What is archival?

[rhagan]

I understand that most readers of this forum are MD enthusiasts, but I would like your opinion on whether HiMD is a good choice for archiving a large collection of classical music.

I have been collecting classical music recordings for four decades - LPs, tapes, off-air recordings to 1/4 inch tape and cassettes, and of course CDs in recent years. All are disintegrating except the CDs, but I read that they too have a brief life expectancy. Plastic is not stable. Silver tarnishes. You can now buy gold CD blanks presumed to be longer lasting, so obviously it is known that regular CDs have a limited life expectancy.

So I am putting it all onto HiMD, LP actually, since it sounds as good as most of the material I put onto it when played back. I use an RH10 and a RH700 for editing.

Of course these MDs will deteriorate in time. Probably sooner than the cassettes, which lasted forty years before becoming fragile in a variety of interesting ways, none of which has deteriorated the sound when they CAN be played back. BUT: how long will HiMD PLAYERS be around? Is it an orphan technology with possibly only a five year horizon? It seems insane to be doing this, but the process at least gets the collection into a digital domain where I can later move it around.

The only way I have thought of to make this collection usable to my heirs or students in the future is to buy five of the Australian 700 players and put them away. But then, will they last in storage, or do these MD devices deteriorate even sitting around?

My interim plan is to eventually back the music up from MDs onto hard drives which can themselves be backed up rapidly. But in ATRAC3 format? No other players will be able to read it, and I cannot bank on Atrac3 decoding to be available. I will have to convert it all to MP3 128k, which seems about the same quality as HiLp, but twice as bulky, and store it that way for the long term.

But is this a crazy way to do it?

[Avrin]

Man, what you are doing is actually the same thing that I have been thinking about for some time. Though it is not only classical music in my case. The main problem is that Hi-MD units will probably not be around in 5 to 10 years, and those, which we already have will probably die by that time. Unused Hi-MD players may also die, and you'll be left with great discs with no device to put them in.

What I suggest in your case (and I am going to do that thing to my LPs), is to digitize your music, and convert it to MP3s in decent quality (one LP side per file, so as to keep them gapless, which is crucial for classical music). Then put those MP3s onto whatever media you like. Just make at least two copies of each on different media (HD & CD, or CD & DVD, or whatever). This way you'll be sure that your collection will always be playable.

The only problem here is with digitizing. Hi-MD recorders do that "like no other" ™. Seriously. The quailty of ADCs in Hi-MD recorders is really really high. But then you'll have to record in PCM, transfer to the PC, export to WAVs, edit, compress to MP3, etc. All this will take ages, but you'll have the best possible quality. Another way is to digitize using a computer, but you need a good sound card and cabling, to avoid introducing noise and distortion into recordings. In this case again, digitize to WAVs, edit them, and encode to MP3s after editing.

One more comment. Good brand CD-Rs have a really good life span. And aluminum CD-Rs are better than gold ones, since the CD format specification was based on aluminum, and gold was introduced much later, exclusively for advertising purposes.

My personal current maximum statistics for media that I own (the oldest ones, good genuine brands):

LP record - 52 years. Plays excellent.

Compact Cassette - 30 years. Plays good (well, it never played as excellent as the LP).

CD - 17 years. Plays excellent.

CD-R (data, not audio) - 10 years. Reads excellent.

DVD+RW with video - 2.5 years. Plays excellent.

P.S. If you have already started backing up in ATRAC3, you may continue in this way. Make sure you strip DRM from them, or they will not be playable on anything, except the original SonicStage installation, that you used to transfer the tracks. Even if devices will not be available, programs will. There are ATRAC3 codecs for both Windows Media Player and Winamp. Just back them up also. The only possible danger here is that future operating systems will change to such extent, that WMP and Winamp will no longer be around, but I think that the probability of that is negligible.

But I strongly suggest the MP3 way. The LP-mode bitrate will not be adequate for some classical music, while in MP3 you'll not be limited by Hi-MD specifications.

Edited February 22, 2007 by Avrin

[greenmachine]

Using a lossless format like FLAC will lower the possibility of being dissatisfied with the SQ, and is a good base for further editing (if ever necessary). Lossy encoding on the other hand usually has a more or less significant size advantage - with a highly developed format/codec the quality will be virtually indistinguishable from the original (LAME's mp3 VBR codec at one of the higher settings for example does an excellent job). Hi-LP might sound acceptable to you now, but might get unacceptable when upgrading your playback equipment and/or your hearing abilities develop. It also is a proprietary codec with an uncertain future.

Other than that I'd recommend reading this recent thread. If your data is important to you, do several (the exact number depends on your degree of paranoia ) copies on different media types and check them regularly.

