On 14 Jun 2005 20:35:38 -0700, "rob" wrote:

Any suggestions are highly appreciated.

1) Don't crosspost. It's rude.

2) Exact Audio Copy.

3) Because you're crossposting, you won't even see this.
Hence the rudeness issue.

Chris Hornbeck
"Foster Dulles went inside to order Princess Beatrice
a Molotov cocktail. When it was served, she drank it down
in one gulp" -JLG _Sympathy for the Devil_ 1969

rob wrote:

I want to rip all my CDs to a lossless format. The big question is what
program should I use. wma seems to be the most supported lossless codec

Supported by what? It's a proprietary codec, not what I'd choose to
archive anything inportant with.

http://flac.sourceforge.net/




I have CDs that
have some scratches so I am looking for a program that handles such CDs
well. Here are my requirements:

1) Album, song, artist, etc information must be automatically retrieved
from a db, hopefully one that doesn't have too many errors and one that
has many records (I have many unusual CDs).

2) The program has to handle scratched CDs well. Preferably, the
program reads the content of the CD at least twice, compares the two
results and then takes corrective actions (reads again and if
unsucessful interpolates values)

3) I don't care how long it takes to rip one CD (well, hopefully less
then 2 hour/CD) as long as I don't have to interact with the program
when it's doing its thing.

http://exactaudiocopy.de/ as Chris mentioned. Works well with FLAC,
and does all of the above.

Chris,

Thanks for the input. What do you mean with crosspost? Are you saying I
should not post to several groups at the same time? I thought that's
exactly what I should do if the question is appropriate to different
groups instead of posting seperate questions to each group.

I've heard of exact audio copy. Do you think it does an equally good
job regarding the album database compared to MS mediaplayer 10?

Thanks,
Rob

On 14 Jun 2005 21:20:27 -0700, "rob" wrote:

Chris,

Thanks for the input. What do you mean with crosspost? Are you saying I
should not post to several groups at the same time? I thought that's
exactly what I should do if the question is appropriate to different
groups instead of posting seperate questions to each group.

I've heard of exact audio copy. Do you think it does an equally good
job regarding the album database compared to MS mediaplayer 10?

Since you've responded in this newsgroup (and, I don't know the
answer to your question!), I've misjudged you. I'm sorry;
just a geezer who values some old outmoded models for society.

But to continue in my geezery mode, Just Say No to MS WhatEver
Version XX.

Thanks for the Insurrection, and now returning you to the Channel
of your choice,

Chris Hornbeck

"rob" wrote in message
ups.com...
Chris,

Thanks for the input. What do you mean with crosspost? Are you saying I
should not post to several groups at the same time? I thought that's
exactly what I should do if the question is appropriate to different
groups instead of posting seperate questions to each group.


He means if you're going to post to multiple groups do a separate post for
each one. Don't put 5 or 6 different NGs names in the "To:" field.

Kurt,

Thanks for your reply. I have a few questions, though.

1) You say flac has better support then wma. If I look at all the
software and hardware out there there seem to be fewer SW/HW that
support flac then wma. So why would you go with flac?

2) wma might be a proprietary codec from MS. Nevertheless, MS is so big
and has so huge financial power that wma might be more likely to be
around 10 years from now then flac. So why would you go with flac?

3) I am concerned about DRM (Digital Right Managment). As far as I know
I can make backup copies of all my CDs (I have many). Therefore, I
don't want to see any error message x years down the road (after my CDs
are not readable anymore) telling me I can't copy my files to another
computer one more time. Does flac have any advnatage over wma in this
regard?

4) I will use my lossless (wma) files mainly for archiving. For my ipod
(or any other device) I still will use some lossy (at high quality
setting) codec. Which codec (wma/flac) has better support to
automatically convert to a lossy format? Again, I don't care how long
the conversion takes as long as my interaction with the program is
minimalized.

Regards,
Rob

Ricky,

Thanks for the input. Actually, I thought it's just the other way
around. Before I had people complain that I was asking the same
question in different groups separately. But according to your post I
am supposed to post the same question to each appropriate group
individually.

People explained me that if somebody replies to a question posted to
multiple NGs the answer goes to each NG where the question was sent to.
If I would post to each NG separately the answer would go to only one
NG but not the others. I am kind of confused now....

