hard.

[Randy Yates[_2_]]

Mxsmanic writes:

Mike Rivers writes:

There's a common example of this in the DAW world. Questions
about why a WAV file recorded in one program (or on one
recorder) won't import into this or that DAW? The usual
answer is "open it in Audacity and export it as a WAV" with
no understanding of why this works (though, it often does).

You may think you're archiving a file, but you may have
inadvertently done it in a format that will become
unsupported sooner than others. Professional archivists have
their club and secret handshake and try to limit the chaos.

You can write something in half an hour that will read PCM audio from a WAV
file. It's just not that hard.

If it's linear PCM, that's true. As I posted earlier today, .wav can
contain a lot more formats than linear PCM, however.
--
Randy Yates
Digital Signal Labs
http://www.digitalsignallabs.com

[William Sommerwerck]

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message
...

A couple of millenia from now, an engineer or scientist would
have no trouble figuring out what a phonograph record was, or
how it worked, in two or three seconds -- even if he or she had
never heard of such a thing. Any more than you or I would be
the least confused about what cuneiform tablet was for.

Really? We are currently in the midst of a tremendous shift from
physical mechanisms to software that could not have been imagined
in say, 1930. That was 80 years ago. 200 years from now, can we
even imagine what the ongoing shift will be from/to?

I'm looking at it in terms of fundamental principles. These don't change,
and any reasonably perceptive person can apply them.

[William Sommerwerck]

At some point nobody will remember the principle
of sampling ...

That would surprise me. It's so elementary that it's
self-evident.

It's not self-evident, not at all. (This is why many people still believe
that a higher samping rate, per se, produces better sound.) But it is a
basic mathematical principle, and the textbooks of 10,000 years from will
still cover it.)


And what would replace it?

Exactly. It is fundamental, and can't be "replaced".

[Don Pearce[_3_]]

On Thu, 17 May 2012 14:35:18 +0200, Mxsmanic
wrote:

Don Pearce writes:

A Wav file can actually be almost anything. Your programme has no idea
what it might have to decode until it reads the RIFF.

The pattern of the raw data in the file, as well as its extension, very
strongly suggests samples of a waveform.

The extension suggests nothing more than that the file contains sound.
The pattern of raw data may well suggest LPCM encoding.

d

[Frank]

On Thu, 17 May 2012 06:32:21 -0400, in 'rec.audio.pro',
in article FLAC or other uncompressed formats, which is best?,
Randy Yates wrote:

typedef enum
{
PCM = 0x0001,
ADPCM = 0x0002,
IBM_CVSD = 0x0005,
ALAW_G711 = 0x0006,
MULAW_G711 = 0x0007,
ADPCM_OKI = 0x0010,
ADPCM_IMA = 0x0011,
ADPCM_SIERRA = 0x0013,
ADPCM_G723 = 0x0014,
DIGISTD = 0x0015,
DIGIFIX = 0x0016,
SONARC = 0x0021,
ADPCM_YAMAHA = 0x0020,
DSPGROUP_TRUESPEECH = 0x0022,
ECHOSC1 = 0x0023,
AUDIOFILE_AF36 = 0x0024,
APTX = 0x0025,
AUDIOFILE_AF10 = 0x0026,
DOLBY_AC2 = 0x0030,
GSM610 = 0x0031,
ADPCME_ANTEX = 0x0033,
VQPLC_CONTROL_RES = 0x0034,
DIGIREAL = 0x0035,
ADPCM_DIGI = 0x0036,
CONTROL_RES_CR10 = 0x0037,
VBXADPCM_NMS = 0x0038,
ADPCM_G721 = 0x0040,
MPEG = 0x0050,
ADPCM_CREATIVE = 0x0200,
FM_TOWNS_SND = 0x0300,
GSM_OLI = 0x1000,
ADPCM_OLI = 0x1001,
CELP_OLI = 0x1002,
SBC_OLI = 0x1003,
OPR_OLI = 0x1004,
} SAMPLE_T;

And that list just includes formats defined through early 1994.

OT: Just heard that Donna Summer, born 1948, has passed.