[Sparky191]

I agree with greenmachine.

For archiving, you need a lossless compressed open format. That would seem to be FLAC. Then back it up over a couple different type of media. Hard Disk, DVD and the original format.

My own choice was that my tape collection is of poor quality so not worth preserving at that high level. I also don't have the space to store and back FLAC's up. So I'm encoding the best of them, and my favorites and dumping the rest. I'm encoding everything as high quality Lame MP3s varying between 192~320kps. Thats basically good enough for me for now. I realise its not HiFi, but I'm accepting that compromise. So I add these to my main library encoded from my CD's. Any music that I lose by dumping the tapes I intend to replace in the longterm with used CD's. So this MP3 library I have is now about 70GB's. Its backed up on 3 disks (one in the PC and 2 seperate external drives) and of course I've the original CD's. In the future I may build a FLAC library from the CD's.

If I was rhagan I'd be using FLAC from the start though. I wouldn't use a propiertery format like ATRAC, or anything that relies on that hardware like MD. I just use HiMD for recording myself. Its much easier to manage other formats for backup and file management.

[ghankstef]

I'd go with FLAC or 320 CBR mp3 and multiple media backups CDs, DVDs, Hard drives

Here's a thought, if you own the copyright and don't mind sharing upload them to www.archive.org too

[1kyle]

I've got over 700 CD's of classical music collected over the years.

MD will last probably longer than CD-R's or other "Consumer" type media. I'm not so sure about the advice given here to convert everything to MP3's.

There's no problem in having a library of ATRAC Lossless -- this will be compatable with your current MD system and you can then also convert the Atrac lossless to any other format you care to name (eitherdirectly if the format is supported or by creating WAV and then choosing your format.

If like me you've got a decent shelf MD unit and not totally dependent on Hi-MD portable units you can reasonable expect YEARS and YEARS of use out of the gear.

There is obviously the question of whether you are happy usin g a proprietary format for storing your music --but as it's LOSSLESS you won't have any problems doing conversions later on (and current sony flash players etc will play atrac lossless directly as will your computer).

We can probably argue till the cows come home over what' s the best format / codec for classical music.

MP3 @ 320 IMO is not the best option. For Classical music I still think ATRAC offers the best listening experience however only your own ears will be the real judge.

Forget even THINKING about 128 kbs mp3's for classical music.

I know I'll gert slagged off here but so long as you store your music on your computer in a LOSSLESS format you can always convert it to whatever format future algorithms and techniques come out.

Hard disk storage is CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAP now. Even in "Rip Off Britain" you can find 320 GB external USB disks for as little as 69 GBP (inc VAT) and those can be found in places such as PC WORLD (not usually the cheapest source of gear).

Don't worry about storage costs or space these days.

My only real gripe with the SS library storage system is that it currently doesn't seem to be able to span multiple disks.

Cheers

-K

[greenmachine]

1kyle, you might be surprised how relatively well classical music usually can be compressed without much quality loss, whereas for modern pop music (rich in high freqencies, dynamically strongly compressed) you usually need a higher bitrate to achieve the same perceived quality. For lossy encoding, VBR is the most intelligent way to compress your files to day, the encoder will automatically choose the necessary bitrates to achieve a given quality without wasting disk space. Encoding classical music in VBR will usually yield lower avg. bitrates than pop music at the same quality setting. There are exceptions of course.

[Sparky191]

I'm not advocating MP3's. I'm saying FLAC is the way go. I just use MP3's as they are perfect for my current needs. Which is a portable music library. I'm not building an archive library. I don't want the overhead of encoding on the fly either.

Problem with MD, ATRAC and ATRAC Lossless is SonicStage is simply a pain to manage a large library. Especially if you have a portable version and a lossless archive. I'm not saying you can't do it. Theres just easier and more convenient ways. IMO. Theres also the problem of proprietary formats especially one where theres a decreasing amount of new hardware for the format.

I have more than one brand of DAP and use my library across a few different PC's. Personally I hate juggling discs be they MD, 3.5" floppies, Zips, Jazz, tapes, CD's or even DVD's. Much more convenient to have a central store.

Edited February 22, 2007 by Sparky191

[cochra1]

Using a lossless format like FLAC will lower the possibility of being dissatisfied with the SQ, and is a good base for further editing (if ever necessary). Lossy encoding on the other hand usually has a more or less significant size advantage - with a highly developed format/codec the quality will be virtually indistinguishable from the original (LAME's mp3 VBR codec at one of the higher settings for example does an excellent job). Hi-LP might sound acceptable to you now, but might get unacceptable when upgrading your playback equipment and/or your hearing abilities develop. It also is a proprietary codec with an uncertain future.

