This is based off of the Pro Tools thread from about two months ago, which ended up discussing the topic of archiving digitally versus analog.

Steve made some great points about the current state of archiving things such as Pro Tools sessions in regards to computer / software / hardware / protocol obsolescence. His points seem non debatable. I do not wish to rehash the thread.

I have used Pro Tools for the past four years and have an archive of all of the projects that I have worked on (I have yet to experience any loss of data, although we are not talking about a long time here). What I find useful about this archive is that it is not only a collection of my two track masters and audio tracks, but a document of the final mixing state frozen in time, as well as previous mixing states leading up to those final mixes. This is because I have chosen to mix within the Pro Tools environment. I can review my mixes from four years ago and see what I was up to. Sometimes I laugh and sometimes I see something useful. I can even slightly tweak it, such as bring the bass down 2db. and leave everything else the way it was. It is an interesting archive that I don't think would exist if I had an all analog studio.

I have some masters from some of my old bands. These masters are the multi track tapes (Otari 8 track half inch, 2" inch 24 track, etc.) and some 1/2" analog two track mixes, along with some track sheets with descriptions and mastering notes. They don't come with the useful documents that my Pro Tools sessions have, and they don't come with the Neotek console and 1176 compressors, etc. that they were originally mixed through (and yes, I do understand that there is a difference between a real 1176 and an emulation).

In this sense, I prefer the archiving of all this useful information to archiving an unalterable final mix and raw tracks. Whether they survive or not is another debate.

The point of archiving the session data (as opposed to the final two track mix) is to retain the potential to alter the mix in the future, and for me at least, to learn from the documents of the mixing state.

Just two days ago I had a client who wanted to try a compressor setting from one song on their last album. I was able to quickly import those settings, so I have my opinions for why I find this data useful.

I'm not looking for opinions such as "Your mixes must suck because they were recorded and mixed in Pro Tools" or any long term archiving issues, but rather:

How do we make an archive that shows the work in it's final state, and is capable of being picked up where it was left off?

How do the analog studios "recall" a session with the same degree of accuracy?

If the singer of a band makes decisions on eq, automation, de essing and even the forsaken Auto Tune, isn't this data just as important as the audio track itself?

It's interesting to consider where the responsibility of the engineer begins and ends in this matter.

If I missed this topic elsewhere in this forum, my apologies.

the answer to all of your questions is very simple.

if you don't already have one, get a good quality digital camera. mine's a 5 megapixel sony, and i think it's awesome.

then, when your mix is done (or in any of it's varying states, really) take a series of pictures of your board and all your gear. that way, if you ever want to recreate the exact settings, you have pictures to work with that you can even zoom in on and see the knobs larger than they are in the real world.

that's how i do it anyways. you could conceivably do the same thing with a pen and paper, but the camera is a lot quicker and easier. and i'm awful lazy like that.

That's smart.

So, do your mixes generally involve a mixer in a static state, or do you sometimes need to ride the faders and pans, etc.? Does that get documented, as well? How far should one be obligated to go, both for the sake of recalling a mix two weeks later, or leaving documentation with the reels of tape for a remix in a different studio twenty years from now? Do you leave photos of your mixer inside the box with the reels of tape?

Thanks!

yeah, great point about the mixes not being static. i dunno, i suppose if you were really intent on being able to *exactly* recreate a mix years later, you might want to also set up a video camera recording your console and getting a good shot of what knobs you were turning when. maybe write some stuff down on paper, too.

the important thing is, as i've heard steve assert when discussing protools and i completely agree with, you've got no guarantee that in 20 years there will even be machines that will read your old protools data. i agree that there is no guarantee. i think protools is popular enough that you'll *probably* be able to read your data in 20 years.

really, it looks to me like a matter of personal choice here. go with protools, and have your exact mix documented and accessible as long as you can keep your data archived and find a computer that will run protools and read your data... or go with a non-pc based setup and be more confident that 20 years from now you'll still be able to track down a machine that will handle your tape, and either be forced to execute a new and different mix (which let's face it, you'll maybe be able to do even more with it in 20 years, do things differently, maybe better [i.e. laser-based compressors or some shit]) or you'll have to work from the digital photos (save them on a cd rom, a dvd rom, a floppy, something...) and do your best to try and recreate.

i dunno, you got me with the non-static mix. workstation-based recorders kick ass there, all realtime and recreateable and stuff, for sure.

Steve's comments are persuasive.