--
Frank, Independent Consultant, New York, NY
[Please remove 'nojunkmail.' from address to reply via e-mail.]
Read Frank's thoughts on HDV at http://www.humanvalues.net/hdv/
[also covers AVCHD (including AVCCAM & NXCAM) and XDCAM EX].

[Randy Yates[_2_]]

Frank writes:

On Thu, 17 May 2012 06:32:21 -0400, in 'rec.audio.pro',
in article FLAC or other uncompressed formats, which is best?,
Randy Yates wrote:

typedef enum
{
PCM = 0x0001,
ADPCM = 0x0002,
IBM_CVSD = 0x0005,
ALAW_G711 = 0x0006,
MULAW_G711 = 0x0007,
ADPCM_OKI = 0x0010,
ADPCM_IMA = 0x0011,
ADPCM_SIERRA = 0x0013,
ADPCM_G723 = 0x0014,
DIGISTD = 0x0015,
DIGIFIX = 0x0016,
SONARC = 0x0021,
ADPCM_YAMAHA = 0x0020,
DSPGROUP_TRUESPEECH = 0x0022,
ECHOSC1 = 0x0023,
AUDIOFILE_AF36 = 0x0024,
APTX = 0x0025,
AUDIOFILE_AF10 = 0x0026,
DOLBY_AC2 = 0x0030,
GSM610 = 0x0031,
ADPCME_ANTEX = 0x0033,
VQPLC_CONTROL_RES = 0x0034,
DIGIREAL = 0x0035,
ADPCM_DIGI = 0x0036,
CONTROL_RES_CR10 = 0x0037,
VBXADPCM_NMS = 0x0038,
ADPCM_G721 = 0x0040,
MPEG = 0x0050,
ADPCM_CREATIVE = 0x0200,
FM_TOWNS_SND = 0x0300,
GSM_OLI = 0x1000,
ADPCM_OLI = 0x1001,
CELP_OLI = 0x1002,
SBC_OLI = 0x1003,
OPR_OLI = 0x1004,
} SAMPLE_T;

And that list just includes formats defined through early 1994.

Frank,

I knew the list was dated, but where did you get the specific year
1994 from?
--
Randy Yates
Digital Signal Labs
http://www.digitalsignallabs.com

[Les Cargill[_4_]]

Mike Rivers wrote:
On 5/16/2012 10:07 PM, Les Cargill wrote:
Mike Rivers wrote:

I can't imagine that the
documentation
for the WAV format, or a data reduction algorithm, will be
around for a
thousand years.

Why not? Unless it just goes completely obsolete, it'll be
used.

And that's exactly my point. I believe that it will be completely
obsolete in a thousand years. Don't ask me to justify that but I've seen
a lot of things become obsolete in my lifetime.


I've seen more things *not* go obsolete than *go*
obsolete. If .wav goes obsolete, it doesn't matter.

Unlike old movies, .wav is purely an abstract data format.
It could theoretically last forever.

--
Les Cargill

[Les Cargill[_4_]]

Mike Rivers wrote:
On 5/16/2012 11:48 PM, Trevor wrote:

snip

And what makes you think there won't be a nuclear holocaust? Or a great
electromagnetic pulse? The LIbrary of Congress has a pretty good
holocaust-resistant storage facility for film, video, and recorded
sound, but they don't have everything, and they have to be selective as
to what they add to that archive. .


in that case, whoever is left will be back to stories
around a campfire.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Enough_at_Last





--
Les Cargill

[Les Cargill[_4_]]

William Sommerwerck wrote:
Is "holocost" what you're charged to use the holodeck?



Not sure. They never had money on Star Trek.

I think "hollowcost" is the price difference between an
ES335 and a Les Paul...


--
Les Cargill

[Les Cargill[_4_]]

Mike Rivers wrote:
On 5/16/2012 9:42 PM, Frank wrote:

Okay, but remember that a .wav file can quite validly contain other
than LPCM audio data. I have perfectly valid .wav files with MPEG-1
Layer III audio data, Dolby Digital AC-3 audio data, Sony ATRAC audio
data, etc.