Other than that I'd recommend reading this recent thread. If your data is important to you, do several (the exact number depends on your degree of paranoia ) copies on different media types and check them regularly.

I have to second these comments. As a classical fan myself I really appreciate some of the wonderfully warm and rich recordings out there, and to digitise these onto Hi-LP would be a great shame. If you can't tell any difference now, it may be due to limitations of your current equipment. But in the future you may regret it.

As mentioned earlier, if you have a decent soundcard then you can record your material to your PC via that.

Alternatively, if you have a CD recorder you could record to that first, then transfer the data onto your PC.

But quite frankly, even taking a totally uncompressed (or lossless) digital copy from a vinyl record will degrade the sound (it will lose warmth and smoothness, and be subjected to the limitations of the soundcard/CD recorder that captured it).

I have hundreds of LP records and would never do this. As long as you respect those large black plastic discs and play them on a decent turntable, you can enjoy them for decades. And unlike magnetic storage, they won't decompose over your lifetime!

As for your analogue tapes, sure, use one of the above methods but if compression is required due to space facors, don't use less than 320mbps MP3.

[cochra1]

1kyle, you might be surprised how relatively well classical music usually can be compressed without much quality loss, whereas for modern pop music (rich in high freqencies, dynamically strongly compressed) you usually need a higher bitrate to achieve the same perceived quality. For lossy encoding, VBR is the most intelligent way to compress your files to day, the encoder will automatically choose the necessary bitrates to achieve a given quality without wasting disk space. Encoding classical music in VBR will usually yield lower avg. bitrates than pop music at the same quality setting. There are exceptions of course.

Hmmm...I agree with a lot of what greenmachine says, but not sure about this. Much modern pop music certainly is (unfortunately) very dynamically compressed, but this generally makes it sound fairly awful in the first place and so it suffers less from data compression (relatively speaking I mean).

Classical, on the other hand (as with jazz, folk, and the best recorded pop from 20+ years ago), is lovingly recorded and produced to sound as prestine as possible, and so suffers more from digitisation and lossy compressions. IMO of course!

Edited February 22, 2007 by KanakoAndTheNumbSkulls

[rhagan]

Thank you all. I posted the original query. I will return and read your replies more carefully later, but I gather that you mostly agree that the HiMD HiLP format will not be around forever.

More later. Thanks again.

RHagan

[Sparky191]

..more importantly its not good enough quality for archival.

[rhagan]

Many of you are what we called audiophiles. So you place great importance on dynamic and frequency accuracy. I am just a music lover and I hear from my old stereo component system nearly as well as I do in a concert hall. If it sounds like a piano concerto or a violin, I'm happy.

Remember, I am archiving music I gathered off-air. Lots of compression built right in to the source signal right there, as well as some frequency delimitation. Then onto a quarter inch recorder -- Teac, Akai, Sony, various makes over the years -- through a Dolby outboard pre-amp. More compression and distortion built in there, and then throw in occasional tape flutter. Then dub out to cassettes, usually de-Dolby'd and re-Dobly'd in the process, because the two Dolby methods were not compatible. By now you're tearing your hair.

But those cassettes sounded good to me and I played them for years. Improving the stereo system a couple times, they sounded better. I never did play them super-loud, except for analysis occasionally, but enough to give the sensation of being in the room with the chamber music group or pianist. I'm also forgiving of the clicks and pops that vinyl LPs produced, sometimes right out of the package, more with every use. Grew up with them.

So if I'm happy with this sound, I am obviously not starting where you are. And I find that the HiLP Mds made from these cassettes sound indistinguishable from the cassettes they are made from, in the same sound system or via headphones. I think it is an amazing technology.

MP3-128 sounds about the same to me when I put some classical music in an MP3 player. It takes about a meg per minute, versus a half meg for HiLP. But as you say, hard drives are cheap. So the likely route will be to pile up MP3 versions onto hard drives. But that is not a directly playable form like the CD or the MD. You have to involve a computer. So more CDs or DVDs or whatever is around then will have to be made ultimately, as well as the drive being periodically backed up.

I wish there were some hope for sturdy MD players to be available in the future. I have already had one MD Walkman go flaky from being dropped a few times.

I appreciate your comments. I can see what I must do.

[Sparky191]

Regardless of how good quality you are happy with, a good backup has more than one copy of a file, for redundancy. You can't easily, or quickly do this with HiLP and no computer.

I don't know what you mean directly playable. Its entirely practical to carry your entire MP3 library around in your pocket and be able to pick any track in it anywhere you go. Thats not going to practical with a large collection on HiMD. You can plug your entire MP3 collection into your HiFi and never have to change a CD/MD again. Directly playable isn't an issue.