Regards,
Rob

rob wrote:
I am kind of confused now....

Regards,
Rob

Rob, don't worry about it...some folks are just a bit uptight...

BTW, I recommend EAC highly! It's the BEST! ;-)

--
--Scot
www.RonnieJamesDio.org
www.SMCProductions.org
www.CraigGoldy.org
www.TonyIommi.org
www.ScotClayton.org
http://scotclayton.blogspot.com/

Scot,

Thanks for your reply. I read some good comments about EAC before. I
just wanted to get some more confirmation before spending countless
hours ripping CDs just to find out that the program I used wasn't the
best, i.e. I spent more countless hours updating song/album titles,
re-ripping problem CDs, etc.

Thanks,
Rob

rob wrote:

1) You say flac has better support then wma. If I look at all the
software and hardware out there there seem to be fewer SW/HW that
support flac then wma. So why would you go with flac?

It's open source. It runs on damn near any OS you can find. Because
the source code is public, I have reasonable faith that it will still be
available in the future, regardless of who buys whom and of what sort of
computer I am using a the time. FLAC is gaining hardware support, BTW.





2) wma might be a proprietary codec from MS. Nevertheless, MS is so big
and has so huge financial power that wma might be more likely to be
around 10 years from now then flac. So why would you go with flac?

See above.



3) I am concerned about DRM (Digital Right Managment). As far as I know
I can make backup copies of all my CDs (I have many). Therefore, I
don't want to see any error message x years down the road (after my CDs
are not readable anymore) telling me I can't copy my files to another
computer one more time. Does flac have any advnatage over wma in this
regard?

Yes -- it's open source and royalty free.




4) I will use my lossless (wma) files mainly for archiving. For my ipod
(or any other device) I still will use some lossy (at high quality
setting) codec. Which codec (wma/flac) has better support to
automatically convert to a lossy format? Again, I don't care how long
the conversion takes as long as my interaction with the program is
minimalized.

That's not up to the codec, it's up to the apps you use. FLAC files can
be easily converted to MP3/MP4/ogg/etc. using something like Foobar 2000
(or any number of command-line setups.)

rob wrote:

I've heard of exact audio copy. Do you think it does an equally good
job regarding the album database compared to MS mediaplayer 10?

EAC can retrieve track names & times from pretty much any CDDB-compliant
DB you want. What happens if MS decides to start charging for access to
their DB?

"rob" wrote in message oups.com...
Dear All,

I want to rip all my CDs to a lossless format. The big question is what
program should I use. wma seems to be the most supported lossless
codec so I think that is what I will go for.

At least you can burn CDs with .wma files using WMP that will play
back successfully in the vast majority of standard consumer CD
players.

The problem is that other software media players or editors will likely
not be able to access or use the .wma files.

Unfortunately, I have CDs that have some scratches so I am looking for
a program that handles such CDs well.

When ripping, that won't necessarily be solely the function of the software
program, but will depend as much on the drive being used to do the rip,
the condition of the CD, and the buss speeds.

Here are my requirements:

1) Album, song, artist, etc information must be automatically retrieved
from a db, hopefully one that doesn't have too many errors and one that
has many records (I have many unusual CDs).

I realize this is the trend, but allowing software to access a remote internet
database for gathering data about the files being ripped, could be hazardous
in a number of ways... from reporting your activities to another database to
getting false results and possibly even opening the door to spyware entering
your PC.

2) The program has to handle scratched CDs well. Preferably, the
program reads the content of the CD at least twice, compares the two
results and then takes corrective actions (reads again and if
unsucessful interpolates values)

I can't help much in this area. I have used EAC (exact audio copy)
until I decided to go ahead with putting some serious pro software
on my internet box to do this. A lot of pro software that rips with great
accuracy, doesn't pull any meta data from the CD and isn't designed
to be accessing the internet. However, the pro software will extract
the full, data-rich CDaudio format... that being .wav files at 16bit,
44.1Khz. IE, no loss what so ever.

3) I don't care how long it takes to rip one CD (well, hopefully less
then 2 hour/CD) as long as I don't have to interact with the program
when it's doing its thing.

