Premier Rock Forum

I have a lot to say about this subject but I will remind you all of the bi-annual Meta crash where Facebook, Instagram, and What'sApp are unavailable for hours. Not to mention a few weeks ago where entire industries were frozen due to some Microsoft updates. You really are putting a lot of trust in the most ultra capitalist companies to protect your data (and I'm not even talking about privacy) from being lost. Shit happens and it happens more often that we like to think.

Also the digital workflow does not lend itself to archivability. Yes I have a lot of old projects that open without issue, and I also have a shit load of projects that won't open right because I don't have some plug-ins I used. Software companies change architecture every few years. Pro Tools used to use DAE for plug-ins, now it's AAX. Apple is making their own processors now, and while Logic projects made on Intel machines open fine (sorta) on the new processor Macs, I don't have hopes that that will still be the case in 10 years. Apple bought Logic from Emagic 20 years ago, and they stopped making Logic for PCs.

These aren't worse case scenarios. These are regular degular scenarios. Analog tape is a robust format, partially because of the work flow but also because it's a physical object that you can keep in your home and would not degrade like a hard drive would.

I never understood this argument with regard to analogue tape because the tape doesn't preserve your mix or any of your outboard effects at all.

If I grab a multitrack from a live show - which I do occasionally because why not, we don't have to hire the Rolling Stones' Mobile Studio these days, I just need to remember to bring a USB drive with me and ask the sound guy nicely - it doesn't matter what software it was recorded with, I don't need the config, it's just a bunch of wav files and I'll drop them into an empty project in whatever DAW I choose and away we go. If you track a whole band at once, it's the same thing. If you are using a DAW like you would use tape, then reconstructing the session from scratch is as easy as cueing up a tape.

I've done that loads of times just for simple convenience. Recorded something in Logic at somebody else's place, go home and mix it in Reaper, didn't bother with anything other than the stems. There will never be a future where we can't read a .wav file. You can even open half a wav file.

eliya wrote: Mon Aug 26, 2024 2:18 pm I have a lot to say about this subject but I will remind you all of the bi-annual Meta crash where Facebook, Instagram, and What'sApp are unavailable for hours. Not to mention a few weeks ago where entire industries were frozen due to some Microsoft updates. You really are putting a lot of trust in the most ultra capitalist companies to protect your data (and I'm not even talking about privacy) from being lost. Shit happens and it happens more often that we like to think.

This is what ultra-capitalist companies are good for. Server farms are like a commodity resource these days and companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft are fighting over the space. Any breaches in data security costs them billions in reputational damage. They have more incentive to keep their data secure than the average person invests in securing their closet. Somebody could always steal your tape.

How many people here have got a Gmail account? How long have you had it? How often has your Gmail data become corrupted? The era of decades of continuous uninterrupted data storage is here already. All the talk about hard drives vs DVD-R or DAT or whatever we used to have in the past, it's none of those things, the server farms win, data storage as a service wins, because when we have fast broadband internet everywhere of course it does.

Your data will still be on your laptop, on your phone, on your whatever, so if the servers go down you still have what you have. But chances are they won't go down, and if they do then chances are it comes back online soon with all your data intact because it's somebody's job. And this is how it's going to be. Everyone will have a digital closet. Probably you already do. This is the future. We don't maintain our own data storage, in the same way as we don't grow our own corn. Dealing with the digital archives left behind by dead people is now a topic for consideration.

As someone who works with, around, and depends on these ultra capialist storage companies:

1. I don't share FM Anthony Flack's confidence in their capabilities and priorities
2. Consumers are a completely different animal in the storage world.
3. The tiered pricing structure for these storage models all include act of God clauses that they can and will use in the event of a loss.

This is not an argument for or against tape v. digital, I just think that the risks associated with offsite digital storage are often understated. People thought their Super 8's would be around forever too.

Anthony Flack wrote: Wed Aug 28, 2024 5:21 pm How many people here have got a Gmail account? How long have you had it? How often has your Gmail data become corrupted?