However if you want to use MD, then have at least have an ATRAC library on HD aswell. Then backup the ATRAC library across a few Hard Disks. Theres enough posts on this forum about errors with MD and bad discs not to have it as your only medium.

Edited February 24, 2007 by Sparky191

[mediageek]

I agree with the folks who urge holding onto your vinyl.

Believe it or not, the US Library of Congress is using 78rpm shellac records to archive digital and analog recordings, because they've found that this medium holds up the best over time (even if fidelity isn't the best). And with 78s all you need is a cone and a needle to hear what's on it -- no computers, no decks, no electricity, even. See this story at NPR:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1216161

Of course, cutting shellac records is out of the question for most of us (but you can buy a machine for cutting your own vinyl 33 and 45 rpm records at home:

http://www.vestax.com/v/products/recorders/vrx2000.html )

So, more practically, I also agree with the advice of keeping as many copies of things on as many different formats as possible. For instance, I do a weekly radio program that I also podcast. I record the show on MD (SP Mono), which I then upload to my PC using an RH1. I keep a .wav uncompressed file and make an MP3 and ogg vorbis for the podcast. I then save the .wav, .mp3 and .ogg to CD-R and DVD-R. I also hold on to the original MD.

CD-Rs are actually a decent archival format, provided you buy quality media -- brands like Verbatim, Maxell and Sony, but not Memorex or store house-brands. Plus, they're so cheap and easy to copy that it's easy to keep several copies in case one of them goes bad.

Just based upon the sheer number of players, I wouldn't consider Hi-MD the best archival choice. However, if you like using your Hi-MD player and find it convenient, I think it makes a good choice to use as your listening copy. Rather than putting wear and tear on your more fragile tape and vinyl, copy them to MD and listen to that. Provided you have a working MD player, MD media is very robust, especially because it's encased in a nice plastic shell, making it difficult to be ruined by fingers, sharp objects or sunlight.

I think archiving is a very important topic, especially if you have recordings that are valuable (to you), unique and/or irreplaceable. The Pacifica Archives lost hundreds of hours of what turned out to be historically significant recordings because back in the 50s and 60s open reel tape was so expensive they reused them, not knowing that some of the people who appeared on them would turn out to be major figures in the civil rights movement 10 years later.

Luckily, blank media is so cheap these days that it really is possible to try and keep your copies alive.

[raintheory]

Hmm, that NPR article is from April 1st...

April Fools?

[Sparky191]

Hmm, that NPR article is from April 1st...

April Fools?

[rayzray]

gee,, i took all of my many 78's out to test them;; i had the cone half built;; will a safety pin work??

i didn't see any she-lack (sp) on them..

i (REMEMBER) buying some 78's when i was little.. but very few;; then,, i "UP_GRADED" to 45's;; the NEW and final medium/media..

all aside;; i think archiving is VERY important;; and i archive on CD-R's ;; DVD-R's;; Standard MD'zz (Never Hi-MD);; and,, i also have much music archived on VHS tapes in SP speed..

i would archive on a banana if i cold..

Edited February 25, 2007 by rayzray

[robo11]

I think for a huge collection of music in lossless format, getting a mirrored raid server/setup would be ideal.

Backup will always be a progression. There is nothing more secure than a continual maintenance and recovery plan. You can't really build for legacy these days as new tech trends develop.

I was thinking about this, and imagine storing your library on a RAID SSD flash drive setup. Fairly expensive now (as they are only getting introduced as 16+32GB drives at present), but in the future prices should come down drastically and the viability of a Hard Drive with no moving parts will seem a smarter idea for futureproofing in the medium to longer term plans.

[Sparky191]

RAID is not intended for backup. RAID is for increasing speed (data throughput), and increasing the logical size of a "hard drive." Its also for redundancy and prevent a system in the event of HD failure. Theres no versioning, no offsite protection, no protection against theft, fire, viruses, no security features, no protection from user error, sabotage etc.

Whereas a proper backup system has all those things.

[Strungup]

I still listen to LP's , ..

Introduced a young Japanese kid (19 Years old) to LP for the firs time today , He came over to help with the House rebuilding project , he looked at my records and said ....I kid you not " What are those?" so I put on the Original Sade " Diamond Life "

Pristine condition, he listen to three songs , and asked to make copies of everything I had , it was toooo funny

His Exact words ..." The Bass is clear , and warm , my CD's dont sound like that" , man I was rollin in the floor.

[Sparky191]

Wait till he tries to RAID those LPs...

[Strungup]

I am content to just RAID the fridge , ,,,,,,,,,,,,..........Honey can I have a BEER