That time frame is generous... you can usually rip at 8X normal speed
and still get fine results as long as the drive and the FSB can accomodate
the speed.

Any suggestions are highly appreciated.

The two most popular free ones have been mentioned. But if there's a
chance you may want to manipulate the files in any way, you may need
something in the not-so-freeware category and transcribe the needed
information by hand.

--
David Morgan (MAMS)
http://www.m-a-m-s.com
Morgan Audio Media Service
Dallas, Texas (214) 662-9901
_______________________________________
http://www.artisan-recordingstudio.com

"rob" wrote in message...

People explained me that if somebody replies to a question posted to
multiple NGs the answer goes to each NG where the question was sent to.
If I would post to each NG separately the answer would go to only one
NG but not the others. I am kind of confused now....


Hi Bob,

That's correct. Groups are collections of people that come together
with common interests... therefore if you post to five groups (which
is the maximum allowed by some newreaders and most ISPs), then
the responses of total strangers will show up in each group, unless the
respondent is sharp enough to actually remove the unrelated groups
from his response. If the original poster is subscribing to each group for
gathering his responses, this can't happen. In that case, a post to each
individual group will garner energetic results and perhaps even extended
conversations whithin the individual groups by the people who are used
to dealing with one another specifically in those respective groups. Some
great information can come from the conversations that may subsequently
develop among members of a group that are comfortable interacting with
one another and have been doing so for years.

It's considered poor netiquette to crosspost to diversified groups because
the multitude of responses that can end up appearing in possibly unrelated
groups due to not editing the TO: line before responding, may be quite diverse,
even perhaps in contradiction to the opinions of some of the respondents
from other, unfamiliar groups. This can lead to flame wars and ill will
between people who have never come together before.

Microsoft groups for example, are very closed and rely on a small group
known as MVPs to respond. The comp.multimedia group is independent,
like this group... but I'd venture to say that there aren't too many folks there
who really understand what a data-rich audio is, like this group does well.

Anyway, I think you'll have a grip on crossposting shortly. The wise and
experienced members of each group will understand this and will probably
edit their posts before replying. This is why Chris figured that you'ld never
see his response. He (as most will) assumed that you were subscribing
to only one of the groups you crossposted to, therefore would never see a
reply from rec.audio.pro.

Good luck...

--
David Morgan (MAMS)
http://www.m-a-m-s DOT com
Morgan Audio Media Service
Dallas, Texas (214) 662-9901
_______________________________________
http://www.artisan-recordingstudio.com

David,

Thanks for that response. Honestly, I haven't thought about this aspect
yet but what you are saying makes a lot of sense.

Thanks,
Rob

Ricky Hunt wrote:
"rob" wrote in message
ups.com...

Chris,

Thanks for the input. What do you mean with crosspost? Are you saying I
should not post to several groups at the same time? I thought that's
exactly what I should do if the question is appropriate to different
groups instead of posting seperate questions to each group.

He means if you're going to post to multiple groups do a separate post for
each one. Don't put 5 or 6 different NGs names in the "To:" field.

No!!!!

That's multi-posting. It's not a solution. It's even worse, IMHO!

The answer is:

If you're going to cross-post, be very judicious about it.
If you're going to cross-post, don't include more than 2 or 3 groups.
If you're going to cross-post, warn everyone clearly in the text
of your messages that you have cross-posted.

There is no right way to post the same question to 5 or 6 groups.
That's because it's just too many newsgroups to be posting the
question to in the first place.

- Logan

David Morgan (MAMS) wrote:
"rob" wrote in message...

People explained me that if somebody replies to a question posted to
multiple NGs the answer goes to each NG where the question was sent to.
If I would post to each NG separately the answer would go to only one
NG but not the others.

That's correct. Groups are collections of people that come together
with common interests... therefore if you post to five groups (which
is the maximum allowed by some newreaders and most ISPs), then
the responses of total strangers will show up in each group, unless the
respondent is sharp enough to actually remove the unrelated groups
from his response. If the original poster is subscribing to each group for
gathering his responses, this can't happen.

While you do have a point here, you are missing two important things,
in my opinion:

1. 5 or 6 groups is too many, period, no matter what technique you use.