Yes. Nothing important to me, but before deleting a bunch of emails going back to about 2009 I poked around a bit and not everything opened. And that's a mouse fart's worth of data.

I can't follow the argument that

mdc wrote: Thu Aug 22, 2024 9:19 am I had a smart professor in university who pointed out that if you want to compare two things you can't in good faith compare the worst possible version of one thing to the best possible version of another.

is then followed with two massive, catastrophic and extraordinarily rare events (the Universal tape fire and the burning of the Library of Alexandria). Those are about the worst possible things I guess you could imagine when you start recording your record to tape: that some day the two master copies (tracking and mixdown) will both be in the same place and that place catches fire.

That's Column A. Column B is that you'll be able to easily reconstruct your session from cloud-stored files at any point going forward. And you end up with ...

Anthony Flack wrote: Fri Aug 23, 2024 6:30 pm

penningtron wrote: Fri Aug 23, 2024 5:46 pm But if you want to put all your work on Google cloud thinking it'll be there in 50 years, have fun.

I bet it will stand a better chance than a reel of tape in a closet.

Bonkers.

Column A, in the real world, is a physical object that contains all or very much most of your information in a non-proprietary, entirely standardized format. The technology for retrieving that information is readily available and has been for coming up on 100 years. (Eh, okay, 50 years for 24 track.) And as FM Steve RIP would point out - you could refashion that tech if you had to. I don't want to construct the argument on this weird case, but it does demonstrate that it's possible. Finally, the standardization of the workflow around creating that information gives you redundancy of the tracking plus the mixdown.

Sure, you don't have the post-recording outboard processing at hand. You'd need to approximate it if that's important.

Column B, in the real world, is a not-physical object that contains all of your information in a possibly proprietary, VERY MUCH non-standard fashion - times 2. First, you need to be able to retrieve the files.

And sure, some of you work for the Pentagon and have RAID 814s* that include nuclear proof hard drives on the moon. But most of us have cloud storage for which we are the owners (leasees, really) that require us to maintain that account, remember what's up there, remember where it is, keep it organized with the rest of the data that we manage.

Should we or our successors be able to find those files in the future and they are not corrupted or inaccessible (which definitely happen), we're onto part 2: being able to retrieve the information. Now if you recorded your multitrack recording with files that have exactly the same start time, no plugins, no overdubs/edits, into .wav files all in the same folder with clear labels (or you always always burn stems that do exactly this), then your may have created a session that some future DAW or whatever takes its place can reconstruct. It almost matches the same availability that a mutitrack master effortlessly presents to the heads of a tape machine.

But this requires exceptional diligence that deviates hugely from the standard DAW workflow. What's much more common is something in a folder labeled "untitled_record/new_song_4/demo_6/" and has about 30 different files labeled "Chris Fart Guitar.wav". And if you're in the industry standard ProTools, you may run into all sorts of complaints when you open the session file (if you know which one it is) because you don't have the right plugins, or it can't find the files and asks if you want it to look for them, or oh, you didn't pay your ProTools subscription so you can't even get those answers until you get that squared away.

The analogies to money or video games don't hold up here because we're talking about two very specific paradigms and one of them - analog tape - has distinctive history that confirms its advantage.

Enjoy editing digital audio, sharing digital audio, and the considerably lower cost to entry. These are all big benefits to recording digitally vs analog tape. But for a long-term recording of a musical document, it is distinctly inferior in regards to anticipated longevity.

= Justin

* I made this up and don't think there is such a thing. Was trying to sound big-time futuristic.

Having a single physical copy of a thing is having nothing for the purposes of archive. There is nothing "archival" about analog tape unless you have multiple copies of it. 1 is none, 2 is one. In digital land 1 is 1,000,000,000... if you want it to be and with very little effort/comparative costs.

