[Trevor]

On 10/05/2019 8:58 am, geoff wrote:
On 10/05/2019 5:05 AM, nickbatz wrote:
The second law of thermodynamics dictates that we're not going back to
using tape.

But the amendment says we can for 'special effects', or for the sake of
recovery of programme for more durable archival purposes.

Yes because we have never had a problem with tape binder failure casing
massive problems with tape archive. Or fire destroying original
recordings leaving only even more inferior copies, if you are lucky. So
great now that you can have an infinite number of copies all identical
to the original! :-)

[Mike Rivers[_2_]]

On 5/9/2019 10:47 PM, Trevor wrote:
Yes because we have never had a problem with tape binder failure casing
massive problems with tape archive. Or fire destroying original
recordings leaving only even more inferior copies, if you are lucky. So
great now that you can have an infinite number of copies all identical
to the original!

Unfortunately, too many people have no backups of the original.

Digital backups have their own set of problems when it comes to long
term storage. You can play a tape until it falls apart, but if your
digital back up is on media or a format that's no longer "supported,"
you may not have the backup that you think you have.

--
For a good time, call http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com

[geoff]

On 10/05/2019 11:29 PM, Mike Rivers wrote:
On 5/9/2019 10:47 PM, Trevor wrote:
Yes because we have never had a problem with tape binder failure
casing massive problems with tape archive. Or fire destroying original
recordings leaving only even more inferior copies, if you are lucky.
So great now that you can have an infinite number of copies all
identical to the original!

Unfortunately, too many people have no backups of the original.

Digital backups have their own set of problems when it comes to long
term storage. You can play a tape until it falls apart, but if your
digital back up is on media or a format that's no longer "supported,"
you may not have the backup that you think you have.



But it is little effort to have multiple backups on several different
types of media, all bit-perfect.

Just one tape backup copy takes considerable effort, and remains fragile.

geoff

[Scott Dorsey]

In article ,
nickbatz wrote:
The second law of thermodynamics dictates that we're not going back to using tape.

I never stopped. Had two Nagra gigs this week, likely a 1" 8-track gig
next week.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Mike Rivers[_2_]]

On 5/10/2019 7:34 AM, geoff wrote:
But it is little effort to have multiple backups on several different
types of media, all bit-perfect.

That it's little effort isn't the point. You HAVE to do it. If you look
at short long term life, say 20-30 years, tape will likely still be
playable. Digital media may not.

--
For a good time, call http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com

[John Williamson]

On 10/05/2019 15:10, Mike Rivers wrote:
On 5/10/2019 7:34 AM, geoff wrote:
But it is little effort to have multiple backups on several different
types of media, all bit-perfect.

That it's little effort isn't the point. You HAVE to do it. If you look
at short long term life, say 20-30 years, tape will likely still be
playable. Digital media may not.

The only digital media I've ever had trouble playing back have been a
couple of years old optical discs, where it turned out the dye wasn't as
stable as I had been told it was. But copies turned up on a very old
machine, so that was okay.

I use various PCs for all sorts of things from answering e-mail to
editing video. The rule is that I click a mouse to run a short program
every time I close down, and all the data gets synchronised to another
PC or network storage. The synchronised copies are then checked. All
this happens while I sleep. I still have readable and usable copies of
30 year old files that started life on 5 1/4" floppies....

I have a few tapes that old that can't be played back due to various
problems, not least of them being finding a working machine to play them
back on.

I do occasionally have a problem finding a way to play back some older
video files that surface on other systems, but my current editor can
handle most of them and I have converters that will handle all of them.
I can edit and convert all audio formats that there have ever been.

When I use the digital desk to record a gig, I stick a USB stick into
the slot and back the recordings up while I'm packing the mics, bits of
electric string and sticks into their cases. By the time I've finished
packing up, the client has a bit perfect copy of the master recordings
of all channels plus a rough mix to take away, and do whatever they wish
with. Once I get back to base, the desk gets backed up to at least one
place immediately, and over a few days to half a dozen independent
places. Then I edit and mix using one of the copies.