2. If the groups are at ALL related, then multiposting can create
some annoying situations, like people having already answered your
question satisfactorily, then others taking the time to answer
a question that has already been answered and doesn't need another
answer. Also, any good Usenet client will track the original
post across all the groups. This means that if someone subscribes
to multiple groups in the list, they will see your article twice
or more. This is totally plausible if the groups are related,
as in the case of the post that started this thread. That post
included rec.audio.pro, rec.audio.misc, and rec.audio.tech. It's
totally possible that someone could read all three and have to see
the article three times.

It's considered poor netiquette to crosspost to diversified groups because
the multitude of responses that can end up appearing in possibly unrelated
groups due to not editing the TO: line before responding,

There is no TO: line, nor is there a To: line. It's a Newsgroups: line,
because Usenet is not e-mail. :-)

may be quite diverse,
even perhaps in contradiction to the opinions of some of the respondents
from other, unfamiliar groups. This can lead to flame wars and ill will
between people who have never come together before.

This is why it is important, if you do cross-post, to very clearly
announce that you have crossposted (not just in the Newsgroups:
header) and be sure not to say anything that is inflammatory or that
will lead to inflammatory stuff.

In some cases, it can be helpful, also, to set the "Followups-To:"
header. This puts your post in multiple groups at once, but it
tells the Usenet clients of anyone who replies to you to put
post to a different (usually shorter, quite often just one group)
list of groups. If you do this, the same rule about putting a
conspicuous warning applies; otherwise, people may think you are
intentionally trying to trick them into replying to a group they
weren't expecting.

This is why Chris figured that you'ld never
see his response. He (as most will) assumed that you were subscribing
to only one of the groups you crossposted to, therefore would never see a
reply from rec.audio.pro.

Huh? All crossposted posts show up in all the groups in the
Newsgroups: line. And that also applies to all the replies to
the post, which get the same Newsgroups: line as the post
they are a reply to. That is, unless the poster manually
changes it or unless the Followups-To: header was been used
on the one being replied to.

In other words, the only reasons for the original poster not to
see Chris's response a

1. Chris has an oddball Usenet client that resets the
Newsgroups: header in a way most Usenet clients don't, or
2. Chris doesn't like crossposting and intentionally removed
all but rec.audio.pro so that he himself wouldn't be
crossposting when he made his reply.

In normal cases, the people in all the groups would see
all the replies.

- Logan

rob wrote:
2) wma might be a proprietary codec from MS. Nevertheless, MS is so big
and has so huge financial power that wma might be more likely to be
around 10 years from now then flac. So why would you go with flac?

The problem with WMA is that you have a single point of failure.
Let's say that in 5 years MS decides lossless audio isn't a
priority for their latest player. Or let's say that they invent
a better lossless codec. It's quite possible they might just
unilaterally decide to kill the WMA lossless format. For all
you know, you could do a Windows Update one day (or upgrade to
the latest OS) and find that the codec no longer can read your
files or that the codec no longer exists.

However, with flac, there are tons of programs that support it,
and it is impossible to have someone make a unilateral decision
that it will be removed or no longer supported, because there is
no one entity that's in charge of all the software that supports
flac. If the flac web site were to disappear, others would have
copies of the source code, and, because of the license, they
would be free to create another web site and resurrect the
project if there is enough interest that someone bothers. This
kind of thing has often happened with open source software; for
instance, one of the two main developers of the popular general
purpose compression library "zlib" decided not to be involved
with the project anymore, and his zlib site has grown out of date.
Now one of the other people related to the project has taken
over and made zlib.net the main web site.

3) I am concerned about DRM (Digital Right Managment). As far as I know
I can make backup copies of all my CDs (I have many). Therefore, I
don't want to see any error message x years down the road (after my CDs
are not readable anymore) telling me I can't copy my files to another
computer one more time. Does flac have any advnatage over wma in this
regard?

If you look at the list of goals on the flac projects page, you
will see a list of 7 goals for flac. For example, "FLAC should
be lossless" and "FLAC should allow at least realtime decoding
on even modest hardware". The same page has two anti-goals (things
that flac wants to avoid). One of them is "Copy prevention of
any kind."