There's a common example of this in the DAW world. Questions about why a
WAV file recorded in one program (or on one recorder) won't import into
this or that DAW? The usual answer is "open it in Audacity and export it
as a WAV" with no understanding of why this works (though, it often does).


That's because the people who develop those recorders aren't very nice
to their customers.

*Some* of us actually wrote code to read things like the Fostex VF16
file format. And we converted 'em to .wav files.

(actually, I borrowed source code from the FDMS3 FUSE FS as a template,
since doing FUSE on Windows was impossible ).

You may think you're archiving a file, but you may have inadvertently
done it in a format that will become unsupported sooner than others.

Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do that...

Professional archivists have their club and secret handshake and try to
limit the chaos.


Since they're "professional", hopefully they develop a sense of
humo(u)r and treat it as an opportunity to charge more...

And don't forget about BWF (EBU Broadcast Wave Format) .wav files that
contain time code.

Wouldn't it be nice to know exactly when something was recorded even if
you can't find the track sheet?


--
Les Cargill

[Frank]

On Thu, 17 May 2012 13:21:41 -0400, in 'rec.audio.pro',
in article FLAC or other uncompressed formats, which is best?,
Randy Yates wrote:

Frank writes:

On Thu, 17 May 2012 06:32:21 -0400, in 'rec.audio.pro',
in article FLAC or other uncompressed formats, which is best?,
Randy Yates wrote:

typedef enum
{
PCM = 0x0001,
ADPCM = 0x0002,
IBM_CVSD = 0x0005,
ALAW_G711 = 0x0006,
MULAW_G711 = 0x0007,
ADPCM_OKI = 0x0010,
ADPCM_IMA = 0x0011,
ADPCM_SIERRA = 0x0013,
ADPCM_G723 = 0x0014,
DIGISTD = 0x0015,
DIGIFIX = 0x0016,
SONARC = 0x0021,
ADPCM_YAMAHA = 0x0020,
DSPGROUP_TRUESPEECH = 0x0022,
ECHOSC1 = 0x0023,
AUDIOFILE_AF36 = 0x0024,
APTX = 0x0025,
AUDIOFILE_AF10 = 0x0026,
DOLBY_AC2 = 0x0030,
GSM610 = 0x0031,
ADPCME_ANTEX = 0x0033,
VQPLC_CONTROL_RES = 0x0034,
DIGIREAL = 0x0035,
ADPCM_DIGI = 0x0036,
CONTROL_RES_CR10 = 0x0037,
VBXADPCM_NMS = 0x0038,
ADPCM_G721 = 0x0040,
MPEG = 0x0050,
ADPCM_CREATIVE = 0x0200,
FM_TOWNS_SND = 0x0300,
GSM_OLI = 0x1000,
ADPCM_OLI = 0x1001,
CELP_OLI = 0x1002,
SBC_OLI = 0x1003,
OPR_OLI = 0x1004,
} SAMPLE_T;

And that list just includes formats defined through early 1994.

Frank,

I knew the list was dated, but where did you get the specific year
1994 from?

Randy, go to my documentation index at
http://www.humanvalues.net/hdv/pdf/ and download the file with the
following name:
Microsoft_Multimedia_Standards_Update_-_Revision_30_-_1994_April_15.pdf

And if you should see anything else there that's of interest, please
help yourself.

Regards,

--
Frank, Independent Consultant, New York, NY
[Please remove 'nojunkmail.' from address to reply via e-mail.]
Read Frank's thoughts on HDV at http://www.humanvalues.net/hdv/
[also covers AVCHD (including AVCCAM & NXCAM) and XDCAM EX].

[Mxsmanic]

William Sommerwerck writes:

It's not self-evident, not at all.

It is to the sort of people who build these things. Digitization and digital
sampling have been known since long before they were actually implemented.
They are very simple concepts. The potential user might not stumble upon the
idea spontaneously, but engineers would.

A great deal of the technology we see today was thought of a very long time
ago, and the only reason it took so long to appear was that it was difficult
to engineer and build in a practical, affordable way. Engineering tends to
advance slowly and incrementally, and often takes quite a while to catch up to
theory.