Try doing that with tape....

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

[nickbatz]

The second law of thermodynamics dictates that we're not going back to using tape.

I never stopped. Had two Nagra gigs this week, likely a 1" 8-track gig
next week.
--scott

Sure, and I still use fountain pens.

Some of the proverbial ink molecules can go back into the bottle that got spilled into the pool.

(I really wanted to use unscrambling an omelet as an entropy analogy, but I just couldn't make it work.)

[Trevor]

On 10/05/2019 9:29 pm, Mike Rivers wrote:
On 5/9/2019 10:47 PM, Trevor wrote:
Yes because we have never had a problem with tape binder failure
casing massive problems with tape archive. Or fire destroying original
recordings leaving only even more inferior copies, if you are lucky.
So great now that you can have an infinite number of copies all
identical to the original!

Unfortunately, too many people have no backups of the original.

Digital backups have their own set of problems when it comes to long
term storage. You can play a tape until it falls apart, but if your
digital back up is on media or a format that's no longer "supported,"
you may not have the backup that you think you have.

Exactly, both have problems. One is fairly easily fixed with multiple
identical backups on different media and cloud which can be shifted to
another media as often as necessary. The other not so easily fixed in
case of fire, flood, tornado, or even just simple oxide shedding.
All archival facilities are transcribing tape to digital, but don't know
any transcribing digital to analog tape for archive?

[Trevor]

On 10/05/2019 9:34 pm, geoff wrote:
On 10/05/2019 11:29 PM, Mike Rivers wrote:
On 5/9/2019 10:47 PM, Trevor wrote:
Yes because we have never had a problem with tape binder failure
casing massive problems with tape archive. Or fire destroying
original recordings leaving only even more inferior copies, if you
are lucky. So great now that you can have an infinite number of
copies all identical to the original!

Unfortunately, too many people have no backups of the original.

Digital backups have their own set of problems when it comes to long
term storage. You can play a tape until it falls apart, but if your
digital back up is on media or a format that's no longer "supported,"
you may not have the backup that you think you have.



But it is little effort to have multiple backups on several different
types of media, all bit-perfect.

Just one tape backup copy takes considerable effort, and remains fragile.

And remains 3rd rate quality.

[Trevor]

On 11/05/2019 12:10 am, Mike Rivers wrote:
On 5/10/2019 7:34 AM, geoff wrote:
But it is little effort to have multiple backups on several different
types of media, all bit-perfect.

That it's little effort isn't the point. You HAVE to do it. If you look
at short long term life, say 20-30 years, tape will likely still be
playable. Digital media may not.

Funny, my digital files from 30 years ago are still playable, and far
better quality than my tapes of that time. But hey, some people thought
the car would never replace the horse and cart too. Some people would
prefer we live in that world now. There will always be a place for
nostalgia enthusiasts I guess.

[Scott Dorsey]

In article , Trevor wrote:
Exactly, both have problems. One is fairly easily fixed with multiple
identical backups on different media and cloud which can be shifted to
another media as often as necessary. The other not so easily fixed in
case of fire, flood, tornado, or even just simple oxide shedding.
All archival facilities are transcribing tape to digital, but don't know
any transcribing digital to analog tape for archive?

Contracts with major labels these days often ask for a safety copy of
the masters on analogue tape. I try and pull safeties on 641, which has
a high noise floor but is proven to last.
--scott

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

[Scott Dorsey]

In article , Trevor wrote:

Funny, my digital files from 30 years ago are still playable, and far
better quality than my tapes of that time. But hey, some people thought
the car would never replace the horse and cart too. Some people would
prefer we live in that world now. There will always be a place for
nostalgia enthusiasts I guess.

Checked them recently?

I have boxes of CD-Rs that no longer play reliably.

Interestingly enough, DAT seems to have survived very well. Everybody is
paranoid about DAT failures but they actually have held up better than
such a horrible format has any right to.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[geoff]

On 11/05/2019 11:59 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
In article , Trevor wrote:

Funny, my digital files from 30 years ago are still playable, and far
better quality than my tapes of that time. But hey, some people thought
the car would never replace the horse and cart too. Some people would
prefer we live in that world now. There will always be a place for
nostalgia enthusiasts I guess.