In other words, one of the stated goals of the flac project is
for the flac format not to ever have any kind of restrictions on
how you can use your data that you put (or someone else) puts
into it.

4) I will use my lossless (wma) files mainly for archiving. For my ipod
(or any other device) I still will use some lossy (at high quality
setting) codec. Which codec (wma/flac) has better support to
automatically convert to a lossy format?

99.999% of all software that does format conversion for audio
is going to do it by first converting the source compression
format to plain vanilla PCM, then converting the PCM into
the destination compression format. So, with any software
written by anyone that has half a clue, as long as the software
supports the format, converting between any two given formats
is just as easy as converting between any two other formats.

- Logan

On Wed, 15 Jun 2005 06:00:10 GMT, David Morgan (MAMS)
wrote:


2) The program has to handle scratched CDs well. Preferably, the
program reads the content of the CD at least twice, compares the two
results and then takes corrective actions (reads again and if
unsucessful interpolates values)

I can't help much in this area. I have used EAC (exact audio copy)
until I decided to go ahead with putting some serious pro software
on my internet box to do this. A lot of pro software that rips with
great
accuracy, doesn't pull any meta data from the CD and isn't designed
to be accessing the internet. However, the pro software will extract
the full, data-rich CDaudio format... that being .wav files at 16bit,
44.1Khz. IE, no loss what so ever.



What pro software are you talking about David? I'm not aware of anything
that does a better job than EAC and only one other program that can equal
it - Plextools. They both extract to .wav files if you want them to and
can use either CD Text data on the CD or an Internet database. If you are
worried about hooking your machine up to the net then you can download the
Freedb database and store it on your local machine - that's what I do with
my studio computer.

I'd seriously suggest archiving to .wav files rather than messing around
with lossless compression. Hard drive space is so cheap nowadays that
lossless compression is becoming superfluous.

Cheers.

James.

"rob" wrote in message
oups.com...
Ricky,

Thanks for the input. Actually, I thought it's just the other way
around.

I used to to (and got yelled at for doing it) and it does make more sense to
do it that way. After all, once the answer comes on any newsgroup then the
thread can be over. The problem has come because now 75% of what gets posted
to any thread has nothing to do with the thread and generally degenerates
into a flame war or useless information that has nothing to do with the
original thread and certainly nothing the other NG's want to hear about. So
it IS the best way if everyone acted like they should but that'll be a cold
day in hell...

In article . com writes:

Thanks for the input. What do you mean with crosspost? Are you saying I
should not post to several groups at the same time? I thought that's
exactly what I should do if the question is appropriate to different
groups instead of posting seperate questions to each group.

It may be appropriate to ask the question to several newsgroups, but
it's often inappropriate to promote discussion in several newsgroups
at a time. If you're clever enough to configure your newsreader to put
a line in your message header that directs replies to the one
newsgroup that you read regularly, then do that. That way, all
replies, regardless of where they come from, will go to where you can
read them, but won't start flame wars that will also be carried by
newsgroups who would rather not see them.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

rob wrote:


I want to rip all my CDs to a lossless format. The big
question is
what program should I use. WMA seems to be the most
supported
lossless codec so I think that is what I will go for.

I'm going to slough this issue as much has already been
said about it


Unfortunately,
I have CDs that have some scratches so I am looking for a
program
that handles such CDs well.

IME scratched CD handling is as much a CDROM drive issue as
anything else. Someone else said Plextor, right?

Here are my requirements:

1) Album, song, artist, etc information must be
automatically
retrieved from a db, hopefully one that doesn't have too
many errors
and one that has many records (I have many unusual CDs).

That's known as CDDB support, which is fairly universal.

2) The program has to handle scratched CDs well.

See former comments about drive issues.

IME the two best CD rippers out there are CDEX and EAC. Both
are freeware and excellent, but they seem do work best with
different drives.

Preferably, the
program reads the content of the CD at least twice,
compares the two
results and then takes corrective actions (reads again and
if
unsucessful interpolates values)

That's not how most software works. They are more dynamic -
rereading as required, on-the-fly.

3) I don't care how long it takes to rip one CD (well,
hopefully less
then 2 hour/CD) as long as I don't have to interact with
the program
when it's doing its thing.

