steve wrote:if I hire a company to do it for me, do I now bill all of my clients every month for eternity for the cost of keeping their session masters up to date?

i believe it was russ that once posted something about having a "wet dream" where this happened. not where you had to charge clients to keep their master formats up-to-date, but just that you had room enough for a warehouse where you could keep all the masters you guys have ever done, and charge the bands for keeping them there.

steve wrote:And when your company or Iron Mountain goes broke, as happens to all companies, and the bill doesn't get paid for this continuous re-copying of data, what happens then? Poof? And if I hire a company to do it for me, do I now bill all of my clients every month for eternity for the cost of keeping their session masters up to date?

all good questions. although, i think that if all companies go broke, including your studio and every other studio, then what happens to the ability to play the tape? exact same scenario as my company going broke or anyone else's company. the fact is, if the information/music/data is important to anyone, it will continue to be accessible whatever the medium may be.

if you hire a company to keep clients data or formats available, then by all means you can charge your client. you are providing a service, just like you do when you record someone. if you don't do it, someone else will.

No, I record an album and give the master to the band and they disappear into the wind. I owe it to them to give them something they will always be able to play, not something they must continuously repair in case it disappears forever.

i really don't see this as being any different than tape machines disappearing forever. the chances of tape machines disappearing are just as likely as a device to recover digital information disappearing. the importance of the data is the driving force here.

zeroart wrote:the fact is, if the information/music/data is important to anyone, it will continue to be accessible whatever the medium may be.

This has not proven true, and is actually impossible. Things become valuable after they have accumulated interest over time. Many records are released from masters that were put on a shelf and forgotten for 30 years or more. There was no interest in them in the 30 years prior to that moment, and so no conservation had been done. Your idea supposes that we will all know what will eventually become important and will set to actively conserving it in advance of that moment. Nobody can do this, so nobody does.

if you hire a company to keep clients data or formats available, then by all means you can charge your client. you are providing a service, just like you do when you record someone. if you don't do it, someone else will.

No, actually, no one will. That's my point. No band will agree to pay for a session if the ultimate cost is infinite, on monthly installments

No, I record an album and give the master to the band and they disappear into the wind. I owe it to them to give them something they will always be able to play, not something they must continuously repair in case it disappears forever.

i really don't see this as being any different than tape machines disappearing forever. the chances of tape machines disappearing are just as likely as a device to recover digital information disappearing. the importance of the data is the driving force here.

Here you are historically wrong. There are numerous expired digital formats with unplayable masters, there are no truly unplayable analog recordings. Computer technology changes so rapidly that there is no way for a current paradigm to be made safe from future changes. Analog technologies, being "fixed" in development, are cross-manufacturer compatible with any player in history. I can even make a machine if I need to. I don't think I'll ever need to.

Your faith that important stuff will be preserved is unwarranted, unless you can demonstrate to me that anyone is actively doing this preservation of all his important stuff. I mean that everyone is doing it. Actually, nobody is doing it.

steve wrote:This has not proven true, and is actually impossible. Things become valuable after they have accumulated interest over time. Many records are released from masters that were put on a shelf and forgotten for 30 years or more. There was no interest in them in the 30 years prior to that moment, and so no conservation had been done. Your idea supposes that we will all know what will eventually become important and will set to actively conserving it in advance of that moment. Nobody can do this, so nobody does.

i see it a bit different. maybe this is just a difference in ethos of conservation. i would think that anything i record for myself or anyone else as being important enough to conserve by any means necessary.

No, actually, no one will. That's my point. No band will agree to pay for a session if the ultimate cost is infinite, on monthly installments

bands do this all the time when signing to a major. king of a joke there, but not really.
they will if it's worth it to them to preserve their recording. the service doesn't have to be done as an ongoing charge, only when conservation services are needed. just like they will pay someone to bake their tape and throw it up on a machine at a studio when the time comes for needing it. if people want to make money from these types of services, they will for however long there is a market for it. we've seen this recently with the analog recording media industry. the business landscape changes about just as fast as the computing world and in this day and age, changes with the computing world.