Checked them recently?

I have boxes of CD-Rs that no longer play reliably.

Azo ? Aluminium ? Or the better Cyanine or Phthalocyanine and gold
metalisation ?

If your archive choice is optical best go with the latter, or better
still M-Disc.

Interestingly enough, DAT seems to have survived very well. Everybody is
paranoid about DAT failures but they actually have held up better than
such a horrible format has any right to.
--scott


The tapes possibly hold up better than the more fragile of the player
mechanisms.


The thing with digital is you have many choices of media and
technologies. Even chisel-and-cave-walls if you want to go back to basics.

And if you decently digitally record your precious tape master, it can
be perfectly preserved with all it's, um, 'favourable aspects'. Duping
onto another tape will accumulate another generation of its flaws.

Of course running a safety (with equal care and attention as the actual
master) when producing the original master tape will save that
generation loss.

geoff

[Trevor]

On 11/05/2019 9:59 pm, Scott Dorsey wrote:
In article , Trevor wrote:

Funny, my digital files from 30 years ago are still playable, and far
better quality than my tapes of that time. But hey, some people thought
the car would never replace the horse and cart too. Some people would
prefer we live in that world now. There will always be a place for
nostalgia enthusiasts I guess.

Checked them recently?

Sure I have found a couple over the years that have a glitch. Nothing as
bad as many of my tapes though. And since Hard drives are so cheap these
days, everything is copied to 2 or 3 hard drives as well.


I have boxes of CD-Rs that no longer play reliably.

But many can be recovered if you know how. Many people don't so simply
whinge instead. Remember they are not like programs, 1 bit of corrupted
data can lose you a computer program, but on audio can be fixed in a DAW
in a few seconds.

BTW, IME many CDr's and DVDr's were simply badly written by dodgy
burners in the first place. Those of us who took the trouble to check
the burn quality our burners were producing with each batch of disks
have less trouble than those who never bothered until they found their
barely acceptable disks became unacceptable.


Interestingly enough, DAT seems to have survived very well. Everybody is
paranoid about DAT failures but they actually have held up better than
such a horrible format has any right to.

Unlike the machines you will need to play them on. Good luck with that
in a couple of decades if you haven't moved them on already.

[John Williamson]

On 12/05/2019 11:09, Trevor wrote:

Unlike the machines you will need to play them on. Good luck with that
in a couple of decades if you haven't moved them on already.

Not DAT, but a lot of important sessions were originally recorded using
Betamax machines, have not been backed up, and these tapes are now
effectively lost, as no spare heads are available to repair the decks.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

[Mike Rivers[_2_]]

On 5/11/2019 10:38 PM, geoff wrote:
The thing with digital is you have many choices of media and
technologies. Even chisel-and-cave-walls if you want to go back to basics.

Possibilities for backup - endless

Getting everyone to have and maintain a backup program - unlikely

Result - lost material

Ultimate effect - probably nil

[Les Cargill[_4_]]

nickbatz wrote:
I've always found all the German-designed apps really non-intuitive to use.

geoff


I've never found *any* DAW intuitive until I learned to use it!



I had the least trouble adapting to n-Track back in the day. It pretty
much used a mixer metaphor that was pretty obvious.

And that's not intended to be snarky. These are all complicated programs, and there's nothing in our genetic make-up to let you use any of them without reading the manual.

What's interesting is that once you learn a program, your fingers know the common key commands without your thinking - even when you switch programs with different ones.



--
Les Cargill

[geoff]

On 13/05/2019 8:20 AM, Les Cargill wrote:
nickbatz wrote:
I've always found all the German-designed apps really non-intuitive
to use.

geoff


I've never found *any* DAW intuitive until I learned to use it!



I had the least trouble adapting to n-Track back in the day. It pretty
much used a mixer metaphor that was pretty obvious.


Getting away from the mixer metaphor to a time-line and envelopes one
was the primary and lasting leap forward for me.