Some manual editing may be required for the best possible
results.

James Perrett wrote:

I'd seriously suggest archiving to .wav files rather than messing
around with lossless compression. Hard drive space is so cheap nowadays
that lossless compression is becoming superfluous.

Offhand, I can think of two advantages FLAC offers over WAV: Metadata
support and error checking.

WAV files can't store artist, album, track, etc. the way FLAC and MP3
can -- at least not using any schema supported by consumer players.

Lacking a checksum, a one-bit error in a WAV file is undetectable and
will probably produce a pop/tick artifact.

"Kurt Albershardt" wrote ...
James Perrett wrote:

I'd seriously suggest archiving to .wav files rather than messing
around with lossless compression. Hard drive space is so cheap
nowadays that lossless compression is becoming superfluous.

Offhand, I can think of two advantages FLAC offers over WAV: Metadata
support

RIFF (of which WAV is one codec) supports whatever metadata you
wish. http://www.neurophys.wisc.edu/auditory/riff-format.txt

and error checking.

Error detection/correction is a function of the underlying file system
and device infrastructure.

WAV files can't store artist, album, track, etc. the way FLAC and MP3
can -- at least not using any schema supported by consumer players.

That is a function of the applications/devices. Not a limitation of the
RIFF/WAV file structure.

Lacking a checksum, a one-bit error in a WAV file is undetectable and
will probably produce a pop/tick artifact.

WAV files have the same error detection and correction as any other
computer files. If you think a one-bit error would cause an audible
artifact in a WAV file, what do you think it would do in an executable
like the newsreader application you are using right now? :-)

On 14 Jun 2005 22:40:13 -0700, "rob" wrote:

Scot,

Thanks for your reply. I read some good comments about EAC before. I
just wanted to get some more confirmation before spending countless
hours ripping CDs just to find out that the program I used wasn't the
best, i.e. I spent more countless hours updating song/album titles,
re-ripping problem CDs, etc.

EAC is probably the best for CD's that have an undamaged table of
contents (or whatever it's called), which is all "good" CD's and most
lightly-damaged CD's. But once you've got a good .wav file it really
shouldn't matter which program you used to rip the CD.
If a CD is badly damaged enough, EAC (and most other things) can't
read the TOC and won't read the data at all, but there are others
(I've got one I've used, but don't remember the name of it, and can't
find it offhand among all the stuff on this machine) that can take a
badly damaged CD with no TOC (such as the CDR I was recording when
power was lost) and generate a big .wav file of it (or as much as it
can read), that you can then reconstitute the tracks with something
like cdwave.com.

Thanks,
Rob

-----
http://mindspring.com/~benbradley

"Logan Shaw" wrote in message...

There is no TO: line, nor is there a To: line. It's a Newsgroups: line,
because Usenet is not e-mail. :-)

Smarty pants. ;-)

"Kurt Albershardt" wrote in message
...
James Perrett wrote:

I'd seriously suggest archiving to .wav files rather than messing
around with lossless compression. Hard drive space is so cheap nowadays
that lossless compression is becoming superfluous.

Offhand, I can think of two advantages FLAC offers over WAV: Metadata
support and error checking.

WAV files can't store artist, album, track, etc. the way FLAC and MP3
can -- at least not using any schema supported by consumer players.

Lacking a checksum, a one-bit error in a WAV file is undetectable and
will probably produce a pop/tick artifact.



OK, so now we are getting pretty far off base, but it's worth the OT
discussion for me to step in when I said I wouldn't.

We have a couple of problems. One is the OP asking about ripping CDs, which
means one thing, and then the discussion of lossless compression, which Kurt
brings up a good point on, that being data for archival purposes, something
that is totally different to the average person than the professional, and
then we are at an impasse. Why? Because we don't know enough yet about the
physical viability of data storage media in the first place, and, as Kurt
points out, Metadata headers may or may not be the way to be able to
retrieve data in the future. It's far more likely that some congruence of
technologies will ultimately give us the ability to do any type of digital
archiving for the future because the amount of data available to use in
Metadata isn't inclusive enough to allow for future storage retrieval of
vast amounts of information. More than likely Metadata headers will
ultimately become data storage pointers to massive databases that don't
store the actual raw data of a wave file or a "lossless" format at all.
Without the interaction of a living database the vast amount of material
will simply be lost over time because of the inability to actually translate
the data into something that our systems will be able to use. Even this
lack will be overcome within 5 years.