Here's a nice link from the archiving community which shows that there is a concern for developing guidelines and techniques towards the preservation of digital media:

http://info.wgbh.org/upf/

I think digital media archiving has the potential to become a big business. Digital audio, photography and video are not going to vanish into thin air if there is money to be made, but my opinions (and Steve's) regarding the future are only speculations.

I like the argument Steve has about how an analog machine, due to it's physicality, would be able to be pieced together in the future, whereas a computer / hardware / software configuration would not. It's kind of a Mad Max type thing. The analog champions will thrive during the apocalypse. I'm exaggerating, but you know what I mean.

Let's imagine two sessions happening this week.

1) Pro Tools man is recording and mixing a band at his studio. The band spends four days tracking and three days mixing. The songs are mixed internally and there is a fair amount of fader automation on the vocals. Some songs have Auto Tune engaged on the tail of a few words by the client's request. A deesser is automated to engage on a few key words or whatever. Four different plug ins were used. The session is archived. Each session contains the final mix PT session file. As a safety, the tracks with plug ins also contain alternate playlists with the effect processed directly into the file, in the event that no one has ever heard of Auto Tune in twenty years. Just for kicks, the alternate vocal takes are archived as separate playlists for posterity, and all the extra drum tracks that were not used are "inactivated" but left in for some future alternate mixes.

2) Analog man records and mixes a band. The same Tom Foolery happens with Auto Tune and deessing. Everyone has a hand on a fader during mix down and it's a lot of fun. Photographs are taken and charts are filled out to detail the mix process. The session is archived, because the 2" tape is going to last forever. Inside the box are a bunch of details regarding the session. All those unused drum tracks and vocal takes were recorded over. That's cool, though, because it's good to make decisions and stick to them.

Twenty years later, the people who own these recordings want to reopen the songs from where they left off and bring the bass down 2 db.

Who is in a worse situation? Pro Tools man needs to find a G4 that reads DVD Rs running OX 10.2.8 with Pro Tools 6 and a HD 192 interface. Luckily, they are ancient and worthless and won't cost too much. For kicks, they listen to the alternate playlists and find a cool alternate take of the vocals and they do an alternate mix with the unused drum tracks.

Analog man needs to find a 2" 24 track, an identical Neve console with the same specs and tolerances, plus the EMT 140 plate reverb, a few 1176s and Disterssors, etc. Luckily, Dreamhire is still in business and are quite happy to rent out the gear.

I do agree with Steve's point that (if I may paraphrase) the engineer has a responsibility to provide the client with a master that embodies all of the work that went into it. The two track mix does contain that information. Beyond that, it's 24 tracks of raw data and a bunch of notes.

In terms of creating documents of the mixing process, I hope that twenty years from now people who are interested in music from today could actually open Pro Tools documents for the sake of study. It would be a blast to open up trash like "Livin' La Vida Loca" and see how all that dated crap was made, or open up a session file from something brilliant and get an inside peek at the mechanics of the mix.

I didn't really even consider what a Pro Tools session file retains until I started to think of what it means to archive. It saves the information automatically. I don't think I would have the patience to precisely document a mix otherwise. So, the questions is:

Where does the responsibility of the engineer begin and end in regard to archiving the studio session?

i think paper is the way to go in archiving a mix for the long term. if you can't open your pro tools files in 20 years, you probably can't open your archived digital photos either.

i dunno about that digital photo thing. that's kinda like saying that in 20 years you won't be able to listen to a cassette. you will. you certainly will. if even only for the novelty of it, folks will have cassette players forever. maybe you'll need to go to an antique store, worst case scenario, and get ANY pc computer that can read a CD (which let's face it, will probably be just about every PC made for a loooooong time) and open the photos. digital photos are typically saved as jpeg files. JPEG stands for something like Joint Photography Experts Group or something? whatever the deal is, JPEGs are an accepted and defined photograph compression standard that exists beyond the PC world (i.e. Mac and pretty much every digital camera as well). if you wanna get real paranoid about the future, you can save them as bitmaps, which cannot possibly become obsolete since they're the most basic representation of an image you can get, just a red-green-blue at each pixel. i would be willing to be you the lives of everyone i know that bitmaps will be readable as long as there are computers. then it's just a question of the CD becoming obsolete. and let's face it, everybody knows that cassette has been dead for years and years, but you're still gonna be hard-pressed to find a boom-box at best buy that doesn't have a dual cassette deck in it.