I remember reading about CD audio in science magazines more than a decade
before it actually appeared. Everyone understood the concept, it was just a
matter of finding a way to actually make CDs from an engineering and
manufacturing standpoint.

[Mxsmanic]

Don Pearce writes:

The extension suggests nothing more than that the file contains sound.

It suggests that the file models a waveform. WAVeform. Of course sound is a
likely candidate waveform.

The pattern of raw data may well suggest LPCM encoding.

Yes, and that's the first time of encoding that would spring to mind as well.

[Mxsmanic]

Randy Yates writes:

If it's linear PCM, that's true. As I posted earlier today, .wav can
contain a lot more formats than linear PCM, however.

How often are other formats used?

[Don Pearce[_3_]]

On Thu, 17 May 2012 21:17:58 +0200, Mxsmanic
wrote:

Don Pearce writes:

The extension suggests nothing more than that the file contains sound.

It suggests that the file models a waveform. WAVeform. Of course sound is a
likely candidate waveform.

The pattern of raw data may well suggest LPCM encoding.

Yes, and that's the first time of encoding that would spring to mind as well.

Wav is just a wrapper - nothing more. It can contain pretty much any
description of a waveform. It has no intrinsic properties of its won.

d

[William Sommerwerck]

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
news
William Sommerwerck writes:

It's not self-evident, not at all.

It is to the sort of people who build these things.

Being educated about something doesn't mean it's self-evident. If it were
self-evident, education wouldn't be needed.

[geoff]

Mike Rivers wrote:
On 5/16/2012 10:07 PM, Les Cargill wrote:
Mike Rivers wrote:

I can't imagine that the
documentation
for the WAV format, or a data reduction algorithm, will be
around for a
thousand years.

Why not? Unless it just goes completely obsolete, it'll be
used.

And that's exactly my point. I believe that it will be
completely obsolete in a thousand years. Don't ask me to
justify that but I've seen a lot of things become obsolete
in my lifetime.

Only if people can't count from 0 to 1.

geoff

[geoff]

Mike Rivers wrote:
On 5/16/2012 3:00 PM, Mxsmanic wrote:

A WAV file is essentially just a string of digital samples, so it
will be readable even after the specs are gone, for anyone who cares
to write a small program to read it.

But suppose you had no idea what it was. And even if you
managed to decode it into a string of values, would you know
how to build a D/A converter?

I pose a similar question about analog magnetic tape. The
difference there is that if you know what it is, it's very
easy to convert what might be left of the magnetic domains
into audio.

Nobody will b e left anyway. 2012, CME and EMP apparently .....

geoff

[geoff]

Mxsmanic wrote:
Arny Krueger writes:

Really? We are currently in the midst of a tremendous shift from
physical mechanisms to software that could not have been imagined in
say, 1930.

Software had already been imagined 100 years before 1930. Babbage
incorporated the concept into his Analytical Engine. Vannevar Bush
even foresaw the Web in a 1945 paper. There's really nothing new
under the sun.

That was 80 years ago. 200 years from now, can we even imagine what
the ongoing shift will be from/to?

Yes. The main problem with predicting the future, though, is that we
tend to assume that past trends always reflect future trends, so that
we predict change in the wrong places.

However, a technical nerd transported to the present day from 1930
would grasp practically all modern technology very quickly indeed.
It's not magic.

The ayatolla will have banned all technology (and music) by around 2027.

geoff

[geoff]

Mxsmanic wrote:
Mike Rivers writes:

But suppose you had no idea what it was.

The format is so simple that I should think it wouldn't be hard to
figure out what it is, especially when the file extension is WAV.

And even if you managed to decode it into a string of values, would
you know how to build a D/A converter?

Sure. It's very basic stuff.

I pose a similar question about analog magnetic tape. The
difference there is that if you know what it is, it's very
easy to convert what might be left of the magnetic domains
into audio.

One of the advantages of analog. But in the future, converting from
digital to analog won't be significantly harder.


How do you get music from a pile of dust ?

geoff

[geoff]

Randy Yates wrote:
Mxsmanic writes:

Mike Rivers writes:

There's a common example of this in the DAW world. Questions
about why a WAV file recorded in one program (or on one
recorder) won't import into this or that DAW? The usual
answer is "open it in Audacity and export it as a WAV" with
no understanding of why this works (though, it often does).

