Re: [ARSCLIST] Copyright and hard drives

[Steven Smolian <smolians@xxxxxxxxx>]

Have you found an eight track quarter inch player machine with all eight
tracks on one head?

Steve Smolian

=========================
Steven Smolian    301-694-5134
Smolian Sound Studios
---------------------------------------------------
CDs made from old recordings,
Five or one or lifetime hoardings,
Made at home or concert hall,
Text and pics explain it all.
at www.soundsaver.com
=========================
----- Original Message -----
From: "Copeland, Peter" <Peter.Copeland@xxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2003 12:07 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Copyright and hard drives


> Dear Mike,
> (1) Well, the CD format *is* well-documented, but a further consideration
is
> that there are more than a billion "Red Book" players out there, whereas
> Edison made only about a million cylinder players. Yet it is simple to
watch
> an Edison machine at work, and either create a new machine to do the same
> job, or modify a vintage machine to transfer the information
electronically.
> This is only ordinary analogue engineering skill (although I agree the
> weakness could be in that last sentence!) The *documentation* survives.
> (2) Yes, this is beginning to happen, but the original patents (which
> expired here in the year 2000) mean the vast majority of CDs should indeed
> play, while the user-base of machinery means that the vast majority of
audio
> CDs still need to be compatible with older players. Again, it's "software"
> which is the problem, mainly recipes for "surround-sound" encoding.
> (3) I'm afraid I don't know Sanyo's "V-cord" format, but the Elcassette
> contains quarter-inch tape which can be extracted from the cassette and
> wound onto a spool. It can then be played on any 4-track quarter-inch
> open-reel tape player. Likewise, another correspondent was bewailing the
> fate of "eight-track" cartridges. Personally, I have been studying these,
> because they often bear UNencoded quadraphonic recordings! They are not
> common on this side of the Atlantic, but I have now found twenty-one, and
> plan to move the tape from the cartridges onto open reels, and play them
on
> an eight-track quarter-inch machine. From this, it should then be possible
> to fine-tune the SQ and QS encoding systems used for vinyl discs.
>     Much of the above comes down to the fact that, for analogue
recordings,
> there is much to be gained from having the same sound on two different
> formats. This is especially true if you accept the idea of getting back to
> what the original recording engineers would have wished.
> Peter Copeland
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Richter [mailto:mrichter@xxxxxxx]
> Sent: 18 March 2003 16:14
> To: ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Copyright and hard drives
>
> At 02:04 PM 3/18/2003 +0000, Copeland, Peter wrote:
> >Dear Joel,
> >     Thanks for your posting. I've retired now, so I cannot speak for my
> >successor, but I see little need for an "open source" software decoder
for
> >CDs. Any CD player with an SP-DIF output is capable of replaying
everything
> >(including the track flags) complete with error-correction, so the audio
> and
> >the flags may be moved to any other audio hardware capable of the
necessary
> >sampling-frequency and bit-resolution. (The AES digital
connection-standard
> >will copy the audio, if necessary for very long physical distances; but
it
> >does not include track flags. Our experiences with Betamax videotapes
with
> >digital audio also showed it was relatively simple to retro-fit the
> machines
> >with SP-DIF outputs).
>
> I am out of my base of knowledge here, but would like to offer some
> questions with implied answers.
>
> 1. Is not the need for "open source" more for documentation so that the
> format can be reconstructed even after it has been abandoned by its owner?
>
> 2. As the patents on CD format expire, liberties are being taken with the
> color book standards. Is there not the risk that some 'protected' discs
> will deviate far enough to preclude easy movement to another medium or
> format?
>
> 3. The Betamax example is perhaps too weak since the hardware was well
> developed and in use for an extended period. Would the result have been
> similar for Sanyo's V-Cord video format or Sony's El-Cassette for audio?
>
> Mike
> mrichter@xxxxxxx
> http://www.mrichter.com/
>
>
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