Here you are historically wrong. There are numerous expired digital formats with unplayable masters, there are no truly unplayable analog recordings. Computer technology changes so rapidly that there is no way for a current paradigm to be made safe from future changes. Analog technologies, being "fixed" in development, are cross-manufacturer compatible with any player in history. I can even make a machine if I need to. I don't think I'll ever need to.

this is precisely why i first posted to this thread. it's important for people to realize that there are open formats and specifications out there to be utilized in the digital domain. if open specifications are used, anyone can build a device or have someone build one for them if they are not capable, to recover their digital data. much like you could build a tape machine if needed. what's very ironic is that the commercial music and movie industries are the ones leading the way to stifle open systems.

this is a good conversation.

zeroart wrote:

steve wrote:Here you are historically wrong. There are numerous expired digital formats with unplayable masters, there are no truly unplayable analog recordings. Computer technology changes so rapidly that there is no way for a current paradigm to be made safe from future changes. Analog technologies, being "fixed" in development, are cross-manufacturer compatible with any player in history. I can even make a machine if I need to. I don't think I'll ever need to.

this is precisely why i first posted to this thread. it's important for people to realize that there are open formats and specifications out there to be utilized in the digital domain. if open specifications are used, anyone can build a device or have someone build one for them if they are not capable, to recover their digital data. much like you could build a tape machine if needed. what's very ironic is that the commercial music and movie industries are the ones leading the way to stifle open systems.

I think there is a little confusion here.

You need to define the storage medium and the playback medium.

Digital audio playback is relatively simple. All we need is a computer and a small amount of code to recompose the binary data before converting it into an analogue signal. I doubt this will ever be a problem, especially since un-compressed digital audio has a logical method for storage - just a sequential series of samples. Computers are unlikely to dissappear. I believe the days of now-dated digital recorders with obscure formats are ending and that most digital data will be stored either on a computer or a computer hard disk in a simple standard format.

The problem still lies with the storage medium and maintaining the data. This is a problem with any medium, but it is more concerning with digital.

I still believe that if people value something, then they will take appropriate steps to maintain it. I don't see it as being a problem.

I'm not sure about the re-discovering an old recording argument. I can't imagine this happening, although I'm not doubting that it is possible. File-sharing would help to prevent this I suppose... Uh oh. Don't start.

Rodabod wrote:I still believe that if people value something, then they will take appropriate steps to maintain it. I don't see it as being a problem.

Do you believe that the masters of the many thousands of recordings being made every year are being meticulously re-copied every year or so? I know that they aren't. No one is doing this. Given that our clients are clearly unwilling to do it, and I cannot do it for them (for legal, manpower and money reasons), I think giving them a master they can safely forget about is the only responsible choice.

steve wrote:Do you believe that the masters of the many thousands of recordings being made every year are being meticulously re-copied every year or so? I know that they aren't. No one is doing this.

You're right. No one is making the effort to re-copy. However, I think if people were aware of the potential problem of data loss then they would take some actions. The reason I don't think anybody bothers is that they are not scared. Maybe they are wrong. ADAT, etc, were a bit of a joke with respect to longevity (and sound quality), but I think people are past that now.

Given that our clients are clearly unwilling to do it, and I cannot do it for them (for legal, manpower and money reasons), I think giving them a master they can safely forget about is the only responsible choice.

This is the best thing to do probably. It basically rules out most of the risks concerned since tape masters are known to have stored audio for decades.

If there was no risk of data loss then this obviously wouldn't be necessary, but I suppose this is the point, nobody knows how big the risk really is. History tells us we are fucked, but technology evolves and we learn along with it. I'm not scared (or maybe I'm naive).

Also, most people would argue that tape sounds better which makes digital mediocre in comparison. That's an obvious argument for tape storage.

toomanyhelicopters wrote:I apologize if this has been covered elsewhere, but could somebody post a link to a well-vetted or at least thoroughly trustworthy study that shows that modern hard disks are expected to not retain data flawlessly if left in storage for decades? I've heard that the disks must be intermittently refreshed or they'll lose at least some of the data (something to do with retaining the proper magnetic charges) but have never seen a source cited for that one. I'm not disputing the validity of the notion, just curious to see a good paper explaining it.

I've heard something about this too. Anyone have a link?

Rodabod wrote:If there was no risk of data loss then this obviously wouldn't be necessary, but I suppose this is the point, nobody knows how big the risk really is. History tells us we are fucked, but technology evolves and we learn along with it. I'm not scared...

Very true.




Technology advances- and I have faith in people developing and utilizing technology to make, record and remember that which they think is worth recording and remembering. If there's a will, there's a technological way.

So:

People preserve those things which they deem worth preserving........... and they forget or outright destroy those things which they deem worth forgetting or destroying.......that is what human history is. It's not some inevitable idealism. It is individual human beings recording and retelling the things that they and others do.

Sometimes there are unexpected catastrophes that no wants or expects that wipes out history...............

Human history, be it word of mouth or passed down through a medium (in one form or another) is a laissez faire free market really if you think about it.

Draw your own conclusions.

here's the ultimate retort: nothing lasts forever. deal with it.