You may think you're archiving a file, but you may have
inadvertently done it in a format that will become
unsupported sooner than others. Professional archivists have
their club and secret handshake and try to limit the chaos.

You can write something in half an hour that will read PCM audio
from a WAV file. It's just not that hard.

If it's linear PCM, that's true. As I posted earlier today, .wav can
contain a lot more formats than linear PCM, however.

But 99.99% don't.

geoff

[geoff]

Mxsmanic wrote:
Trevor writes:

You think anybody will care in 10,000 years?

People today are still looking at things that are 10,000 years old.
And 10,000 from now, there will be a lot more to look at.

Now THAT'S Classic Hits !

geoff

[Scott Dorsey]

geoff wrote:

How do you get music from a pile of dust ?

Put it inside a gourd and make maracas.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Randy Yates[_2_]]

"geoff" writes:

Randy Yates wrote:
Mxsmanic writes:

Mike Rivers writes:

There's a common example of this in the DAW world. Questions
about why a WAV file recorded in one program (or on one
recorder) won't import into this or that DAW? The usual
answer is "open it in Audacity and export it as a WAV" with
no understanding of why this works (though, it often does).

You may think you're archiving a file, but you may have
inadvertently done it in a format that will become
unsupported sooner than others. Professional archivists have
their club and secret handshake and try to limit the chaos.

You can write something in half an hour that will read PCM audio
from a WAV file. It's just not that hard.

If it's linear PCM, that's true. As I posted earlier today, .wav can
contain a lot more formats than linear PCM, however.

But 99.99% don't.

You're changing the premise. The premise is that it is easy to read a
..wav file. That premise is false. The premise that it is easy to read a
..wav file which contains linear PCM is true, however, that was not your
original premise.
--
Randy Yates
Digital Signal Labs
http://www.digitalsignallabs.com

[Les Cargill[_4_]]

geoff wrote:
Mike Rivers wrote:
On 5/16/2012 10:07 PM, Les Cargill wrote:
Mike Rivers wrote:

I can't imagine that the
documentation
for the WAV format, or a data reduction algorithm, will be
around for a
thousand years.

Why not? Unless it just goes completely obsolete, it'll be
used.

And that's exactly my point. I believe that it will be
completely obsolete in a thousand years. Don't ask me to
justify that but I've seen a lot of things become obsolete
in my lifetime.

Only if people can't count from 0 to 1.

geoff




Well, there's only 10 kinds of people...

--
les cargill

[Marc Wielage[_2_]]

On Thu, 17 May 2012 03:23:32 -0700, Mike Rivers wrote
(in article ):

"Impossible" is a strong word, and I'm not saying that
nobody will ever figure out a CD 1000 years from now, but
there indeed may not be anyone who cares enough and is well
enough funded.
------------------------------snip------------------------------

These are troubling topics. The Motion Picture Academy has published two
documents on what they call THE DIGITAL DILEMMA, all about what's going to
happen to digitized sound and picture files over a long period of time. It's
available free on the web:

http://www.oscars.org/science-
technology/council/projects/digitaldilemma2/index.html

In the year 2525, who the F knows? But at least for the next couple of
hundred years, I think there's a good chance that if humans are left on
earth, and if we still have electricity and technology, a lot of what's being
digitally archived now will survived. Films and analog tapes... I dunno.

The oldest analog master magnetic recording I ever handled was from 1954 (a
Bernard Herrmann 4-track 35mm mag from Fox), and it was just on the edge of
falling apart. That was back in 1995, which was more than 15 years ago. I
would be very surprised if it could still play today.

As long as the data gets migrated over to new drives, and conversion tools
exist, I think the material will survive. Whether people will want it...
it's hard to say. Certainly scholars and historians will. There's every
hope that somebody will read about The Beatles and want to hear them, even
"many years from now."

--MFW

[Marc Wielage[_2_]]

On Thu, 17 May 2012 05:36:52 -0700, Mxsmanic wrote
(in article ):

WAV file format is trivially simple. It will be very easy to figure
out in the future, even for someone with no documentation.
------------------------------snip------------------------------

I think the FILE format is not going to be the problem. The problem is going
to be the STORAGE format. What do you store it on?