But for this young man, moving CDs to disk isn't going to be a long term
storage solution one way or the other. It will allow quick access provided
one has enough disk space but it's short term regardless of whether one may
try to archive said files in any proprietary format or not and even if it
suffices for 5 years or more. Proprietary formats will go the way of the
dinosaur while integration of databases and raw data will become pennies
worth of cost for hours worth of entertainment. And why not? It doesn't
require people to maintain for the most part. It doesn't require tens of
thousands of sq feet of storage space. Just those two things are 90% of the
costs.

There have been some good concepts provided in terms of long term digital
music storage in some of the rags of late. Most of it is fine for what it
is and understanding that any format will probably have to be re-archived in
the future, but only if the functions of data storage and retrieval cannot
be overcome. Metadata is fine for now, but like ethernet addressesses, it's
a finite situation. If it were to last more than 10 years without morphing
into something else I'd be amazed.

Look at it this way. 90% of all programmers in the 80s and 90s were
spending their time trying to get data from old flat file databases for use
in more widely used three-dimensional databases (while people were dying and
making a lot of that data worthless), and then fixing those old databases
for the Y2K bug. That means that only 10% of all programming has gone to
solutions for future implementation. It's a shame, but one cannot
accurately predict the future on all points. Lossless compression is pretty
much a dream and storage has become cheap enough that it shouldn't be a
problem from here on. Blu-Ray and other technologies will keep storage
cheaper than the value of the data stored. It will really be a matter of
whether one can read the data into some useful application and whether
anyone actually needs the data in the first place (two decidedly different
subjects).

How this works out in the future will probably come down to certain amounts
of data, such as Bobby Darin's recording of Mac the Knife at the Copa in
1952 being held in ONE PLACE ONLY, and truthfully, there's no reason to
expect it to be held in any other location once data acquisition speeds come
up to par as a norm for the majority of people. I am on RCN (used to be
Starpower here in the DC area) and tested (via BandWidthPlace.com) my
internet connection today and came up with 8 Mb/s. Probably a lot of this
internet music sharing will go away when a product is readily available from
a single source at a reasonable price and it won't be compressed and won't
have the intermediate judgements of what sounds OK enough for those
compression parameters.

I'd suggest people read Thom Friedman's The World Is Flat to get a grasp on
this. Once data transfer is solved, data storage is solved. I have no
problems with playing a file off the internet in it's raw data format if I
can listen to it unadulterated. If I want to listen I simply tell my
computer what I want to listen to and it finds it, wherever it is in the
world. I spoke about this 10 years ago and I still hold that this will be
the ultimate outcome of the technological advances we are making.

The pity is that we have no new young people who understand this too,
because it means we've lost the edge that we started out with 40 years ago
in computer technology.

Roger W. Norman wrote:
"Kurt Albershardt" wrote in message
...

WAV files can't store artist, album, track, etc. the way FLAC and MP3
can -- at least not using any schema supported by consumer players.


More than likely Metadata headers will
ultimately become data storage pointers to massive databases that don't
store the actual raw data of a wave file or a "lossless" format at all.

I'll agree with respect to commercial recordings, but how would this
apply to the multitude of unpublished noncommercial recordings? Storing
the metadata with the essence makes a lot of sense there.



Without the interaction of a living database the vast amount of material
will simply be lost over time because of the inability to actually translate
the data into something that our systems will be able to use. Even this
lack will be overcome within 5 years.

Maybe. I'll bet PCM (as variants of RIFF) file formats are going to be
around for a long, long time.




moving CDs to disk isn't going to be a long term
storage solution one way or the other. It will allow quick access provided
one has enough disk space but it's short term regardless of whether one may
try to archive said files in any proprietary format or not

Using FLAC, I will most likely have all the tracks I care about from my
several thousand CD collection stored on hard drives within the next
year or two. Within five years, it should all fit on a single optical
disc or a solid state portable of some sort.