anyways, whatever. if you have the dilligence to document on paper, knock yourself out. it may or may not be as accurate as a digital photograph in terms of exact knob settings and stuff. but paper, even though plenty of people were claiming it would become obsolete in the immediate future, has yet to do so.

but yeah, if there's some kinda complete cataclysm that destroys all forms of electronics-type technology on the earth, then you'll have a hard time with those digital photos. in the meantime i bet there's a lot more folks working professionally that use digital photos (like magazines and web designers) than there are using protools and pure-analog audio combined. just like there's more folks using CD than vinyl. i think that one could make the case that the more pervasive a technology becomes, the more likely it is that manufacturers will maintain backwards compatibility. and CD's are certainly pervasive. as are digital images.

i can still easily get an atari 2600.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... egory=3537

or a coleco,
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... egory=3541

or an intellivision.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... egory=3551

i can even get a 5.25" floppy drive!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... gory=51096

why would protools disappear off the face of the earth when none of this other stuff does? and WHY would digital photos become unreadable when they're all over the world, on every current computer format, in every digital camera, even printers are compatible without need for a computer.

here's an 8-track machine, too. so in 20 years i could still play my 8-track tapes if they weren't degraded.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... gory=14999

just sayin.

the important thing is, as i've heard steve assert when discussing protools and i completely agree with, you've got no guarantee that in 20 years there will even be machines that will read your old protools data. i agree that there is no guarantee. i think protools is popular enough that you'll *probably* be able to read your data in 20 years.

i was essentially playing devil's advocate to the above statement in my post. you were suggesting making a digital photo archive of a session and saying the above at the same time. it struck me as odd, that's all. i agree that one will probably be able to piece together the means to read wavs, aiffs, and jpegs for quite some time.

it does strike me as odd to assert that one will be able to find/build a tape machine to play back tapes, but not be able to do the same for digital media. i suppose there is some confort in the physicality of tape, but a cd is just as real, isn't it. why is digital audio technology percieved as being so much more transient? is it becasue a lay person would figure out how to build a tape machine before a computer? analog has had quite some time to standardize itself, but hasn't digital audio been around long enough by now to lend some degree of comfort about the archiving process?

discuss

googacky wrote:i was essentially playing devil's advocate to the above statement in my post. you were suggesting making a digital photo archive of a session and saying the above at the same time. it struck me as odd, that's all. i agree that one will probably be able to piece together the means to read wavs, aiffs, and jpegs for quite some time.

That's a long way from being able to resurrect an entire session -- to what are you recording these files that you will be able to connect to the computer of the future? I can't think of a single memory format or storage system (other than paper tape/punch cards) that has lasted as long as 15 years.

why is digital audio technology percieved as being so much more transient?

Because over the course of decades, it has proven to be consistently so. This isn't a prejudice, it's a plain-english reading of the events. The computer world needs flexibility, so development can happen quickly in products and processes. This requires radical changes implemented in hardware, software and computer systems in a short development cycle.

That makes the old stuff useless.

analog has had quite some time to standardize itself, but hasn't digital audio been around long enough by now to lend some degree of comfort about the archiving process?

discuss

I can play back even the earliest magnetic analog recordings today. All of them. Any of them. I cannot play back many of the 100-or-so obsolete digital formats. Digital recording has had more than 25 years to get its shit together.

My objection to the technology of digital recording is not a theoretical one. I don't like the way it has proven itself to be transitory over time. It has created nothing permanent.

My objection to the practice of digital recording (we can call it Pro Tools) is the underlying assumption that is the germination of this thread: Everything should be being tweaked and changed all the time, and wouldn't it be cool if that were true even of old archival material.

The timidity -- unwillingness to make decisions -- is encouraged by the equipment and process. The indecision shows at every stage. Not one take, 40 takes. Not one edit, 120 edits. Not one overdub, 50 overdubs. Not one mix, but an infinite stream of mixes cascading over decades.

This is why it is a childish method and unsuitable for making records.

toomanyhelicopters wrote:
why would protools disappear off the face of the earth when none of this other stuff does? and WHY would digital photos become unreadable when they're all over the world, on every current computer format, in every digital camera, even printers are compatible without need for a computer.

I work for a data recovery company and you would be suprised to learn what information can and cannot be retreived, sure some of the machines still work, but that doesn't mean you can do anything useful w/ it, like copy it to a new medium.

and when you can it is expensive, like you wouldn't believe