I've seen even LTO's and DTF's fail, in as little as 6-7 years. The cruel
reality is, no digital formats are guaranteed for super-long-term survival.
And even if the backup tapes survive, what if the drives don't survive?

There are a lot of uncertainties out there. Read the Academy papers for
which I posted links elsewhere. Believe me, record label execs, studio
execs, network execs, and other media conglomerate owners are worried about
the long-term future of their libraries.

--MFW

[William Sommerwerck]

The oldest analog master magnetic recording I ever handled
was from 1954 (a Bernard Herrmann 4-track 35mm mag from
Fox), and it was just on the edge of falling apart. That was
back in 1995, which was more than 15 years ago. I would be
very surprised if it could still play today.

"The Egyptian", right?

I had an idea some years back -- print the digital data on Tyvek paper, then
store it in a controlled environment.

You could probably get 1Mb on an 8x10 sheet. 700 sheets could hold the
contents of a single audio CD.

[Mxsmanic]

William Sommerwerck writes:

Being educated about something doesn't mean it's self-evident. If it were
self-evident, education wouldn't be needed.

In this case, education is not needed. The whole concept of digital audio
occurred spontaneously to engineers. Nobody taught them about it.

[Mxsmanic]

geoff writes:

How do you get music from a pile of dust ?

You don't. But both analog and digital recordings end up as dust, because they
are both recorded on the same physical media. Digital is no more or less
vulnerable than analog.

[Mxsmanic]

Marc Wielage writes:

I've seen even LTO's and DTF's fail, in as little as 6-7 years. The cruel
reality is, no digital formats are guaranteed for super-long-term survival.
And even if the backup tapes survive, what if the drives don't survive?

Use the same media used for analog recordings, and you'll have the same life
expectancy. You can record music digitally on clay tablets if you want,
although it's a bit awkward.

[Mxsmanic]

Randy Yates writes:

"geoff" writes:

But 99.99% don't.

You're changing the premise. The premise is that it is easy to read a
.wav file. That premise is false.

It's false 0.01% of the time; the rest of the time, it's true.

[Trevor]

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
...
Actually the way things are going these days is that nearly all human
knowledge is stored on current servers somewhere, which are regularly
replaced and backed up as necessary.

But some of them aren't. rec.music.makers.synth has been around longer
than Google. Can you find my posts about the first NAMM show I attended,
1988, I believe. I can't. I Nobody archived that, unless it's in someone's
private collection. I didn't archive it myself because I figured that the
newsgroups and their content would be around for a very long time. And if
I did save the text files, they'd probably be on an ST506 disk drive,
backed up on a 5-1/4" floppy. I still have a working computer with 5-1/4"
and 3-1/2" floppy drives, at least I think it still works. But I'm not
planning to preserve it forever.

I did say "these days", obviously transferring old data like books etc. is
labor intensive, and that may or may not ever happen. Current on-line stored
information is a different issue, however I'm not talking about your
personal files.


There is no reason short of nuclear
holocost that such knowledge will simply be erased. Especially given the
continual reduction in data storage costs.

While data storage cost for media may have dropped, we're putting more
data in smaller containers, which means that the risk of greater loss with
smaller mishaps is greater. So refreshing the archive must be done more
frequently. Even though this can be automated, it still involves labor,
and that's getting more expensive.

Yep, but that's the main focus of much of human activity these days, and
with 7Billion people and growing, it seems data storage will be safe for the
time being.


And what makes you think there won't be a nuclear holocaust?

It think there possibly will, that's why I mentioned it. And IF it happens,
saving old music files or formats may not be the number one priority!

Trevor.

[Trevor]

"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message
...
I had an idea some years back -- print the digital data on Tyvek paper,
then
store it in a controlled environment.

You could probably get 1Mb on an 8x10 sheet. 700 sheets could hold the
contents of a single audio CD.

Nah, chisel it in stone, but don't leave the stone out in the rain!
And don't use sandstone :-)

Trevor.