Lossless compression is pretty much a dream and storage has become
cheap enough that it shouldn't be a problem from here on.

Most lossless PCM compression schemes address another issue that hasn't
been mentioned here, and that's bitrate. Many of today's media (and
sometimes I/O architectures) fall short of the throughput requirements
for high samplerate PCM. Most offer the side benefit of error checking
in that if they play back, there is an implicit validity to the
retrieved data stream (and they can at least tell you if there are
problems with it.) OTOH small errors that might produce pops or ticks
in raw PCM can render compressed files indecipherable -- hardly the best
situation for a true archive.




I'd suggest people read Thom Friedman's The World Is Flat

So would I!

"Kurt Albershardt" wrote in message
...
Roger W. Norman wrote:
"Kurt Albershardt" wrote in message
...

WAV files can't store artist, album, track, etc. the way FLAC and MP3
can -- at least not using any schema supported by consumer players.


More than likely Metadata headers will
ultimately become data storage pointers to massive databases that don't
store the actual raw data of a wave file or a "lossless" format at all.

I'll agree with respect to commercial recordings, but how would this
apply to the multitude of unpublished noncommercial recordings? Storing
the metadata with the essence makes a lot of sense there.



Without the interaction of a living database the vast amount of material
will simply be lost over time because of the inability to actually
translate
the data into something that our systems will be able to use. Even this
lack will be overcome within 5 years.

Maybe. I'll bet PCM (as variants of RIFF) file formats are going to be
around for a long, long time.




moving CDs to disk isn't going to be a long term
storage solution one way or the other. It will allow quick access
provided
one has enough disk space but it's short term regardless of whether one
may
try to archive said files in any proprietary format or not

Using FLAC, I will most likely have all the tracks I care about from my
several thousand CD collection stored on hard drives within the next
year or two. Within five years, it should all fit on a single optical
disc or a solid state portable of some sort.




Lossless compression is pretty much a dream and storage has become
cheap enough that it shouldn't be a problem from here on.

Most lossless PCM compression schemes address another issue that hasn't
been mentioned here, and that's bitrate. Many of today's media (and
sometimes I/O architectures) fall short of the throughput requirements
for high samplerate PCM. Most offer the side benefit of error checking
in that if they play back, there is an implicit validity to the
retrieved data stream (and they can at least tell you if there are
problems with it.) OTOH small errors that might produce pops or ticks
in raw PCM can render compressed files indecipherable -- hardly the best
situation for a true archive.




I'd suggest people read Thom Friedman's The World Is Flat

So would I!

Well, principally I was talking about commercial situations, but even that's
hard to predict because one has to wonder what commercial music will mean in
5 or 10 years. But in terms of metadata, yes, enough data can be stored for
the average person who's catalog, though large in some circumstances such as
yours, isn't really sufficient for having an Oracle database up and running
just to fetch music. But on the whole, since the possibility exists that
music won't be a physical product like an LP or a CD, you will truly be a
licensee and able to retrieve and listen to your licensed products wherever
you are via broadband at home or satelite receivers like XM or Sirius.
Essentially you can already do that with both of the radio services since
you can program in what your favorite music is and call it down any time you
want. At least it's heading that way, and it's something I predicted about
15 years ago on Compuserve's Midi Forum. I believe somebody acted on my
idea! g

For individuals who are cutting tracks and trying to get their music heard,
well, it's just going to be much the same as we are doing now. But even at
that I have literally hundreds of CDs of other people's tracks (and hundreds
of tracks for those mixes) that must be maintained and I've complained about
the requirements of becoming a damned librarian for years now. Think I'm
going to start bar coding everything and get it up in a database. I've even
considered a couple of those automated CD stacks that will eject the CD
you're looking for but they just don't hold enough CDs. It just all gets
pretty strange at times. I just finished moving almost 200 gigs of music
and video data from my old AMD1600+ to the A64. Guess I'm going to have to
slap a couple more 200 gig SATA drives and then add in my two removables for
80 gig backup drives. My attempt at DVD backups ended up with a lot of
expended time and 12 DVDs later I still had only one drive backed up. I
sometimes think it makes more sense to leave the CD archival idea alone and
just play the damned things! g