As far as Google existing in 50 years... doesn't matter. If someone wants to be the custodian of a digital document, they need to be responsible for moving it from dying format / storage solution to whatever is replacing that solution. Not impossible or even hard but requires some baby sitting. At least, digitally, you can make those trades without degradation as long as there are computers, and someone to do it. Analog archives cant be considered stable without care and attention either. "Someone mover those tapes so the roof stops leaking on them" etc. I still stand that in 50-100 years, as long as someone has actually acted as any responsible curator, a digital file has a better chance of being easily accessible than anything recorded on a reel to reel. Those machines are going away eventually. Sure there will be the rando that still has one up and working somewhere, but thats an unknown factor to say the least. Not saying it won't be possible, just extremely harder than it will be for a maintained digital format.

For the record, I love analog tape and wish it was feasible for me to use it daily but it just isn't. If I did, I would absolutely bounce out everything to digital files for backup.

Frankie99 wrote: Thu Aug 29, 2024 9:55 am This is not an argument for or against tape v. digital, I just think that the risks associated with offsite digital storage are often understated. People thought their Super 8's would be around forever too.

So people's Super 8's didn't stick around forever? The data security of a single copy in the back of a closet is being overstated I think. We just don't notice all the things that get thrown out and never missed.

I thought the burning of the Library of Alexandria demonstrates the durability of digital records due to the continued existence of a lot of its content through other copies. Text is digital; you can reproduce it as much as you like. As I mentioned, The Iliad, The Republic and Euclid's Elements have stuck around to this day. Nice.

Now if you recorded your multitrack recording with files that have exactly the same start time, no plugins, no overdubs/edits, into .wav files all in the same folder with clear labels (or you always always burn stems that do exactly this), then your may have created a session that some future DAW or whatever takes its place can reconstruct

Hang on, it's not a case of if you do all of that you MIGHT be ok. If you do all of that you will have definitely created something that ALL future DAWs would be able to reconstruct perfectly with no effort whatsoever. You won't do all of that, but there's a pretty severe double standard being applied here. You don't get any information about the mix or outboard effects on your tape, but that's ok because the "workflow" means you write it all down and of course you don't lose it and of course you have access to all of those outboard effects in the future. But if a plugin isn't present, never mind that the workflow includes automatically writing human-readable files that tell you exactly what they all are and the worst case scenario is that you have to use a different effect. Meanwhile assuming the digital "workflow" dictates we all become Skrillex and the edit will be really complicated and raw takes will be useless.

All these old machines are going to be so rare in the future. I keep saying that looking back over the 20th century is not really going to be a good guide for the 21st century. The idea that somebody in 2080 is going to have an easier time retrieving data from a 2" magnetic tape rather than some .wav files on a digital network seems bonkers to me. Never mind the idea that the person in 2080 is going to say "of course I will store my important recordings on magnetic tape too".

I also love old technology and collect old technology, but I am getting old myself.

The irony of 'niche' tech like tape machines, much like vinyl pressing plants and tube amp builders were for many years, is that will enable them to survive longer. They aren't seeing daily wear and tear recording jingles or whatever. I've been hearing that tape recording will go away for 25+ years now, and at least in big cities and music hubs, it's still quite easy to find. I live 2 miles away from a tape-based studio I hope to check out some day.

And much like I wouldn't have predicted the last Shellac record being pressed with brand new technology, maybe something similar could happen with analog recording. Time-proven preservation will be important enough for someone (for things beyond what any of us are doing, probably.)

Justin Foley wrote: Thu Aug 29, 2024 3:46 pm What's much more common is something in a folder labeled "untitled_record/new_song_4/demo_6/" and has about 30 different files labeled "Chris Fart Guitar.wav".

Man, you got ALL of Chris' fart guitar out-takes, that's going to be great for the box set re-issue. Some of them aren't even guitar parts! The fans will love it.

The folders don't seem to be in any kind of order but since this is some point later than 2024 let's just get a fucking AI to take care of all that for us in one second, there we go. Oh yeah we have machine learning now, dang, I forgot. Well that's gonna make things easier.