Always amuses me when I see a DAW trying to look like a mixer.

geoff

[Scott Dorsey]

geoff wrote:

I have boxes of CD-Rs that no longer play reliably.

Azo ? Aluminium ? Or the better Cyanine or Phthalocyanine and gold
metalisation ?

For a long time I was buying the cheapest ones possible from Cassette House,
because they could be had for $16 each when the Mitsuis were $25. Once the
price of the Mitsuis dropped down to a couple bucks each I started using
those exclusively.

I have recently been using a lot of the Verbatim azo discs for high speed
duplication, but a lot of what I do is still using the 1X realtime CD recorders
which don't like those discs. So I am still using the last of my stock of
Mitsuis.

If your archive choice is optical best go with the latter, or better
still M-Disc.

M-Disc is cool and the idea is a good one, but it won't play in a CD player.

The thing with digital is you have many choices of media and
technologies. Even chisel-and-cave-walls if you want to go back to basics.

And if you decently digitally record your precious tape master, it can
be perfectly preserved with all it's, um, 'favourable aspects'. Duping
onto another tape will accumulate another generation of its flaws.

Yes, the good news about digital is that you get lossless duplication. The
bad news is that the effects of degradation are abrupt rather than gradual,
and that some of the existing media are known to have poor longevity.

Of course running a safety (with equal care and attention as the actual
master) when producing the original master tape will save that
generation loss.

But then you have a safety which is just as old as the original and likely
subject to similar degradation. Better than nothing, though.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Les Cargill[_4_]]

geoff wrote:
On 13/05/2019 8:20 AM, Les Cargill wrote:
nickbatz wrote:
I've always found all the German-designed apps really non-intuitive
to use.

geoff


I've never found *any* DAW intuitive until I learned to use it!



I had the least trouble adapting to n-Track back in the day. It pretty
much used a mixer metaphor that was pretty obvious.


Getting away from the mixer metaphor to a time-line and envelopes one
was the primary and lasting leap forward for me.


There are still timelines but most of the control is though the mixer
rather than a small eternity of dropdowns.

Might surprise you, but I still don't use envelopes much. Instead I tend
to normalize the individual raw tracks to -25dB RMS ( and 16 bit ).

I mainly need mutes. For that in Reaper, you split the track at a point
and slide the edges. It offers a variable-length fadein for each end of
the "cut".

Always amuses me when I see a DAW trying to look like a mixer.


Yeah, because why would you use the primary metaphor that's already in
place? "It's a recorder; treat it as such" is still my approach.

There's far too much fiddling with stuff.

You can't really "fix" things. Sure, you can use Beat Detective and
Melodyne but that conflates composing with recording/producing.

No, I think that thinking of the timelines as the primary thing is
where we begin to go wrong....

geoff

--
Les Cargill

[geoff]

On 28/05/2019 7:03 AM, Les Cargill wrote:


I mainly need mutes. For that in Reaper, you split the track at a point
and slide the edges. It offers a variable-length fadein for each end of
the "cut".

Exactly my favoured method (of several possible) in Veags ;-)


No, I think that thinking of the timelines as the primary thing is
where we begin to go wrong....


Find and navigate to a peak (or verse, or chorus etc) in a whole piece
from the start in a few seconds without a timeline !

geoff

[Les Cargill[_4_]]

geoff wrote:
On 28/05/2019 7:03 AM, Les Cargill wrote:


I mainly need mutes. For that in Reaper, you split the track at a
point and slide the edges. It offers a variable-length fadein for each
end of the "cut".

Exactly my favoured method (of several possible) in Veags ;-)


No, I think that thinking of the timelines as the primary thing is
where we begin to go wrong....


Find and navigate to a peak (or verse, or chorus etc) in a whole piece
from the start in a few seconds without a timelineÂ* !

geoff

Oh no - it's wonderful for that.

I've just seen a lot of videos, particularly related to Beat
Detective and/or Melodyne , especially related to quantization
of the signal itself and I'm not fond of that phenomenon.

--
Les Cargill